I laughed when the title flashed.
'My Balenciaga' by Han Ong, published in The New Yorker on March 15, 2026. We all know Balenciaga's creations of turning cheap things into 'high art' and pricing them ridiculously — the most recent being that
$1790 trash bag made of leather that comes in blue and yellow, brought to discussion because of
a Chinese actress's choice of bag as a nod to her film character.
However, this story has nothing to do with the bag, or any Balenciaga bag. It's the author's nod to a Mavis Gallant story 'The Ice Wagon Going Down The Street' (1963). It revolves around a dress that may be a Balenciaga, and focused on the relationship between a Filipino single mother and her daughter Lucy.
The Filipina mother was an ex-beauty queen in Manila and a successful model who walked the runways of Europe, then America where she raised Lucy with the help of her sister Fely. Lucy's Aunty Fely is the chief thoracic surgeon at Mount Sinai. They lived in the Upper West Side in New York.
A Filipino film star's death opened the story and set it for many memories of the past for Lucy's mother and her Aunty Fely who were the film star's fans. That was Nora Aunor (21 May 1953 to 16 April 2025).
I knew that my mother was not crying for some man in her past, but I also knew that she had secret griefs, and that it must have been a pleasure to be able to weep openly for Nora—the onscreen as well as the dead figure—while being the star of her own private soap opera. As for me, I wept for all the times my classmates had called me ugly—which had been all the more painful because I had a mother who was considered the “Sophia Loren of the Orient.” I wept for all the times my mother hadn’t shown up when she was supposed to, and for Aunt Fely’s spinsterhood (but, oddly, not for my own). But, mostly, I wept for Nora’s death—which was also the death of part of my childhood. As for Aunt Fely’s tears—I could not even begin to guess for what or for whom they were being shed.
The Balenciaga in this story, refers to a black dress worn by Lucy's mother when they went to watch a memorial film made by Nora Aunor. The dress was the mother's 'opera outfit' where she wore it to wow occasions, and to solemn funerals. Till she could no longer fit into it. Lucy then inherited this dress.
A perfect festive mourning costume. It had supposedly been made in the nineteen-forties, for an Italian countess or an English lady, then scrapped, and afterward either smuggled out of the workroom by a starry-eyed seamstress or, with the atelier head’s approval, given to one of the in-house models. It ended up in the hands of another model, who bartered it with my mother for something precious that my mother couldn’t remember—some days, it was a carton of Marlboros, on others a cannister of expensive Chinese tea. The designer’s label was not stitched inside the garment, which was to be expected of a discard, although so few “failures,” if any, were allowed to leave the Balenciaga workroom that no one could know for sure if that was indeed one of the house protocols.
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There had once been talk of selling it and spending the proceeds on a cruise for both of us, but, as I mentioned, there was the matter of the absence of any label, and to authenticate it might mean, as I understood it, taking it apart, and, more crucially, where would we get the money to pay the experts? (I believed my mother when she said that it was a Balenciaga. I did not think that this was an instance of her taking baroque liberties with the truth. What reason did she have to lie? In her closet were seven Ungaros, three Rykiels, a Kamali bathing suit and a Kamali sleeping-bag coat, five Kenzo dresses, two pieces from the Ballets Russes collection of Saint Laurent—all of which were trades or payments in kind, none of them mothballed, but instead worn ostentatiously and often. To my mother’s credit, she owned no Chanels, having refused several gifts. She took every opportunity to remind anyone who would listen that the Frenchwoman had been the lover of a German military-intelligence officer during the Second World War. Who was this high-principled priestess? She was, because of such stances and suaveness, the love of my life.)
Lucy sent the dress for authentication, but when the results were returned in an envelope, she never opened it. Not even when her mother's health declined.
I’d begun by being overwhelmingly certain that the Balenciaga was a Balenciaga; I would not have paid for the research otherwise. And then time and silence did their work, and I slowly, slowly came to the opposite belief, but I did not call off the researcher’s efforts. I was afraid, yes, but I was also strangely exhilarated. For years, I had delighted in my mother’s sunlike quality, and then a stray cloud—of doubt, when I began to question the harmlessness of her inventions and exaggerations, centered on, of all things, a costume, on pieces of fabric—had come between us, and I had wanted to extend that moment for a little longer, and longer after that. But could that be what I still wanted? Did I have the courage to see my treasonous impulses through to their logical end point?
In an interview with the journal, the author explained why Lucy never took an interest in her father or seek to verify if the dress is truly from Balenciaga. Lucy saw her mother as beautiful, and herself as 'ugly', albeit an 'ugly' but moderately successful novelist with two titles to her name. At this point when the story ended, she still hadn't opened the envelope. Perhaps she might in the future, but we would not know when, except when she is ready to.
“My Balenciaga” leaves a big question unanswered, because Lucy chooses not to know the answer. Why do you think, by the end of the story, she no longer wants to learn the truth?
All I’ll say is: Lucy has the truth. She has her truth. And it’s not an empty truth, because it seems to be corroborated by many good hunches—for example, the feeling that she is “being held in place by a firm hand,” when she puts on the titular dress to accompany her mother for a walk in Central Park. Also, it’s important to add that, although by the time the story ends Lucy has decided not to look up the answer she sought, that doesn’t mean she never will. Maybe the length of time she is taking is the time she needs to acclimate to possible disappointment.
