When Pierpaolo Piccioli landed in Paris to start working as Balenciaga’s new creative director last June, he went straight from the airport to the Balenciaga archive near Bourget, to which he would devote a total of three days, eager to inspect dresses that he had only ever seen in photos.

He would spend the next month working at Balenciaga headquarters, overlapping with the tenure of Demna, who would stage his final couture show on July 9 before taking the creative lead of sister house Gucci in Italy.

“So we had been sharing all the teams, all the spaces, and that was interesting, too,” he said. “To have two creative directors sharing the same house for one month, you learn the idea of respect, of tolerance, of sharing, which I think is important for life, not only for fashion

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