The campaign star finally hit the catwalk for Demna alongside health goths, celebs, influencers, and baristas

This just in: after starring in two Balenciaga campaigns and having her face plastered all over some of Paris’ most prominent billboards, Demna finally convinced Cardi B to hit the runway at his Fall 24 show in Los Angeles. Taking over the palm tree-lined bougie boulevard slap bang in the centre Hollywood, the creative director served up a collection of his signature slouchy streetwear, twisted rad carpet showstoppers, and big, boxy tailoring, with Cardi stepping into a fuzzy blue faux fur coat to take her turn on the catwalk. The crowd, unsurprisingly, were gagged.

Though today marks Balenciaga’s first ever show in La La Land, the move feels a lot like a homecoming. Hollywood is notorious as a place where nothing is as it seems, a city built on artifice with a deeply unsettling undercurrent bubbling beneath its freeways, crosswalks, and beach fronts. In no other place is celebrity held in such high regard, where fame is currency, where dreams are realised and shattered – and so it makes total sense that Demna would want to come here and interrogate its foundations in his own brilliantly twisted way.

It’s something he’s been obsessed with for basically ever: after all, this is the man who turned the lens on the editors, influencers, and fashion insiders who attended his SS22 Simpsons premiere, hired proper paparazzi photographers to capture his campaigns, and had the most famous woman in the world, Kim Kardashian, walk his SS22 Haute Couture show.

After taking over Wall Street with a perverse show full of latex-clad gimps in 2023, Demna’s decision to cast Cardi this time around makes a lot of sense. The musician is loved for her rags-to-riches success story, rising up out of a strip club in the Bronx to become one of the best-selling rappers of all time. It’s the American dream in action, baby!

Add to this the fact she’s also the closest thing we have to a proper old-school star: bolshy and outspoken, she doesn’t filter what she says unlike a lot of the dead-eyed, media-trained celebs that dominate gossip columns the world over now. Were Kenneth Anger writing Hollywood Babylon right now, in 2023, it’s not a stretch to imagine Cardi featuring in one of its chapters, rolling out of the Chateau after some clandestine little night.

Stay tuned to Dazed for the full report from the show, follow Dazed Fashion on Instagram and TikTok for real time updates from the runway, and revisit Demna’s stellar SS24 show here and in the gallery below.