Balenciaga has always been an early adopter of sorts. Within tech, they held VR fashion shows, within culture, they integrated their designs into Fortnite outfits. Last year, they even created a Substack profile, becoming the first fashion house to do so, and began releasing musings from Pierpaolo Piccioli, the latest being notes on the maison’s SS27 collection.
Now, the brand has announced an official partnership with the platform, joining Substack’s native sponsorship program. This isn’t your regular ad or brand placement. Balenciaga will support Substack writers and collaborate on co-written pieces.
“Balenciaga has a century-long history of innovation, and I’m proud that it continues to forge ahead as a cultural catalyst, empowering creativity and new channels of independent thinking, embodied today with this Substack partnership,” said Gianfranco Gianangeli, the CEO of Balenciaga.
This partnership comes at a time when we are seeing a clear shift from content to written media. Chanel Beauty recently partnered with Chaos—a creative agency, lifestyle brand, and magazine all rolled into one—to release the COCO magazine, a beauty-focused print. Their first issue, available at limited Chanel Beauty stores, explores the power of makeup. Whereas Coach pulled focus on the act of reading, creating book charms in collaboration with Penguin Random House, and starting a book club for its Spring 2026 campaign.
Beyond the print media resurgence, the shift in popularity of Substack itself shows the cultural desire to move away from content and into written word. According to reports by the platform, Substack has approximately 50 million subscribers, with paid newsletter subscriptions totalling to $5 million, revealing the appetite for slower media from writers that audiences can trust.
Partial influence comes from The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the nostalgia of the early 2000s, and the glossy prints of that time. Whereas another source for slower media, like Substack, comes from the collective exhaustion experienced from traditional social media sites. AI-generated videos, performative posting, obvious bot-written tweets, and an algorithm curated from backend data have left users distrustful of social media altogether. With Substack, the power goes back to the individual who can choose which writers to subscribe to, and develop their mind while they’re at it. With Balenciaga joining as a sponsor, it further proves that this shift is here to stay.
