I’ve been anxiously awaiting Balenciaga Spring 2012 for several years. Not literally, but in the sense that I’ve not been knocked off my feet by Nicolas Ghesquiere since his Fall 2007 collection for the house. You might remember how that landmark season spawned several iconic trends, including the keffiyah and the tailored blazer with contrast piping. In many ways Balenciaga Fall 2007 was a game-changer, but perhaps in no way more than demonstrating that it is entirely possible for a young designer like Ghesquiere to take the helms of a storied Parisian design house and breathe new life into a label whilst respecting the archives and brand DNA of the original founder, Cristóbal Balenciaga.

To read more about how Balenciaga taught Amy to love fashion, click below:

 On a personal note, Balenciaga Fall 2007 was the collection that made me fall in love with fashion. I was a junior at Michigan State University at the time and was just starting to seriously follow fashion. It was during this time that I discovered The Sartorialist. When I saw the photo of Kim Noorda (below) on Style.com it blew my mind. I understood the references, having grown up with an academic mother whose personal style was dominated by blazers, khakis, and other hallmarks of “scholarly” fashion. But here, “university cool” was deconstructed, infused with ethnic patterns and hippie-like graphic colors. With some silhouette experimentation it was transformed into a singular aesthetic, one that captured the essence of Balenciaga at the dawn of the 21st century.

Upon seeing this collection it was like kensho. I finally grokked the power of design. The feeling I had was of a sudden crystallization as though my fashion brain was a supersaturated chemical solution that had been primed for the experience by years of reading Vogue. Balenciaga Fall 2007 was the seed crystal that sparked a chemical reaction that has continued to this day, a deep and abiding passion for fashion. I was so blown away that I begged my mom to buy me the nearly identical J.Crew Lexington blazer, clearly modeled on the Balenciaga version but sensible for a college student like myself. It was her first true fashion indulgence for me, one we both justified as me needing it for job interviews since it was the beginning of my final year in college. But really, I just needed a piece of this collection, even if only the J.Crew version.

To this day, this is my favorite blazer and I wear it often during the cooler months. A few months later, during my family’s Thanksgiving trip to New York City, I purchased my first designer handbag on my first visit to a designer flagship at Balenciaga in Chelsea. How fitting, as this was the brand that sparked an unrelenting love of fashion via runway images, which I obsessed over on my tiny laptop computer screen in an East Lansing dorm room during a typically Michigan lake-effect snowstorm. I remember it like it was yesterday.