Balenciaga has unveiled its latest collaboration with Crocs, that includes shoe styles in the form of rainbows and one with a narrow stiletto heel.
For Balenciaga’s Spring 2022 collection, which debuted Sunday, the fashion house presented knee-high boot Croc style and stiletto Croc. The show titled “Clones” explored the “reality through the lens of technology.”
“To illustrate this concept, every look in the Spring ’22 collection is seen on Eliza Douglas, an artist who has either opened or closed every show and appeared in most campaigns for the past several years,” Balenciaga wrote. “In a video directed by Quentin Deronzier, Eliza appears as a series of digital clones, some of which are deepfakes, or models with Eliza’s photogrammetry-captured and CG-scanned face digitally grafted on.”
The collaboration, dubbed “Balenciaga Crocs 2.0,” saw the classic clog transform into a stiletto heel that comes in green and black. Knee-high rain boots in green, black, and gray were also a part of the brand’s rollout.
“Balenciaga Crocs 2.0,” according to the show notes, sees the classic Croc clogtransformed into pumps, thick boots with the signature foot bed shape and pool slides. Instead of the iconic crocodile logo on the shoe’s rivets, the designer brand is stamping their version with brand’s name.
“We were inspired by Crocs and we worked with them on a Balenciaga reinterpretation. Balenciaga x Crocs isn’t impossible, the question of taste is a very subjective value. We’ll see if this works in six months’ time in the stores,” Balenciaga’s creative director Demna Gvasalia told French Vogue in 2017. “I wore Crocs this summer to see how I felt about them and they are the world’s comfiest shoes! I just wanted give to give them a fashionable touch: a platform. At the end of the day, fashion is all about having fun.”
No price has been announced for the shoe yet — but Balenciaga and Crocs first made waves with its first collaboration of the $850 platform clogs back in 2017 for their Spring/Summer 2018 Paris Fashion Week. It was reportedly sold out as the clogs were available exclusively through Barney, selling out before they ever were made available in stores.
The spring show did bill itself as a “deep fake runway” and a “commentary on the uniformity of trends and their diminishment of individuality,” Hypebeast reported. However, the style is here to stay, as evidenced by the brand’s loyalty to Crocs dating back to its first collaboration in 2017.
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