Bureau Borsche redesigns Balenciaga’s new website to reflect “norm core” aesthetics

Bureau Borsche has created the new website for French luxury fashion house Balenciaga, as part of its refreshed direction. In 2015, Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia was brought in to inject the brand with a “breath of fresh air”, taking his “norm core aesthetic and mundane brand-abstractions” to Balenciaga’s runways.

Bureau Borsche has worked with Demna to emulate this shift on its digital platforms by creating a new website that aims to be “utterly brilliant in its simplicity and superbly user-friendly”. The Germany-based studio, founded by Mirko Borsche, has stripped back the website’s elements completely and the result is a basic grid system that guides customers through Balenciaga’s collections, leading to a “fast and fun” check-out in its online shop. There’s little brand presence, with Balenciaga’s logo appearing modestly in the top left corner and imagery is focused purely on the products, creating a uniform, catalogue-like design.