Balenciaga is something of an internet native. As a fashion House, Balenciaga has long been ahead of the game in terms of how it approaches its digital footprint – becoming first adopters of new platforms, hosting VR fashion shows, pioneering metaverse fashion, and even creating high-fashion fabric skins in the Fortnite game.
Last year, the House launched its own presence on Substack, posting occasional dispatches from green creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli and experimenting with live-streaming runway shows on the platform – reportedly the first luxury brand to do so. But now, that experiment has evolved into something even more interesting.
What exactly is Balenciaga doing on Substack?
Balenciaga is the first fashion house to join Substack’s new native brand partnership program, launched in June 2026. The premise is quite different from traditional advertising. Instead of placing ads around newsletters, brands can directly support individual Substack writers. In practice, that means Balenciaga will collaborate with creators on co-written newsletters, shared conversations, and live events – extending beyond fashion into areas like music, wellness, and wider cultural commentary.
Why are brands suddenly interested in Substack?
Because the way attention works online has changed. Substack is built on a simple idea: people follow people, not algorithms. And more importantly, they actively choose – and often pay – for the voices they trust. For brands used to operating in algorithm-driven environments, that’s a very different kind of media ecosystem.
Balenciaga has already been testing its way into this space. It has used Substack for runway livestreams and behind-the-scenes creative notes, treating it less like a press distribution tool and more like an ongoing cultural feed.
How does this change the role of a fashion brand online?
At a recent Balenciaga and Substack panel in Cannes – which featuring contributors like writer Plum Sykes and author Pauline Klein – the discussion circled this exact idea: that influence is becoming more distributed, more conversational, and less reliant on traditional media structures. Balenciaga’s own CEO Gianfranco Gianangeli described the partnership as an extension of the House’s long-standing support for “bold voices.” And Substack’s co-founder Chris Best positioned it as a model built on trust between creators and their readers.
