Balmain (Q1829)
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French fashion house
- House of Balmain
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Balmain |
French fashion house |
|
Statements
2001
2003
ready-to-wear designer, Artistic Director of Haute Couture
2003
Artistic Director
2011
Chief Designer
2015
embellishment expert
worked
Pre-fall is showroom season. And of all the showrooms we visit, Balmain’s 8th arrondissement center of operations is amongst the buzziest. Both in womenswear on the ground floor and men’s in the basement, the models who roam the space in rotating looks appear to be having a blast. While the in-house retail teams and wholesale visitors seem tightly focused, the timbre of their dialogues is uplifted by laughter. Crucially, the designer is present.Olivier Rousteing moves here and there between sections of his collections via moments with the models as they meander past. Despite the agreeable atmosphere, Rousteing says he is working to create tension by mining dichotomies. One central tension here runs between aristocratically historic Versailles pomp and democratically contemporary Parisian elan. Rousteing’s negotiations include a typical Balmain peak lapelled tailored jacket that explodes into mini panniers at the hips. This generates an extreme symmetry when placed alongside the huge-shouldered marabou belted jacket that wafts past shortly afterwards. Evening dresses combine grandiose materiality (chandelier-worthy cut crystals, crest-embossed golden buttons) with fleeting, borderline scanty silhouettes. Draped tops and dresses are cut in a trompe l’oeil spectrum of stone that gives them the appearance of weathered classical statues. Wrapped mini skirts and jackets are crafted from gold brocade frogging over densely woven cotton linen, while a white cashmere sweater features two parallel horizontal grids that simultaneously reference the Breton shirt and the Balmain’s officer jacket staple.Around the structure there is slouch in diamond quilted leathers and denim (plus denim with Versailles worthy crystal embellishment) and oversized contemporary military outerwear in leopard and cheetah. Tweed, which Rousteing says represents around 30% of daywear sales, is deformalized through color, embellishment, cut, and placed in combination with leathers. Hardware includes the founder-favorite gold chains on belt charms and jewelry and the big-buckled belt detailing on bags and powerfully waisted envelope dresses.As so often, the central intersection betweens menswear and women’s runs through tailoring. With half an eye on the upcoming Met Gala’s Black Dandyism theme, Rousteing has riffed on the urchin swagger of the Titi Parisien to evoke a hometown version of the dressed-up archetype.
Silk robe suiting and scarf-fronted silk shirting create a Balmain-by-way-of-Beau Brummel starting point before he breaks into low lapeled, high waisted suiting featuring decadent gold hardware and pants hemmed high enough to showcase wickedly pointed stack-heeled boots. Topped with the Parisian version of newsboy caps and cinched with more belting, these looks mix the sartorial architecture of the 1940s with the 1970s and propel them towards a very French flavored form of futurism.One particular highlight is the fur lined slide soccer boot in three colorways that Rousteing says will be called the “Halftime” and that features convincingly professional looking cleats. There are menswear equivalents of the oversized contemporary military outerwear and slightly more structured versions of the gorgeous cocoon coats seen upstairs. As we head back up there, Rousteing says: “It’s a fresh expression of our DNA. After 15 years here at Balmain I treasure that DNA more and more, and become more convinced of how important it is to keep focused on deepening and developing it. Because as soon as you stop, someone else will try and take it. Plus, I think that trends are not relevant anymore: as soon as a trend emerges everyone jumps on it and it immediately becomes meaningless. It’s so much better to be yourself.”
6 December 2024
Pre-fall is showroom season. And of all the showrooms we visit, Balmain’s 8th arrondissement center of operations is amongst the buzziest. Both in womenswear on the ground floor and men’s in the basement, the models who roam the space in rotating looks appear to be having a blast. While the in-house retail teams and wholesale visitors seem tightly focused, the timbre of their dialogues is uplifted by laughter. Crucially, the designer is present.Olivier Rousteing moves here and there between sections of his collections via moments with the models as they meander past. Despite the agreeable atmosphere, Rousteing says he is working to create tension by mining dichotomies. One central tension here runs between aristocratically historic Versailles pomp and democratically contemporary Parisian elan. Rousteing’s negotiations include a typical Balmain peak lapelled tailored jacket that explodes into mini panniers at the hips. This generates an extreme symmetry when placed alongside the huge-shouldered marabou belted jacket that wafts past shortly afterwards. Evening dresses combine grandiose materiality (chandelier-worthy cut crystals, crest-embossed golden buttons) with fleeting, borderline scanty silhouettes. Draped tops and dresses are cut in a trompe l’oeil spectrum of stone that gives them the appearance of weathered classical statues. Wrapped mini skirts and jackets are crafted from gold brocade frogging over densely woven cotton linen, while a white cashmere sweater features two parallel horizontal grids that simultaneously reference the Breton shirt and the Balmain’s officer jacket staple.Around the structure there is slouch in diamond quilted leathers and denim (plus denim with Versailles worthy crystal embellishment) and oversized contemporary military outerwear in leopard and cheetah. Tweed, which Rousteing says represents around 30% of daywear sales, is deformalized through color, embellishment, cut, and placed in combination with leathers. Hardware includes the founder-favorite gold chains on belt charms and jewelry and the big-buckled belt detailing on bags and powerfully waisted envelope dresses.As so often, the central intersection betweens menswear and women’s runs through tailoring. With half an eye on the upcoming Met Gala’s Black Dandyism theme, Rousteing has riffed on the urchin swagger of the Titi Parisien to evoke a hometown version of the dressed-up archetype.
Silk robe suiting and scarf-fronted silk shirting create a Balmain-by-way-of-Beau Brummel starting point before he breaks into low lapeled, high waisted suiting featuring decadent gold hardware and pants hemmed high enough to showcase wickedly pointed stack-heeled boots. Topped with the Parisian version of newsboy caps and cinched with more belting, these looks mix the sartorial architecture of the 1940s with the 1970s and propel them towards a very French flavored form of futurism.One particular highlight is the fur lined slide soccer boot in three colorways that Rousteing says will be called the “Halftime” and that features convincingly professional looking cleats. There are menswear equivalents of the oversized contemporary military outerwear and slightly more structured versions of the gorgeous cocoon coats seen upstairs. As we head back up there, Rousteing says: “It’s a fresh expression of our DNA. After 15 years here at Balmain I treasure that DNA more and more, and become more convinced of how important it is to keep focused on deepening and developing it. Because as soon as you stop, someone else will try and take it. Plus, I think that trends are not relevant anymore: as soon as a trend emerges everyone jumps on it and it immediately becomes meaningless. It’s so much better to be yourself.”
6 December 2024
Olivier Rousteing has enjoyed 15 years, 13 as creative director, inscribing his handwriting on the history of the house of Balmain. Only now, however, has he picked up his pen and got scribbling. “Yes, that’s my writing,” he confirmed of the elegant cursive script inked via craft across these men’s and women’s pre-collections. “When I was at school the calligraphy classes were one of my favorites.”Here his text served to underline signatures both long-established and seasonal. In large-lettered reproduction—‘Je t’aime’—it snaked across the front of a trompe l’oeil shadowed, nude-effect crystal embroidered dress. In brass-toned metal brooches it gleamed on the chest of a snow-white boucle jacket. In intarsia it ran across the chest of a monochrome piped-sleeve t-shirt blouse with sportswear detailing, as well as a collarless tailored jacket. It ran riot over peplum buttressed dresses, chic loose suiting and shirting, and swishily lapelled outerwear. In menswear it also featured in metal bracelets, cropped bikers, and a tunic top in which Rousteing’s nib simultaneously marked the ‘t’ of his declaration of love and the deep-V neckline of the garment. The ‘A’ in ‘Amour’ fulfilled the inverse role in a marvelously regal and heavily scripted coat near the close. ‘Toujours’ wrote Rousteing across the edge of the crystal-etched torso trompe l’oeil that covered the right side of the closing jacket.This penmanship narrated a collection that was bursting with witty self-reflexive detail. Pin cushions were reproduced as amulets, jewelry, and hardware on shoes. Tape measures were reimagined as spiraling metal earrings and curved neckpieces. Rousteing introduced bags fronted with sweatshirt neckline openings, leather bikers spliced with denim truckers, and double-neck sweaters. On our call Rousteing said his billet-doux was designed to be read as an exploration of “my love for Balmain and my love for the atelier. When I designed it I was also thinking about when you are married for such a long time and renew your vows to show everyone you still feel that love. This is Balmain, and this is my letter of love.” Consider his message signed, sealed, and delivered: that Rousteing has left his mark on Balmain is beyond dispute.
28 October 2024
Olivier Rousteing has enjoyed 15 years, 13 as creative director, inscribing his handwriting on the history of the house of Balmain. Only now, however, has he picked up his pen and got scribbling. “Yes, that’s my writing,” he confirmed of the elegant cursive script inked via craft across these men’s and women’s pre-collections. “When I was at school the calligraphy classes were one of my favorites.”Here his text served to underline signatures both long-established and seasonal. In large-lettered reproduction—‘Je t’aime’—it snaked across the front of a trompe l’oeil shadowed, nude-effect crystal embroidered dress. In brass-toned metal brooches it gleamed on the chest of a snow-white boucle jacket. In intarsia it ran across the chest of a monochrome piped-sleeve t-shirt blouse with sportswear detailing, as well as a collarless tailored jacket. It ran riot over peplum buttressed dresses, chic loose suiting and shirting, and swishily lapelled outerwear. In menswear it also featured in metal bracelets, cropped bikers, and a tunic top in which Rousteing’s nib simultaneously marked the ‘t’ of his declaration of love and the deep-V neckline of the garment. The ‘A’ in ‘Amour’ fulfilled the inverse role in a marvelously regal and heavily scripted coat near the close. ‘Toujours’ wrote Rousteing across the edge of the crystal-etched torso trompe l’oeil that covered the right side of the closing jacket.This penmanship narrated a collection that was bursting with witty self-reflexive detail. Pin cushions were reproduced as amulets, jewelry, and hardware on shoes. Tape measures were reimagined as spiraling metal earrings and curved neckpieces. Rousteing introduced bags fronted with sweatshirt neckline openings, leather bikers spliced with denim truckers, and double-neck sweaters. On our call Rousteing said his billet-doux was designed to be read as an exploration of “my love for Balmain and my love for the atelier. When I designed it I was also thinking about when you are married for such a long time and renew your vows to show everyone you still feel that love. This is Balmain, and this is my letter of love.” Consider his message signed, sealed, and delivered: that Rousteing has left his mark on Balmain is beyond dispute.
28 October 2024
“I actually think the face is the sexiest part of a woman’s body.” So said Olivier Rousteing toInto The Glossback in 2012. That was Rousteing’s first full year as creative director of Balmain, which he’d first joined in 2009, and first shown for in September 2011. Tonight, backstage, he said: “I didn’t know [then] I would still be with you talking about this incredible brand. I think the recipe of fashion is to not be trendy. The recipe of fashion is to be you.”This evening’s Balmain show was about Rousteing being Rousteing. He referred back to the fiercely pointy shoulders and intensely worked detail that first emerged at the house when he was assistant to predecessor Christophe Decarnin, and which upon his accession he embraced and amplified. The marinière stripe, both a fundamental French trope and reflective of Rousteing’s Bordelais upbringing, was there too. Rousteing was the first Black lead designer at a Paris luxury house, and his long-term commitment to broadening fashion’s spectrum tonight, as last season, looked especially to include women from across multiple generations on his runway.However this evening’s Balmain show was also very much about a key moment that Rousteing has long been working towards. Back in 2012, Balmain was only eight years clear of a bankruptcy scare, and still sold solely ready-to-wear: That year it posted revenues of just over €30 million. By last year, the range of categories had broadened to include bags, eyewear, sneakers, kidswear and more, and revenues had increased over tenfold. Tonight, though, was Rousteing’s runway declaration that Balmain has re-entered the broadest luxury category of all: beauty. Which brings us back to the start.The face images in the dresses, jackets and shorts were rendered by the hand-embroidering of hundreds of thousands of pearlescent beads. The multi-toned, multi-textural dress and top in looks 31 and 32 were wearable mascara palettes. Many of the looks reflected the ridged and glossy flagons of the recently launched Les Éternels throwback heritage Balmain fragrance range. These also inspired heels and bag hardware. Sometimes the models more straightforwardly carried the fragrances. In the audience was William P. Lauder, executive chairman of Estée Lauder Companies, Balmain’s new long-term global beauty licensee and partner—rarely, if ever, could he have witnessed such a fully-expressed runway embrace.
Rousteing delivered a non-metaphorical runway embrace to Brigitte Macron, a habitual Balmain wearer, before a finale spritz of draped silk dresses in multiple tonal shades. “This show is me,” said Rousteing, the essence of Balmain.
25 September 2024
Although he referenced it back inFall 2020menswear as part of his wild and much wider personal story, this was the first time in 13 years at Balmain that Olivier Rousteing dedicated a full collection to his childhood home of Bordeaux. It was also in many ways a love-note to Lydia Rousteing, his adoptive mother, who along with husband Bruno-Jean raised the young designer there until he left the city to study fashion in Paris (before rapidly leaving Paris to work for Roberto Cavalli).“My mom came here today and she loved the looks,” he reported backstage pre-show. “And she reminded me of memories from being a kid. She was always wearing a trench—you know,really French—and we would go on a picnic and throw a gingham blanket on the grass.” If last month’s menswear show sprang from Rousteing’s African heritage, this womenswear sequel spoke to his identity as a Bordelais.The regional capital’s most celebrated product, its Cru Bourgeois wines, were reflected in the Dionysian abundance of grapes that grew across the collection. They hung from hands in fearsome bunch bags in metal, coiled around the body as inlaid shapes in a peplum-defined black leather dress, nestled in glass and metal beading on bodices, were printed on black or purple silk dresses, trenches and tailoring, and came woven in the patterned fabrication of ruffle hemmed or floor length dresses in tapestry fabric.Rousteing’s second territorial decorative reference was the chief ingredient inEscargots à la Bordelaise. The brittle twisting helix of a snail shell was molded into a substantially fossilized golden breastplate, or into a bodice, or as earrings, or used to decorate the fastenings on belts and bags.These signatures played across multiple remixes of the trench coat, all armed with the same formidable buttons that Rousteing applies to the house’s signature blazers. The trench was fortified with mighty shoulders, deconstructed into a hooded crop top and skirt, reimagined as a product of Pierre Balmain’s nipped-waist and flute-hipped Jolie Madame shape or cut into leather. Gingham, a surface reflection of Rousteing’s long-tumultuous and now becalmed internal duality (as well as that picnic blanket), was reproduced in monochrome or navy and silver crystal overlapping stripes on dresses.
Some dresses and tops came with wickedly sharp and emphasized peak lapels on the left side edged with more metal for more emphasis: these were sometimes placed above ruched roomy pants Rousteing said were designed after a 1960s Judo-inspired model first created by the founder.Touching details that reflected the domestic nostalgia at the heart of this collection included the Balmain branded net shopping bags half-filled with artificial fruit. Another notable element was the age diversity in the casting, which you didn’t have to be called Sigmund to surmise might well be linked to this collection’s connection with Rousteing’s childhood. However, he stressed, this was more than mere memoir: “You know it’s really nice to see all these incredible fashion shows all around the world but it’s often the same models. Sometimes I feel there is a uniformity of models, and that we need to be careful. Because we are celebrating the beauty of diversity.” That last sentence epitomizes the design credo through which Rousteing molds the lessons of his experience and expertise into such specific and terrific works of fashion.
28 February 2024
“Luxury has many meanings,” mused Olivier Rousteing tonight. “And this is screaming luxury.” For his first full menswear show since the eve of the pandemic four yearsago—via last season’s warm up salonpresentation—Rousteing cranked his maximalism up, up, up. “I’m not a quiet man,” he mused.The opening AI-generated face transposed onto a crystal topcoat set the tone for what was to come; intricate technique and extravagant embellishment combined to create unmissable clothes. “So many people laugh about my lips,” said Rousteing pre-show as he walked us through a series of looks that reclaimed the punchline and blew multiple ironic kisses at the gossips. Lip cummerbunds, brooches, jacquard suiting, shirt prints, and monochrome prints on bombers and shirts as well as some amazing pavé-crystal bracelets and lip-toed shoes made for a top-to-bottom riposte.After a polka dot section he shifted into a homage to Congo’s sartorial cult, the sapeurs. Their ten commandments include this rule: “Thou shalt subdue thengayas(non-knowers), thenbendes(ignorant) thetindongos(aimless talkers) on earth, underground at sea, and in the heavens.” To fulfill that brief Rousteing delivered powerfully shouldered and high-waisted silhouettes in full-wattage color mixes. Next up was a print collaboration with Accra based Prince Gyasi. Rousteing reproduced his images on garments and turned them into clothes: look 38’s triptych was adapted from a Gyasi photo. Another collaboration, with Cameroonian Ibby Njoya, transformed suitcases and tiny hard cases into highly lovable luggage.An inverted tulip hemmed coat with layers of white cashmere arranged to form an eye was a key achievement in a suite of tailoring that draped with a sharp and precise beauty. A gold coat, gold face sculptures, heaped gold chains, a gold briefcase and a gold helmet—“for when you don’t want to be seen”—added more luster. At the end we saw Naomi Campbell in a surrealist belt whose fastening was two hands clasped to hold a golden bouquet of golden flowers. She wore a beige cashmere jacket, Rousteing’s sole concession to so-called “quiet luxury.” As he pointed out, Balmain has gone from 20 million euros in revenue a year to 300 million under his watch, “so I’m not gonna start being quiet now.” Why should he?
20 January 2024
“I don’t think there are many designers who can go back to a collection they did for their maison 10 years ago and refer to it in a new collection,” said Olivier Rousteing. He’s right: founder-designers like Giorgo Armani, Stella McCartney, or Junya Watanabe apart, Rousteing is indeed in rare company.After Véronique Nichanian at Hermès menswear and Ian Griffiths at Max Mara, he is now the third longest serving gun-for-hire creative director in the runway racket. Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton womenswear, and Stuart Vevers at Coach have hit the decade milestone more recently than Rousteing. At Hermès (again) Nadège Vanhée should join that select few soon enough.Although, in a business whose commentariat increasingly gets most het up about designer debuts, perhaps experience is moot? Rousteing demurred: “It’s important! You can’t tell a story or create a legacy in one or two seasons, or one or two years. And it’s kind of scary when I look around in the fashion industry today and see that there is no time [being given] for designers to create their own legacy.”Rousteing inherited an already resurgent Balmain from Christophe Decarnin in 2011, and has in his tenure rocket-fueled that growth for the house, while designing a Balmain body of work that is also very much his own. This pre-collection was as oomphy as ever yet also benefited from the designer’s depth of experience. The general vibe was Miami-inspired—“yes, it’s always a good idea!”—and informed by the brash pastel art deco of that city as well as by references to Pierre Balmain’s tapestry-strewn Elba villa by architect Leonardo Ricci that was the subject of a house activation at last year’s Art Basel Miami. It was further enriched by many layered references to his harlequin Miami-meets-Cuba collection fromspring 2013.“This is arealBalmain collection, I’d say. There are some where I go away from the aesthetic of the house, and there are some when I go full on. This one is full on! There’s a lot of joy and a lot of confidence. And in a moment when there is apparently a lot of quiet luxury happening, we should not forget that maybe not everybody only wants a camel cashmere turtleneck.” Miaow!Palms, those pastels, and some fabulous flamingos in flight were overlaid against the diamond check and silhouettes that were sometimes as wild and subversively exuberant as a lost Saturday night on South Beach. “This is my quiet luxury,” said Rouesting with an almost audible wink.
And he’s still only just 38 years old, so not only more experienced in his role than almost every other jobbing creative director in fashion, but also younger than almost every other one, too.
11 December 2023
“I don’t think there are many designers who can go back to a collection they did for their maison 10 years ago and refer to it in a new collection,” said Olivier Rousteing. He’s right: founder-designers like Giorgo Armani, Stella McCartney, or Junya Watanabe apart, Rousteing is indeed in rare company.After Véronique Nichanian at Hermès menswear and Ian Griffiths at Max Mara, he is now the third longest serving gun-for-hire creative director in the runway racket. Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton womenswear, and Stuart Vevers at Coach have hit the decade milestone more recently than Rousteing. At Hermès (again) Nadège Vanhée should join that select few soon enough.Although, in a business whose commentariat increasingly gets most het up about designer debuts, perhaps experience is moot? Rousteing demurred: “It’s important! You can’t tell a story or create a legacy in one or two seasons, or one or two years. And it’s kind of scary when I look around in the fashion industry today and see that there is no time [being given] for designers to create their own legacy.”Rousteing inherited an already resurgent Balmain from Christophe Decarnin in 2011, and has in his tenure rocket-fueled that growth for the house, while designing a Balmain body of work that is also very much his own. This pre-collection was as oomphy as ever yet also benefited from the designer’s depth of experience. The general vibe was Miami-inspired—“yes, it’s always a good idea!”—and informed by the brash pastel art deco of that city as well as by references to Pierre Balmain’s tapestry-strewn Elba villa by architect Leonardo Ricci that was the subject of a house activation at last year’s Art Basel Miami. It was further enriched by many layered references to his harlequin Miami-meets-Cuba collection fromspring 2013.“This is arealBalmain collection, I’d say. There are some where I go away from the aesthetic of the house, and there are some when I go full on. This one is full on! There’s a lot of joy and a lot of confidence. And in a moment when there is apparently a lot of quiet luxury happening, we should not forget that maybe not everybody only wants a camel cashmere turtleneck.” Miaow!Palms, those pastels, and some fabulous flamingos in flight were overlaid against the diamond check and silhouettes that were sometimes as wild and subversively exuberant as a lost Saturday night on South Beach. “This is my quiet luxury,” said Rouesting with an almost audible wink.
And he’s still only just 38 years old, so not only more experienced in his role than almost every other jobbing creative director in fashion, but also younger than almost every other one, too.
11 December 2023
In Olivier Rousteing’s most recent roses-everywhere womenswear collection, onelookseemed anomalous: a tailored jacket heaped with a swoop of embellished swallows. Turns out this was an Easter egg that prefigured a menswear collection aswirl with them. Backstage, in the 44 Rue François 1er building that housed the founder’s first atelier, Rousteing explained that Pierre Balmain had in the 1950s adopted the migratoryhirondelleas a motif on couture dresses and shoes. “It was really interesting for me to take this from couture and apply it to my menswear.” Balmain saw the swallow as an emblem of good luck, he said: “because you can never be sure of what will happen tomorrow.”What happened at the show was that a flight of clearly high-altitude VICs and friends—the Rolex on the gentlemen next to me was as gold and chunky as it gets—glided en masse into the OG Balmain atelier. “For me it’s about the princes of the new world,” said Rousteing: “They all own their own kingdoms.” The swallow’s migratory path takes it from Europe to central Africa, but here Rousteing flew it still further. He majored on souvenir jackets blended with varsity cardigans (sometimes tailoring-touched) that also rioted with tigers and dragons. Rousteing said he had been inspired by the embellished jackets brought back to the US by combat personnel from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam in the 20th Century, and thought of his house’s emergence at the end of World War II, and how (he said) he regularly encounters people who believe Balmain is American. Why the misconception? “Because of the pop,” he reckoned.Atop either substantially elevated Cuban heel boots or very haute woven leather riffs on the summer’s metaverse megaboots, the collection segued between sporty to princely. Tailoring was cut in the outline of enlarged and deconstructed sectional swallow shapes, and paneled in more swallow sections. The shapes were reimagined, organic and sometimes retro-futuristic. Narrow legged and slim-fit boot-cut pants above those Cuban heeled boots hinted at a languid androgynous Balmain glam, which Rousteing said was by no means exclusively for males: “Today we are going to see our VIC women too, and I know that half of the collection they will buy as well.” He added: “I can see the numbers, and it’s so interesting that the men now start to buy the womenswear and the women are buying the menswear. So there is a shift in our collection.
” He added that 20% of the collection is specifically designed to be unisex, while other sizings are adapted to be accessible to all genders.Like the womenswear collection before it, this collection read as if Rousteing was deliberately broadening and adapting his design language to communicate messages that are beyond the apparently “sophisticated.” Tellingly he again mentioned Pierre Balmain’s great friend Gertrude Stein, whose patriarchy-confounding words were similarly encoded. He said: “For me what is interesting is to see all the cultures together, which I think is something that I miss in our world.” The tantalizing spaces between the said and the unsaid were left there on purpose as a murmuration of shifting, fluid meanings. This was a collection designed to be worn out, not spelled out.
5 October 2023
Oliver Rousteing’s rhetoric was as flowery as Balmain’s rose-wreathed clothes this evening. Despite having had a chunk of this collection stolen by carjackers when it en route from Charles de Gaulle airport (of which Rousteing said they were able to hastily remake 70 per cent), he was as ebullient and lyrical as he has ever been. He dropped bon mots like wedding guests drop confetti. Wearing his epic new braids and a majorly-shouldered Balmain jacket (“because you have to have big shoulders to survive in the fashion industry!”) Rousteing shrugged off what would have been a state of emergency for most houses.Instead he said, “What this collection is about is this: I die tomorrow, I just want people to remember that I made sure that Balmain is a French luxury house. And what is French? I think this is more the question.” Rousteing’s answer started with tailoring, including plenty of the house’s big-on-social angular, gold-buttoned blazers, and sharply cut dresses with womanly upholstering at the hip that in some elements echoed the house’s 1990s and 1950s couture output. Several of the models carried chain-strapped conical bags filled with bouquets of what looked like patent leather roses in black. One dress featured two navy coquille-shaped panels running from strong shoulder to armpit over a rose-buttoned corseted wool bodice that merged at the hip with a double layered miniskirt in red polka dot white silk. The chisel-toed shoes in this case were willfully mismatched color-wise, in orange patent. It was a look you couldn’t miss.The kapow color-story continued with a green blazer over a mid-thigh pink ruffle skirt in irregularly pleated pink silk over those shoes, this time in tricolore blue. Then the tailoring receded, overgrown by the silks, which came layered, strapless and ruffle-edged in peach or topped in blue with a roiling tangled bodice of metal branches budded with enamel roses.Rousteing quoted the house founder’s close friend, Gertrude Stein: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” A long red silk dress was gathered from the navel in a twist of fabric arranged into a rose: a patent leather coat bloomed with dozens of them, also in patent. They grew from necklines in semi-transparent recycled plastic and rioted in prints taken from a reworked Pierre Balmain scarf design. They rose rosily as molds, or maybe 3D prints, on a rubbery red jacket and skirt.
They sprouted at the end in intricate early-Rousteing Balmain signature embroidered pieces (which was one, especially time-consuming to produce, part of the collection that was blessedly not in that stolen van).All these multitudinously crafted roses seemed to reflect Rousteing’s instinct to cultivate his expression of “French luxury” in many exaggerated varieties of womenswear flavor; chic, gamine, bourgeois, aristo, street, boho, rive droite, rive gauche, and more. “These roses have thorns, you know?” he said. “The Balmain rose cannot just be a romantic rose. There is also toughness and strength. So it’s about love, it’s about colors, happiness and joy. But it's also about torment! Just because you are tormented it doesn’t mean you need to do a black collection.”To a highly-appropriate Björk soundtrack, Rousteing delivered a hyper-Balmain collection this evening: it was punchy and humorous and emotional, populated by wearable expressions of bold-type mood and social sensation.Editor’s note: This review was corrected to reflect that 70% of this collection was not remade for this show, but 70% of what was stolen from Balmain.
27 September 2023
Olivier Rousteing’s tenure at Balmain has lasted a dozen years already, but to hear him tell it he’s still “finding confidence” with the house. “I live almost every day of my life like a new chapter,” the designer offered during a showroom visit.It may ring counterintuitive, but it takes confidence to dive into the archives of a designer whose name is now more closely associated with Rousteing than it is with a founder’s signature—the kind that, decades if not a century on, remains the lifeblood of other heritage houses. Mention Pierre Balmain, and few would be able to summon a catchphrase like ”jolie madame.”Now that Rousteing no longer needs to prove himself, exploring Balmain’s heritage opens up a new path. That might mean sculpted ”jolie madame” jackets with rounded shoulders and nipped waists or culottes, in statement-making combinations of red, light blue, and mint. Or leopard print in lurex jacquard. Or even hats inspired by the ’50s and ’70s, shown here in their true-to-heritage dimensions. It might mean an oversized twist on the lavaliere blouse. Or it might be a sculpted leather top, or taking details like archival embroidery or a crystal brooch and exploding them into an entire dress.Post-pandemic life has brought a sea change, the designer noted. “Chic and comfort take on a new meaning every decade, and today things have shifted again,” the designer observed. ”During Covid it was loungewear. Now, people want to wear more unique things.” When you already own a zillion hoodies, a special jacket holds fresh appeal that Rousteing likened to a piece of art, albeit art that’s less stealth wealth (let alone norm-core) than in-your-face.“If it’s not part of your DNA, there’s no point in jumping on the same bus,” he said. That goes for men, too. After a century of borrowing from men’s closets, women’s wear now is returning the favor. ”It shows that the codes of humanity are changing,” the designer said.While Rousteing’s muses include Josephine Baker, Brigitte Bardot, and Beyoncé, the American Dream, too, is a through-line. Those on his maximalist wavelength will delight in one of the star-spangliest collections the designer has produced to date. Take, for example, a jacket with one of Monsieur Balmain’s signature constructions—a nip-waisted jacket now revisited with a lashing of stars and stripes in the form of crystal fringe. Ornamental trim borrowed from the cowboy lexicon is blown up into lavishly embroidered jackets, bodycon dresses, or pants.
In a comparatively pared-back vein, a jacket in beige and black patent leather let the designer show his construction chops. A few workhorse pieces, among them a sharply cut python-print leather trench, will likely move fast. It is probably not coincidental, either, that Texas looms large in the brand’s retail strategy: September will see the opening of outposts in Dallas and Houston.“The new American Dream is that you get to redefine it all the time,” the designer offered. ”For me, the American dream is being free to be who you want to be.”
10 June 2023
Olivier Rousteing’s tenure at Balmain has lasted a dozen years already, but to hear him tell it he’s still “finding confidence” with the house. “I live almost every day of my life like a new chapter,” the designer offered during a showroom visit.It may ring counterintuitive, but it takes confidence to dive into the archives of a designer whose name is now more closely associated with Rousteing than it is with a founder’s signature—the kind that, decades if not a century on, remains the lifeblood of other heritage houses. Mention Pierre Balmain, and few would be able to summon a catchphrase like ”jolie madame.”Now that Rousteing no longer needs to prove himself, exploring Balmain’s heritage opens up a new path. That might mean sculpted ”jolie madame” jackets with rounded shoulders and nipped waists or culottes, in statement-making combinations of red, light blue, and mint. Or leopard print in lurex jacquard. Or even hats inspired by the ’50s and ’70s, shown here in their true-to-heritage dimensions. It might mean an oversized twist on the lavaliere blouse. Or it might be a sculpted leather top, or taking details like archival embroidery or a crystal brooch and exploding them into an entire dress.Post-pandemic life has brought a sea change, the designer noted. “Chic and comfort take on a new meaning every decade, and today things have shifted again,” the designer observed. ”During Covid it was loungewear. Now, people want to wear more unique things.” When you already own a zillion hoodies, a special jacket holds fresh appeal that Rousteing likened to a piece of art, albeit art that’s less stealth wealth (let alone norm-core) than in-your-face.“If it’s not part of your DNA, there’s no point in jumping on the same bus,” he said. That goes for men, too. After a century of borrowing from men’s closets, women’s wear now is returning the favor. ”It shows that the codes of humanity are changing,” the designer said.While Rousteing’s muses include Josephine Baker, Brigitte Bardot, and Beyoncé, the American Dream, too, is a through-line. Those on his maximalist wavelength will delight in one of the star-spangliest collections the designer has produced to date. Take, for example, a jacket with one of Monsieur Balmain’s signature constructions—a nip-waisted jacket now revisited with a lashing of stars and stripes in the form of crystal fringe. Ornamental trim borrowed from the cowboy lexicon is blown up into lavishly embroidered jackets, bodycon dresses, or pants.
In a comparatively pared-back vein, a jacket in beige and black patent leather let the designer show his construction chops. A few workhorse pieces, among them a sharply cut python-print leather trench, will likely move fast. It is probably not coincidental, either, that Texas looms large in the brand’s retail strategy: September will see the opening of outposts in Dallas and Houston.“The new American Dream is that you get to redefine it all the time,” the designer offered. ”For me, the American dream is being free to be who you want to be.”
10 June 2023
The Hotel Regina, just across from the Louvre, is where many of my fashion colleagues rest their heads at the end of a long day of shows. Its proximity to A Jean Nicot, plus its creaky parquet floors and ancient plumbing are part of its charm—plus it’s usually pretty quiet. Not tonight though.“We’ve had a great crowd,” said Olivier Rousteing at around 7PM. For his menswear presentation Rousteing invited clients, celebrities, and fashion folk to drop into Regina’s velvet upholstered bar. Inevitably cast members ofEmily in Pariswere present—“because who doesn’t relate toEmily in Paris?”—as well as a host of up-and-comers from a multitude of territories. Champagne coupes were tilted and gossip shared as wave after wave of drop-ins came and went. Crucially all of them mingled with models wearing some of the 45 looks from Balmain’s fall ’23 collection.My favorite was Mamour, the model in look number 2, who towered over the crowd in his platform penny loafers. You could not see these because of the long-hemmed and kicky flared velvet pants spotted with crystals—“because Mr. Balmain was obsessed with polka dots”—that were worn underneath a tightly tailored jacket, accentuated cuff shirt and “mega bow” tie. Following his back-to-the-house’s-roots womenswear collection, Rousteing extended the theme tonight by looking at Pierre Balmain’s debut menswear collection, released in 1966. Rousteing incorporated elements of that period’s Rive Gauche vs. Rive Droit aesthetic tension and was also inspired by the earliest commercial sketches by Karl Lagerfeld, produced during his first ever paid gig—which was for Balmain. The 1970s Labyrinth monogram, pointed collars, crystal basque dressing (here applied to suiting) and cleverly cinchedjolie madamesilhouette were all crossover elements from the womenswear show we saw earlier this week.By diving deep into looks that sometimes seemed anachronistic but were also sometimes stone-cold classics—again, the theme of the season—Rousteing was fomenting a delicately questioning provocation. Its answer? As he put it: “I think there is a shift of what the new world and its people want to see from fashion: they want to dream about something that is timeless. The past is a safe space, but it also informs the present and helps us understand the future.”
13 March 2023
To be clear, Olivier Rousteing does not fear the end is near. Neither was this his final curtain: of that, he clarified over WhatsApp post-show, he’s certain. Instead the reason he played “My Way” with such heavy emphasis—“When there was doubt/ I ate it up and spit it out/ I faced it all and I stood tall”—was he said: “about following the voice inside your heart and your soul.”Yet again, as with every show in his 12 years (and counting) here—this was Balmain by Rousteing without exemption. And yet it was also dramatically different to last season’s stadium-presented festival showcase. That included a star turn from Cher and was great for the casual punter, but also presented a stern challenge for those pros who were there to check the clothes. This season, while still doing things his way, Rousteing pivoted both in presentation and product towards classicism, which is fast becoming a keynote feature of the fall shows more broadly. Presentation wise we were in a smallish, well-lit salon plonked in Le Carreau du Temple’s cavernous darkness: two parallel leather benches with a filling of five circular banquettes (upon which so-called influencers and so-called journalists were mixed freely, without apparent conflict), allowing a total capacity of 220. Said Rousteing pre-show: “I wanted something intimate. To enjoy a moment, after five months’ hard work. Back to origins, the new French style by Monsieur Balmain, and also to me what is passion—luxury and quality. We are surrounded by fireworks and all this craziness—social media—but at the end of the day we go back to quality… to understand the future you must understand the past, and this collection is clearly an homage to the house that I am working for.”
1 March 2023
Aged only a youthful 36, Oliver Rousteing is now 12 years into his stint as creative director of Balmain—which makes him the fourth longest-serving gun for hire of all the 40-plus equivalents in luxury fashion (excluding jewelry). Yet while he is immensely experienced, Rousteing’s youthful nature allows him to constantly reset his output in order to never slip into second album syndrome.This expansive pre-fall collection for men and women was a designed conversation along two main lines. The first interacted with Rousteing’s own history with the brand, while the second riffed on that of Pierre Balmain, its founder. Sculptural womenswear and menswear marked by military frogging and structural facades of crystal echoed the lavishly directional flavor of luxury that Rousteing has developed with his house’s revived atelier. The platforms’ height signified Rousteing’s ongoing ambitions for the house, while the restored shoulderpads seemed a generous nod to Christophe Decarnin, who enabled Rousteing to inhabit his shoes.Platforms led to flares, which inevitably led to the decade in which the house founder began to wind down his designed output. Rousteing stretched the boundaries of 1970s suiting into an almost sportily sleek—yet lavish—exploration of the body’s contours defined by button and seam. Dresses were fashioned from large squares of silk ingeniously tucked, pinned, and draped to echo Pierre’s own adventures in foulard dressing. Meanwhile sculpturally shaped cascading bows referred back to the post-art deco context of the founder’s early days.Walking with Rousteing through the house’s two-floor showroom, thronged with quick-changing models and headset-wearing, fast-talking sales representatives, we roamed from retro skiwear to new handbags to categories to come. This designer has lost none of his energy; his first decade at the label might yet prove to be only his amuse-bouche.Pierre Balmain designed in earnest at his own house from the late 1940s to the late 1970s, a 30 year stint. Already over 10 years in, Rousteing would match the founder’s longevity—should he stay—when he hits his mid 50s in the early 2040s. You can see him doing it without Balmain’s clothes ever feeling old, while simultaneously always feeling connected with the history of a house that is extremely fortunate to have him.
9 January 2023
Aged only a youthful 36, Oliver Rousteing is now 12 years into his stint as creative director of Balmain—which makes him the fourth longest-serving gun for hire of all the 40-plus equivalents in luxury fashion (excluding jewelry). Yet while he is immensely experienced, Rousteing’s youthful nature allows him to constantly reset his output in order to never slip into second album syndrome.This expansive pre-fall collection for men and women was a designed conversation along two main lines. The first interacted with Rousteing’s own history with the brand, while the second riffed on that of Pierre Balmain, its founder. Sculptural womenswear and menswear marked by military frogging and structural facades of crystal echoed the lavishly directional flavor of luxury that Rousteing has developed with his house’s revived atelier. The platforms’ height signified Rousteing’s ongoing ambitions for the house, while the restored shoulderpads seemed a generous nod to Christophe Decarnin, who enabled Rousteing to inhabit his shoes.Platforms led to flares, which inevitably led to the decade in which the house founder began to wind down his designed output. Rousteing stretched the boundaries of 1970s suiting into an almost sportily sleek—yet lavish—exploration of the body’s contours defined by button and seam. Dresses were fashioned from large squares of silk ingeniously tucked, pinned, and draped to echo Pierre’s own adventures in foulard dressing. Meanwhile sculpturally shaped cascading bows referred back to the post-art deco context of the founder’s early days.Walking with Rousteing through the house’s two-floor showroom, thronged with quick-changing models and headset-wearing, fast-talking sales representatives, we roamed from retro skiwear to new handbags to categories to come. This designer has lost none of his energy; his first decade at the label might yet prove to be only his amuse-bouche.Pierre Balmain designed in earnest at his own house from the late 1940s to the late 1970s, a 30 year stint. Already over 10 years in, Rousteing would match the founder’s longevity—should he stay—when he hits his mid 50s in the early 2040s. You can see him doing it without Balmain’s clothes ever feeling old, while simultaneously always feeling connected with the history of a house that is extremely fortunate to have him.
9 January 2023
“The beauty of Egypt is its maximalism and its minimalism,” said Olivier Rousteing. The French designer translated that starting point with great verve in a collection that was packed with overt, hyper-representative references to his ancient source material—Tutunkhamun’s mask, the material entombment of mummies, the scarab, and the asp that Cleopatra grasped to her bosom—alongside more restrained communications about his own authorship. Rousteing says that since he was bandaged after suffering terrible burns, this has become a signature of his collections, and it was here in many stretchily-sexy (and slightly “Thriller”-esque) dresses. But the relationship of the bandage to the stripe, which in France is Breton and a pillar of national identity, ricocheted fascinatingly back to the designer’s origin story.The blue and gold Tutankhamun pieces echoed the canard under which Rousteing, who was adopted and had no information about his pedigree until recently, grew up. “My parents always thought I was Egyptian,” he said. “So it was always part of my DNA, in a sense.” Rouesting honored that truly personal connection in a collection that of course would have best been presented in the shadow of the pyramids, but for arbitrary reasons is not. This was a shame but the product still amply reflected the thought behind the design.The designer said that his clients are increasingly drawn to individual, atelier-fashioned pieces—“like art”—in order to generate the warm feeling of owning a one-off. Chief examples here included a fierce spiky dress made of wood lined in knit, and the gleamingly metallic animalia pieces. The beautiful, oyster-ish cocoon shapes were amongst the many air-kisses blown at the house’s couture founder.Rousteing has recently become obsessed with platforms, which elevated many looks here. What’s the score? “Well, you know, the sky’s the limit and we all want to touch it. But sometimes you need to be careful because you can get too close to the sun and you can burn your wings.” Ah, Icarus in heels. Rousteing and Balmain fly on.
17 November 2022
“The beauty of Egypt is its maximalism and its minimalism,” said Olivier Rousteing. The French designer translated that starting point with great verve in a collection that was packed with overt, hyper-representative references to his ancient source material—Tutunkhamun’s mask, the material entombment of mummies, the scarab, and the asp that Cleopatra grasped to her bosom—alongside more restrained communications about his own authorship. Rousteing says that since he was bandaged after suffering terrible burns, this has become a signature of his collections, and it was here in many stretchily-sexy (and slightly “Thriller”-esque) dresses. But the relationship of the bandage to the stripe, which in France is Breton and a pillar of national identity, ricocheted fascinatingly back to the designer’s origin story.The blue and gold Tutankhamun pieces echoed the canard under which Rousteing, who was adopted and had no information about his pedigree until recently, grew up. “My parents always thought I was Egyptian,” he said. “So it was always part of my DNA, in a sense.” Rouesting honored that truly personal connection in a collection that of course would have best been presented in the shadow of the pyramids, but for arbitrary reasons is not. This was a shame but the product still amply reflected the thought behind the design.The designer said that his clients are increasingly drawn to individual, atelier-fashioned pieces—“like art”—in order to generate the warm feeling of owning a one-off. Chief examples here included a fierce spiky dress made of wood lined in knit, and the gleamingly metallic animalia pieces. The beautiful, oyster-ish cocoon shapes were amongst the many air-kisses blown at the house’s couture founder.Rousteing has recently become obsessed with platforms, which elevated many looks here. What’s the score? “Well, you know, the sky’s the limit and we all want to touch it. But sometimes you need to be careful because you can get too close to the sun and you can burn your wings.” Ah, Icarus in heels. Rousteing and Balmain fly on.
17 November 2022
“We all saw climate change this summer. We all saw fires around the world. And coming back with a show in September, thinking about whether our pants are going to be high-waisted or low-waisted—it seems a bit futile to me.” So said Olivier Rousteing before a show that that was in equal parts inspiring, infuriating and surprising.The biggest surprise was Cher, who popped up at the finale of this 100+ look show with Rousteing on the runway. She’d been hired to pitch a new handbag, and we’d seen her on a pre-show video, but had no sense she was in the stadium. Her ensemble was veryIf I Could Turn Back Time, and indeed, at 76, she looked convincingly like time was at her total command: quite amazing.The inspiring part was rooted in Rousteing. Dressed like a samurai messiah, he told us backstage that while he could not claim this collection was 100 per cent sustainable, he’d used fabrics made of paper, of banana, and of wicker (in the couture) to be as much so as possible. He added: “I have friends who tell me they don’t want to have kids, because what will our world be tomorrow? And at the end of the day it’s not about taste. It’s not about aesthetics.” When faced with the hardest proposition—that all fashion is essentially unsustainable for its inherent ephemerality—he convincingly riposted that his ongoing project is to radicalize his supply chain for the better. So props to him.And yet when you were watching the collection it was hard to square the circle of sustainability and consumption. We editors were sat alongside 1,000 invited guests—-Neymar!—and around 6,000 standing punters who had snapped up tickets to be at this third installment of Balmain’s show/festival. The collection, when it came down the open air runway, was almost not the point: but the main elements were trans-cultural and riffed against Renaissance references (this a slight recycling of Gaultier) in the prints and the astronomically hardwared accessories.When Ashley Graham hit the runway, hearteningly the audience cheered. But by this point we were over an hour-and-a-half beyond the advertised start-time and the industry audience was beginning to wilt, 13 hours after our first appointments of the day, and with our bottoms soggy from the rain-soaked benches. Then came a tightly edited couture collection that was nonetheless so challenging (and tight) for the models to walk in that it lasted around 15 minutes longer.
Which is why so many hungry, cold and sleepless editors—but not we true stalwart reviewers, of course—left before Cher arrived. This is said with love, but Rousteing and Balmain need to reconcile their DTC and B2B rationales when amplifying their shows going forward.
28 September 2022
“We all saw climate change this summer. We all saw fires around the world. And coming back with a show in September, thinking about whether our pants are going to be high-waisted or low-waisted—it seems a bit futile to me.” So said Olivier Rousteing before a show that that was in equal parts inspiring, infuriating and surprising.The biggest surprise was Cher, who popped up at the finale of this 100+ look show with Rousteing on the runway. She’d been hired to pitch a new handbag, and we’d seen her on a pre-show video, but had no sense she was in the stadium. Her ensemble was veryIf I Could Turn Back Time, and indeed, at 76, she looked convincingly like time was at her total command: quite amazing.The inspiring part was rooted in Rousteing. Dressed like a samurai messiah, he told us backstage that while he could not claim this collection was 100 per cent sustainable, he’d used fabrics made of paper, of banana, and of wicker (in the couture) to be as much so as possible. He added: “I have friends who tell me they don’t want to have kids, because what will our world be tomorrow? And at the end of the day it’s not about taste. It’s not about aesthetics.” When faced with the hardest proposition—that all fashion is essentially unsustainable for its inherent ephemerality—he convincingly riposted that his ongoing project is to radicalize his supply chain for the better. So props to him.And yet when you were watching the collection it was hard to square the circle of sustainability and consumption. We editors were sat alongside 1,000 invited guests—-Neymar!—and around 6,000 standing punters who had snapped up tickets to be at this third installment of Balmain’s show/festival. The collection, when it came down the open air runway, was almost not the point: but the main elements were trans-cultural and riffed against Renaissance references (this a slight recycling of Gaultier) in the prints and the astronomically hardwared accessories.When Ashley Graham hit the runway, hearteningly the audience cheered. But by this point we were over an hour-and-a-half beyond the advertised start-time and the industry audience was beginning to wilt, 13 hours after our first appointments of the day, and with our bottoms soggy from the rain-soaked benches. Then came a tightly edited couture collection that was nonetheless so challenging (and tight) for the models to walk in that it lasted around 15 minutes longer.
Which is why so many hungry, cold and sleepless editors—but not we true stalwart reviewers, of course—left before Cher arrived. This is said with love, but Rousteing and Balmain need to reconcile their DTC and B2B rationales when amplifying their shows going forward.
28 September 2022
“We all saw climate change this summer. We all saw fires around the world. And coming back with a show in September, thinking about whether our pants are going to be high-waisted or low-waisted—it seems a bit futile to me.” So said Olivier Rousteing before a show that that was in equal parts inspiring, infuriating and surprising.The biggest surprise was Cher, who popped up at the finale of this 100+ look show with Rousteing on the runway. She’d been hired to pitch a new handbag, and we’d seen her on a pre-show video, but had no sense she was in the stadium. Her ensemble was veryIf I Could Turn Back Time, and indeed, at 76, she looked convincingly like time was at her total command: quite amazing.The inspiring part was rooted in Rousteing. Dressed like a samurai messiah, he told us backstage that while he could not claim this collection was 100 per cent sustainable, he’d used fabrics made of paper, of banana, and of wicker (in the couture) to be as much so as possible. He added: “I have friends who tell me they don’t want to have kids, because what will our world be tomorrow? And at the end of the day it’s not about taste. It’s not about aesthetics.” When faced with the hardest proposition—that all fashion is essentially unsustainable for its inherent ephemerality—he convincingly riposted that his ongoing project is to radicalize his supply chain for the better. So props to him.And yet when you were watching the collection it was hard to square the circle of sustainability and consumption. We editors were sat alongside 1,000 invited guests—-Neymar!—and around 6,000 standing punters who had snapped up tickets to be at this third installment of Balmain’s show/festival. The collection, when it came down the open air runway, was almost not the point: but the main elements were trans-cultural and riffed against Renaissance references (this a slight recycling of Gaultier) in the prints and the astronomically hardwared accessories.When Ashley Graham hit the runway, hearteningly the audience cheered. But by this point we were over an hour-and-a-half beyond the advertised start-time and the industry audience was beginning to wilt, 13 hours after our first appointments of the day, and with our bottoms soggy from the rain-soaked benches. Then came a tightly edited couture collection that was nonetheless so challenging (and tight) for the models to walk in that it lasted around 15 minutes longer.
Which is why so many hungry, cold and sleepless editors—but not we true stalwart reviewers, of course—left before Cher arrived. This is said with love, but Rousteing and Balmain need to reconcile their DTC and B2B rationales when amplifying their shows going forward.
28 September 2022
What was conceived months ago as a metaphorical motif—body armor, tactical gear, protective wear, compression pads—to illustrate a theme personal to Olivier Rousteing inevitably hit the eye in a different light on the runway tonight. Shortly before the show, Rousteing posted to his social media (ironically the catalyst of that original theme) a statement that read: “We are well aware that there are more important things happening in the world today. It’s hard to feel right about focusing on runways and clothes, as we listen with a heavy heart to the latest news. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Ukrainians. We are inspired by their dignity, resilience and devotion to freedom.” And in the notes for this show he expanded: “These runway offerings were not designed as a direct response to the recent horrific invasion of our neighbours and I would never dare to even think of comparing the suffering that they are going through right now with the problems that I have had on social media. Still, as we watch the news, my team and I do keep in mind this collection’s message: united in solidarity, we can rely on the power of hope and truth to push back against hate, lies and aggression.”Tellingly, this three-act show—which opened with a two-tribes dance before segueing into the mainline—ended with a seven or so strong group of dresses that combined the motifs of this collection with some of the signatures first written on the runway in October 1945 by Pierre Balmain at the house’s first ever presentation. Prior even to Christian Dior, Balmain’s imagination was the fashion green shoot most at the vanguard of Paris’s post-war reconstruction and emergence.This is the moment in a review where perhaps you might now say “despite all that,” then breezily proceed to describe the expressive clothes that were delivered in typically bombastic Rousteing style. This you could do at length, because while often excellent, this run of show needed editing against repetition. The original thematic point of the exercise had been to propose an armor against online image dysmorphia, much of whose metaphorically illustrative protective wear was inspired by the bandaging and recovery gear Rousteing had been forced to wear after suffering burns in his house fire, as well as motorsport equipment, ancient armor, modern militaria and, by the look of it, Marvel costume direction.
Yet in a collection that majored on large platforms, that would be to underserve Rousteing’s approach to the limitations of the fashion show as a platform in this specific moment. After Armani he became among the first designers with commercial skin in the game to acknowledge the incapacity of a serious industry that sells the apparently trivial to confront its relationship with the horrible now, and actually to talk about it. Compared to the acts of bravery we are all currently marveling at, it was nothing: but it was also something.
2 March 2022
“Do you still buy magazines?” That chilling sentence, which Olivier Rousteing said was doodled after the style of Kurt Cobain in his journals, leaps out from its position on a weathered leather monochrome tote featured in Look 1 of menswear and 26 of womenswear within this pre-fall Balmain ensemble. Of it, Rousteing said: “This sentence is something that scares me a lot, but I wanted to use it because we are living in a world where something that was so relevant and important is becoming so vintage. And I’m really scared that for a new generation, maybe in one or two decades, you will have to explain what a magazine is. The same way you have to explain Kodak now. Or what a tape is.”Having just hit a decade at Balmain and steered himself through a medical crisis, this ever-thoughtful designer has been extra contemplative of late. And as the magazine riff intimated, Rousteing, 36, has been thinking about his particular seating position in fashion’s passage of time: “I feel that I’m not so old, but also I’m not young anymore either…. And that’s so weird when you have seen all these evolutions-slash-revolutions of the fashion industry.”Here Rousteing went both back in time and forward to tie together different strands of his Balmain-centric consideration in a freshly shaped knot. There were strong houndstooth (pied-de-poule) and Breton stripe (lamarinière) sections to markla patrimoine, andpetites mainsexercising adventures in embellishment, embroidery, andfourrure(all faux) to service the house’s couture tradition. On top of these were layered elements more contemporary—decadently oversized synthetic outerwear, complex-washed denim, stompy boots—which were themselves all merely another layer in a future-facingmille-feuillethat stretched from the couture (broken sculpture latex sheath dresses, a Zendaya red carpet cert) to the sporting (Balmain-customized protective gear by the Californian moto brand Fox Racing).The conceptual glue holding all these spaceship- (or time machine–) shot look book elements together went back to that scrawled text, based on Cobain’s notebooks. Rousteing explained that he’d embraced the tear-it-up-and-start-again philosophy of grunge this season, and had been partially inspired by memories of his earliest days working with KCD’s late lamented Ed Filipowski.
He said: “I remember Ed telling me I was the rebel in fashion of my time, and talking about brands he had worked with earlier who were very affected and influenced by grunge … and this was interesting because even though I am French and do not look like a guitarist from Seattle in the ’90s, there is for sure this grunginess in me. The second reason I have come to grunge now is that after my accident, I realized that in the past I have been searching for a perfection that maybe turned out to be a stereotype of perfection. I realized that true perfection can lie in imperfection. And so I wanted to fuck up my embroideries, and make the pieces seem torn, in order to allow the beauty of imperfection, achieved through craftsmanship, to be seen.”Rousteing’s work at Balmain is becoming increasingly self-aware, honest, and complex in tandem with his own personal development. Inspired by everything from the velvet on his furniture to the burn scars on his fingers—yet always informed by his profound engagement with the dialect of Balmain—his output mirrors both house and designer with a verisimilitude that only a few other historic maisons can match. As for his distressing Kodak moment vis-à-vis print, as the recent history of vinyl suggests, the story of fashion magazines—which are, after all, the couture of fashion media to digital’s ready-to-wear and social’s fast fashion—might not be on its final page quite yet.
9 December 2021
“Do you still buy magazines?” That chilling sentence, which Olivier Rousteing said was doodled after the style of Kurt Cobain in his journals, leaps out from its position on a weathered leather monochrome tote featured in Look 1 of menswear and 26 of womenswear within this pre-fall Balmain ensemble. Of it, Rousteing said: “This sentence is something that scares me a lot, but I wanted to use it because we are living in a world where something that was so relevant and important is becoming so vintage. And I’m really scared that for a new generation, maybe in one or two decades, you will have to explain what a magazine is. The same way you have to explain Kodak now. Or what a tape is.”Having just hit a decade at Balmain and steered himself through a medical crisis, this ever-thoughtful designer has been extra contemplative of late. And as the magazine riff intimated, Rousteing, 36, has been thinking about his particular seating position in fashion’s passage of time: “I feel that I’m not so old, but also I’m not young anymore either…. And that’s so weird when you have seen all these evolutions-slash-revolutions of the fashion industry.”Here Rousteing went both back in time and forward to tie together different strands of his Balmain-centric consideration in a freshly shaped knot. There were strong houndstooth (pied-de-poule) and Breton stripe (lamarinière) sections to markla patrimoine, andpetites mainsexercising adventures in embellishment, embroidery, andfourrure(all faux) to service the house’s couture tradition. On top of these were layered elements more contemporary—decadently oversized synthetic outerwear, complex-washed denim, stompy boots—which were themselves all merely another layer in a future-facingmille-feuillethat stretched from the couture (broken sculpture latex sheath dresses, a Zendaya red carpet cert) to the sporting (Balmain-customized protective gear by the Californian moto brand Fox Racing).The conceptual glue holding all these spaceship- (or time machine–) shot look book elements together went back to that scrawled text, based on Cobain’s notebooks. Rousteing explained that he’d embraced the tear-it-up-and-start-again philosophy of grunge this season, and had been partially inspired by memories of his earliest days working with KCD’s late lamented Ed Filipowski.
He said: “I remember Ed telling me I was the rebel in fashion of my time, and talking about brands he had worked with earlier who were very affected and influenced by grunge … and this was interesting because even though I am French and do not look like a guitarist from Seattle in the ’90s, there is for sure this grunginess in me. The second reason I have come to grunge now is that after my accident, I realized that in the past I have been searching for a perfection that maybe turned out to be a stereotype of perfection. I realized that true perfection can lie in imperfection. And so I wanted to fuck up my embroideries, and make the pieces seem torn, in order to allow the beauty of imperfection, achieved through craftsmanship, to be seen.”Rousteing’s work at Balmain is becoming increasingly self-aware, honest, and complex in tandem with his own personal development. Inspired by everything from the velvet on his furniture to the burn scars on his fingers—yet always informed by his profound engagement with the dialect of Balmain—his output mirrors both house and designer with a verisimilitude that only a few other historic maisons can match. As for his distressing Kodak moment vis-à-vis print, as the recent history of vinyl suggests, the story of fashion magazines—which are, after all, the couture of fashion media to digital’s ready-to-wear and social’s fast fashion—might not be on its final page quite yet.
9 December 2021
On September 28, 2011, a 25-year-old nobody named Olivier Rousteing took his first bow for Balmain. Back then there were many “who had a hard time imagining someone who looked like [him] could lead a Parisian couture house.” So said Beyoncé in her (prerecorded) opening message for Rousteing’s 10th anniversary show tonight. She was right, and how wrong they were.For his first few years, Rousteing was repeatedly dismissed as Fantasy Island or vulgar or trashy, and in retrospect the unconscious subtext is both clear and damning. This rightly vexed him. He worked twice as hard. But when in 2016 or so, five years in, Rousteing—the first Black person to lead a historic French house—matured within himself enough to view these “haters”’ barbs not as wounds but as badges of honor and scars of the right fight (bring it on!), and he gained a superpower. He understood that this furious noise was the angrily squeaking hinges of a door never before opened until he had pushed it. So he kept pushing.Tonight there was noise again. But this time it was 6,000 people—real people, not fashion people—screaming as Rousteing took his bow at the end of this show. They screamed almost as loudly when Beyoncé started speaking, and almost as loudly again when Naomi Campbell walked in the first of a 12-or-so-look archive-based capsule we saw at the end, derived from Rousteing’s favorite and most effective pieces from his past decade at the label.Fascinatingly they also screamed with extra gusto at the collection (intoxicatinglySaultedby Michel Gaubert). It was celebratory when Precious Lee and Alva Claire—two models whose bodies are greater than conventional fashion’s spurious sample-size limitations—walked the runway. As the comments under newspaper fashion stories demonstrate, real people recoil at fashion’s super-skinny fetish, and rightly so. Or as Rousteing said: “I’m glad you heard them scream too. I think that this shows that the fashion industry is sometimes too late to understand that this is the new world. And that it is beautiful to show reality and difference, and leave the standard that we have been brought up to understand is fashion.”The show had such an enormous audience because it was presented as the heart of a two-day Balmain-run music festival—Doja Cat was on immediately after the clothes, before Franz Ferdinand finished the evening.
With respect to the other houses in Paris trying bombastically to flex their bombast, this democratic display of openness was pretty hard to top. The collection we saw was ready-to-wear for women and men, a prelude to that special archival section, opened by Campbell and closed by Carla Bruni, before Rousteing’s raucous bow.The collection was celebratory, but, as ever with Rousteing, also honest. Things I reacted to most were the sensuality of the backless tailoring in menswear, the sludgily comfy appeal of his Insta-friendly slides, the square link chain details that were the metaphorical point of connection across the collection, and the framing of the female body that—unlike some collections we have seen this hormonal season—felt more celebratory than salacious.The final few dresses of the ready-to-wear section reflected another recent Rousteing truth: During lockdown he was badly burned, spent a month in hospital in recovery, and has been processing an alteration to his skin pigmentation as a result. After storing this knowledge privately for some time, he threw it into his process this evening, thereby owning it through disowning it via its expression in craft. “Fresh, audacious, empowering,” is how Beyoncé described Rousteing in her preamble. She was right again.
29 September 2021
Cosmology says that the universe constantly expands. When it comes to the universe of Olivier Rousteing, the same applies. Coming to Netflix on June 26 is the documentaryWonder Boy: It follows Rousteing’s fabulous and fixatedly-driven lifestyle at Balmain, as well as his search to discover his parentage after being adopted as a baby. Spoiler alert that doesn’t spoil the film: His mother is Somalian and his father Ethiopian. Your genetics and parentage define neither your soul nor your being, but as I witnessed in my own father (who was given away through a classified newspaper advertisement when he was seven days old), not knowing who your mother and father are creates a swirling void at what is otherwise the core of your identity—and you constantly wonder.This exuberant resort collection, both for women and men, is Rousteing’s rendering in the métier he loves of the existential expansion that the discovery of his parents’ identity has unlocked in him. Since that discovery he has been unable to visit either Somalia or Ethiopia (pandemic issues), but is itching to go. Instead he has been researching the Horn of Africa from afar and was particularly moved by a visit to the exhibitionDivas, from Oum Kalthoum to Dalidaat the Arab World Institute in the town that is his home—Paris. This inspired in Rousteing some of the jewelry—particularly the great chain-chinned baseball cap look—as well as an affinity to the story of the Egyptian-Italian and iconic-in-France singer Dalida. More broadly, you could see the unstructured design and pattern on the tapestry fabric in look 28 of womenswear or look 17 of menswear as a geographically more specific creative coordinate.Rousteing said that before he discovered the information about his parents, he would often speculate as to his heritage; might he be ‘from’ Guadeloupe? Martinique? Senegal? Morocco? Egypt? “I always wondered where I was coming from, so it’s a gift to know which cultures you have in your blood. But even if you don’t know, you take pride in the cultures that might be in your blood. Because France is a melting pot of so many cultures, and definitely this collection is about that melting pot, as well as the source of my blood, which is the Horn of Africa, as well as being a citizen of the world.” When you think you could be ‘from’ anywhere, you feel like you are from everywhere.
14 June 2021
Cosmology says that the universe constantly expands. When it comes to the universe of Olivier Rousteing, the same applies. Coming to Netflix on June 26 is the documentaryWonder Boy: It follows Rousteing’s fabulous and fixatedly-driven lifestyle at Balmain, as well as his search to discover his parentage after being adopted as a baby. Spoiler alert that doesn’t spoil the film: His mother is Somalian and his father Ethiopian. Your genetics and parentage define neither your soul nor your being, but as I witnessed in my own father (who was given away through a classified newspaper advertisement when he was seven days old), not knowing who your mother and father are creates a swirling void at what is otherwise the core of your identity—and you constantly wonder.This exuberant resort collection, both for women and men, is Rousteing’s rendering in the métier he loves of the existential expansion that the discovery of his parents’ identity has unlocked in him. Since that discovery he has been unable to visit either Somalia or Ethiopia (pandemic issues), but is itching to go. Instead he has been researching the Horn of Africa from afar and was particularly moved by a visit to the exhibitionDivas, from Oum Kalthoum to Dalidaat the Arab World Institute in the town that is his home—Paris. This inspired in Rousteing some of the jewelry—particularly the great chain-chinned baseball cap look—as well as an affinity to the story of the Egyptian-Italian and iconic-in-France singer Dalida. More broadly, you could see the unstructured design and pattern on the tapestry fabric in look 28 of womenswear or look 17 of menswear as a geographically more specific creative coordinate.Rousteing said that before he discovered the information about his parents, he would often speculate as to his heritage; might he be ‘from’ Guadeloupe? Martinique? Senegal? Morocco? Egypt? “I always wondered where I was coming from, so it’s a gift to know which cultures you have in your blood. But even if you don’t know, you take pride in the cultures that might be in your blood. Because France is a melting pot of so many cultures, and definitely this collection is about that melting pot, as well as the source of my blood, which is the Horn of Africa, as well as being a citizen of the world.” When you think you could be ‘from’ anywhere, you feel like you are from everywhere.
14 June 2021
“I don’t know where we’re going,” said Olivier Rousteing before the scheduled streaming of this show, “but I do know that we are goingsomewhere. The point is not the destination but the actual going—the journey, the leaving, and the escape.”Rousteing was talking about this show’s format and the collection in it. Like any truly tuned-in fashion proposal, however, his message harmonized with a wider truth: The 12 months behind us have made the prospect of carefree travel seem deliriously enticing. In Australia and Taiwan, airlines have even been running sold-out “flights to nowhere”—round trips taken just for the thrill of it.Shot in a cavernous hangar at Charles de Gaulle Airport in and around a recently underused Air France 777, Rousteing’s film and collection served to whet the appetite even more for imminent escape. Witty accessories included neck-pillow earrings and handbags, paper-plane suitcase charms, and working compass pendants. “They point you in four directions: to Balmain, to your lover, to a bar, or home,” he said.Rousteing purposefully dialed down the atelier-produced embellishment-heavy party dresses that he still absolutely adores but for which he has been typecast by some. Instead he banked hard toward the dialect of aviation-specific utilitywear. This included shearling aviator jackets, greatcoats, flight suits, and webbing-strafed dresses in parachute silk. As his flight path unfolded his looks became higher altitude and more technical, contrasting metallic high-shine hazmat chic (sometimes with flying saucer embroidery) against padded orange and olive outer-orbit-wear with rip-cord-pull hardware. Sprinkled among these were looks more “departure lounge” than “cockpit,” but happily escapist nonetheless. Rousteing’s enduring take on the Breton stripe flew in formation with sumptuous padded leather overcoats, fluoro knitwear, and total looks patterned with the recently reintroduced 1970 vintage P.B. monogram.On our Zoom, Rousteing said he had been inspired in part by Pierre Balmain’s postwar travels (also on Air France), first in 1947 to Sydney to launch a collection and later to New York in the company of his friend Gertrude Stein. “She was a great writer and a great feminist, and she took him to discover America. I love the fact that he wanted to see the world and not just stay stuck in one place,” said Rousteing.
Flight BAL 021’s final destination at last revealed itself when Captain Rousteing (whose crew included Michel Gaubert sampling a Philip Glass safety announcement on the P.A. while Charlotte Stockdale and Katie Lyall ensured all belts were fastened just so) piloted us to a digitally rendered runway platform suspended between Earth and moon. Even here he steered clear of stratospheric minidresses, opting instead for softened evening suits with fluoro reveres and a closing long-hem gown in space-blanket silver. Climatic menswear looks included a red-trimmed silver astronaut suit. Signing off, Rousteing said that he’d shaped this collection while gripped by two competing forces: “of loving my present, but also being so excited about a better future.” These combined to give this highly diverting and extremely confident collection a fresh creative gravity: It really flew.
8 March 2021
“I don’t know where we’re going,” said Olivier Rousteing before the scheduled streaming of this show, “but I do know that we are goingsomewhere. The point is not the destination but the actual going—the journey, the leaving, and the escape.”Rousteing was talking about this show’s format and the collection in it. Like any truly tuned-in fashion proposal, however, his message harmonized with a wider truth: The 12 months behind us have made the prospect of carefree travel seem deliriously enticing. In Australia and Taiwan, airlines have even been running sold-out “flights to nowhere”—round trips taken just for the thrill of it.Shot in a cavernous hangar at Charles de Gaulle Airport in and around a recently underused Air France 777, Rousteing’s film and collection served to whet the appetite even more for imminent escape. Witty accessories included neck-pillow earrings and handbags, paper-plane suitcase charms, and working compass pendants. “They point you in four directions: to Balmain, to your lover, to a bar, or home,” he said.Rousteing purposefully dialed down the atelier-produced embellishment-heavy party dresses that he still absolutely adores but for which he has been typecast by some. Instead he banked hard toward the dialect of aviation-specific utilitywear. This included shearling aviator jackets, greatcoats, flight suits, and webbing-strafed dresses in parachute silk. As his flight path unfolded his looks became higher altitude and more technical, contrasting metallic high-shine hazmat chic (sometimes with flying saucer embroidery) against padded orange and olive outer-orbit-wear with rip-cord-pull hardware. Sprinkled among these were looks more “departure lounge” than “cockpit,” but happily escapist nonetheless. Rousteing’s enduring take on the Breton stripe flew in formation with sumptuous padded leather overcoats, fluoro knitwear, and total looks patterned with the recently reintroduced 1970 vintage P.B. monogram.On our Zoom, Rousteing said he had been inspired in part by Pierre Balmain’s postwar travels (also on Air France), first in 1947 to Sydney to launch a collection and later to New York in the company of his friend Gertrude Stein. “She was a great writer and a great feminist, and she took him to discover America. I love the fact that he wanted to see the world and not just stay stuck in one place,” said Rousteing.
Flight BAL 021’s final destination at last revealed itself when Captain Rousteing (whose crew included Michel Gaubert sampling a Philip Glass safety announcement on the P.A. while Charlotte Stockdale and Katie Lyall ensured all belts were fastened just so) piloted us to a digitally rendered runway platform suspended between Earth and moon. Even here he steered clear of stratospheric minidresses, opting instead for softened evening suits with fluoro reveres and a closing long-hem gown in space-blanket silver. Climatic menswear looks included a red-trimmed silver astronaut suit. Signing off, Rousteing said that he’d shaped this collection while gripped by two competing forces: “of loving my present, but also being so excited about a better future.” These combined to give this highly diverting and extremely confident collection a fresh creative gravity: It really flew.
8 March 2021
Remember heading to the meeting feeling as sharp as your tailoring? Or hitting the grimy dive for a gig in black denim, lurex, or leather? How about a spot of tennis in way-too-much-for-Wimbledon pastel pleats in a luxe ’90s track top? Down the inevitable Zoom Olivier Rousteing was tangibly excited at the prospect of 2021 allowing us to get reacquainted with these and the many other human pleasures that demand physical presence. And in this ebullient and enormous pre-fall collection Rousteing was effectively placing a cosmic order for all that he hopes might happen in the year ahead.“It’s a collection for morning-to-evening, and it’s a collection that is about taking care of yourself,” he said. “But when I say taking care of yourself I mean by going outside your home and doing what you enjoy. We’ve all been taking care of ourselves by staying in our homes, staying in pajamas, robes, hoodies. But maybe let’s think about the idea of going out, seeing people we haven’t seen for months, and taking pleasure in seeing and being seen.”Rousteing’s enforced year of living digitally—“showing collections on the iPad, urgh, it’s just not right”—has convinced this earliest of fashion’s digital early adopters that there is no substitution for Being There. “We are working with emotion. And we are working with people who have great craft and expertise. And the result of that is a reality. So I don’t believe in showing just virtually. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media, but it is a tool for communication, not for creation.”What Rousteing created in this collection was a convincing Balmain pitch for a joyous post-vaccination wardrobe. The tennis stuff kit was personal—“I love to play tennis,” he said—as was the decision to return to some of his earliest motifs as Balmain’s main man, the Faberge egg detailing from Fall 2012. “There is a lot of nostalgia in the collection,” Rousteing observed: “I tried to go back to when there was more happiness in fashion.” It will be 10 years ago next February that Rousteing was chosen to take the helm at Balmain, an upcoming milestone that he said: “is kind of scary. Because it means I am among the longest serving designers at a house in Paris, and I’m 35.” As we were going back, way back, it seemed apposite to bring up this comment from Nicole Phelps’s Fall 2013 Balmain review for Style.
com: “Rousteing makes blingy clothes designed for going out and having a good time; if you come looking for pantsuits or a winter coat, you’ve got the wrong idea.” Hearing this, Rousteing laughed so loud the speakers on my laptop distorted: “She was absolutely right! Because if we just talk about utility well then we don’t need fashion, we don’t need designers, we don’t need reviewers—we’re all fired!”
15 December 2020
Remember heading to the meeting feeling as sharp as your tailoring? Or hitting the grimy dive for a gig in black denim, lurex, or leather? How about a spot of tennis in way-too-much-for-Wimbledon pastel pleats in a luxe ’90s track top? Down the inevitable Zoom Olivier Rousteing was tangibly excited at the prospect of 2021 allowing us to get reacquainted with these and the many other human pleasures that demand physical presence. And in this ebullient and enormous pre-fall collection Rousteing was effectively placing a cosmic order for all that he hopes might happen in the year ahead.“It’s a collection for morning-to-evening, and it’s a collection that is about taking care of yourself,” he said. “But when I say taking care of yourself I mean by going outside your home and doing what you enjoy. We’ve all been taking care of ourselves by staying in our homes, staying in pajamas, robes, hoodies. But maybe let’s think about the idea of going out, seeing people we haven’t seen for months, and taking pleasure in seeing and being seen.”Rousteing’s enforced year of living digitally—“showing collections on the iPad, urgh, it’s just not right”—has convinced this earliest of fashion’s digital early adopters that there is no substitution for Being There. “We are working with emotion. And we are working with people who have great craft and expertise. And the result of that is a reality. So I don’t believe in showing just virtually. Don’t get me wrong, I love social media, but it is a tool for communication, not for creation.”What Rousteing created in this collection was a convincing Balmain pitch for a joyous post-vaccination wardrobe. The tennis stuff kit was personal—“I love to play tennis,” he said—as was the decision to return to some of his earliest motifs as Balmain’s main man, the Faberge egg detailing from Fall 2012. “There is a lot of nostalgia in the collection,” Rousteing observed: “I tried to go back to when there was more happiness in fashion.” It will be 10 years ago next February that Rousteing was chosen to take the helm at Balmain, an upcoming milestone that he said: “is kind of scary. Because it means I am among the longest serving designers at a house in Paris, and I’m 35.” As we were going back, way back, it seemed apposite to bring up this comment from Nicole Phelps’s Fall 2013 Balmain review for Style.
com: “Rousteing makes blingy clothes designed for going out and having a good time; if you come looking for pantsuits or a winter coat, you’ve got the wrong idea.” Hearing this, Rousteing laughed so loud the speakers on my laptop distorted: “She was absolutely right! Because if we just talk about utility well then we don’t need fashion, we don’t need designers, we don’t need reviewers—we’re all fired!”
14 December 2020
“Argh, I am sorry to call so late but the rehearsal ran over!” said Olivier Rousteing via his Apple iPhone in Paris and my Google Pixel in Venice. “But we still have a few minutes before the show starts, and I have the board here so we can talk through the collection right now! Or, if you want, we could wait until after the show? I am doing no interviews then and I can call you straight after!”Interview the designerafterthe show? That’s an idea so old it feels quitenouvelle: This year’s enforced bloom of digital collection deliveries has made the pre-Zoom even more ubiquitous than the pre-see used to be. Yet watching a show in which you already know the designer’s thinking sometimes feels just a little like cheating, or at least having the dots joined for you. So sure, why not go old school?On Balmain’s IG Live there were about 5,000 of us backstage, watching as Rousteing strode the line in a PB monogram face mask delivering last minute “you look great!” benedictions to his models, many of whom were wrapped in gold emergency blankets. Over on Balmain.com, front of house at the Jardin de Plantes, we were in a holding pattern: A camera operator was de-steaming his lens as the director ran through his angles for a final check. Then, the show started, but it was not quite clear precisely when that was—Instagram’s feed was running about two looks ahead of Balmain’s url. Were the streams also running on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn all inhabiting slightly different time zones?Instagram was first, so Instagram it was. Through the dry ice came Rousteing, face mask off now, to sit on a wooden stool at the end of his runway. Then to him came six models who walked not with the rush that is the contemporary style. Instead they meandered from one side of the runway to the other, tilting hips, running hands through hair, twirling, pausing to allow us better to see the adapted 1970s archive looks in gray cashmere and grain de poudre patterned in the same archive monogram Rousteing had worn on that face mask. Sonia Icthi, the sixth model out, almost fell victim to the time-traveling combination of a 1970s wide bell-bottom with a 2020s high 110mm heel mesh sock shoe, but like all of these experienced couture models in the opening, she was a pro, and recovered gracefully from her stumble. Over the soundtrack—at least online—we heard pronouncements which were presumably from Pierre Balmain himself.
In French he spoke of the pre-eminence of French elegance—so French—while in English he opined: “Black is the only color young people can wear more successfully than old people. A young girl dressed in black is always tremendously beautiful. An older woman in black can be dreary. That’s why black is not an old color, it’s a young color. Black velvet is the epitome of young and sexy. Because there is also a touch of sex in fashion now.”
30 September 2020
Just weeks ago, we noted that social media was Olivier Rousteing’s runway. So too, it turns out, is the Seine. On Sunday, using the hashtag #BalmainSurSeine he made the whole river his stage.Early that evening, the Balmain crew boarded a barge to travel from the Eiffel Tower eastward, stopping for a performance—featuring the French pop singer Yseult, 50 dancers, and choreography by Jean-Charles Jousni—beside the Pont des Arts footbridge before looping around the Île Saint Louis and gliding back to the Iron Lady and home base.The two-hour extravaganza was set to livestream on TikTok, marking a first for Balmain and for the video platform, which had never before worked with a luxury brand. It was a brilliant idea.Incredibly, the weather held up. Unfortunately, the tech did not. Amid a cascade of political trolling, the sound dropped and, minutes after embarking, the live feed cut out never to return. By that time, Balmain had racked up about 15,000 new followers on the platform. That’s a win, of sorts. (Editor's note: Balmain’s PR explained that the TikTok stream was scheduled for just 20 minutes.)During a conversation about the event earlier today, Rousteing sounded sanguine about the episode.“What happened on Sunday was beyond the digital Fashion Week,” he said, estimating at 20,000 the number of locals who caught at least some part of the spectacle.“After 75 years, Balmain is showing a new direction. We gave people access to our house, and we showed that we are really French. It was our gift to Paris, the City of Light.” (In the meantime, the show will re-stream on the Federation de la Haute Couture’s online platform this Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Paris time).So what those who were strolling by the river early on a summer evening could glimpse was a fashion show for all, in the spirit of inclusivity Rousteing often evokes. Many will have spotted models Cindy Bruna, Feuza, and Joséphine Le Tutour. They certainly would have clocked those oversized chain belts and many covetable looks, whether current pieces reworked with couture craftsmanship or others making a rare outing from the house’s archives.The latter included 13 pieces by the founding couturier and his successors Eric Mortensen and Oscar de la Renta, plus as many from Rousteing’s first decade at the house. One highlight was a raffia number from spring 2013 that the designer says pushed the petites mains’ expertise to the extreme.
From the current Balmain collection, a black tailored jacket with white trim captured ’90s-inflected elegance.In his show notes, Rousteing referenced Joni Mitchell’s line from her 1970 hit “Big Yellow Taxi”: “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,” and wrote heartfeltly about the need for friends, solidarity, community, and hope for a better future. He also expressed a longing to return to real-life presentations.“It’s really hard to just do digital without any physical experience; we are all missing it,” he offered. “We work for an audience, and you lose the emotion if you don’t have one. We need to go back to that.”Even so, and despite the glitch, Rousteing probably just shared a glimpse of the future. Where he goes, others will surely follow.
7 July 2020
It’s no secret to Olivier Rousteing’s 6 million followers that the digital-scape is his runway, lockdown or no. “When you work in fashion, you’re creating a world,” the designer commented. His Instagram bio exclaims, “This Is My Reality!”Now, of course, we’re all in the same boat. Like many of his peers, the designer had to forge a new, “together-apart” process, sketching fluorescent lines on a flurry of photos in WhatsApp groups, tweaking toiles on Zoom, and checking in aspetites mainsembroidered pieces at home in Italy. Like virtually everyone, he spent off-hours going overboard on streaming.Anyone who’s keeping up has already gotten a glimpse of what happened next. A stylized logo as well as the ’60s/’70s-era clutch-slash-shopper it originally came on have resurfaced for a new generation. Just this morning, a video of the new “chocolate bar” bag clocked nearly 100,000 views in a matter of hours.To showcase menswear, Rousteing invited a handful of “Balmain army” friends to style themselves in his latest looks. The Colombian megastar Maluma and actors Rome Flynn, Nicholas Galitzine, Jorge López, and Jon Kortajarena all came on board, choosing jackets that would look at home onMiami Vice,paired with Vichy checks, or polka dots inspired by Julia Roberts’s famous dress inPretty Woman(the motif was scaled down for men, and up for women). Elsewhere, a mash-up of graphics and color on T-shirts, jackets, and sequined cocktail dresses nodded toThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.Sherbet denims, militaria in hot colors, and a vista done entirely in sunset-hued-thread embroidery brought to mind the early days of MTV. The heavily encrusted bustiers and lapels will send new-generationDynastytypes into overdrive.California dreams aside, the designer has parlayed this collection (and the look book shoot, at a manor house in Normandy) into a way of re-broaching old questions that, in the light of now, have new urgency. Environmental responsibility is one, and from resort’s small debut effort he plans to expand to a 50% sustainable collection for spring 2021 (new kinds of embroidery and sequins included). Examining the house’s DNA is another: Seventy-five years ago, Balmain was founded to cater to a high-society clientele in a different postcrisis context. Which, of course, raises the question of identity. Rousteing opted to stick to his home turf, but suggested that a reckoning may be in the works for that abiding (and lucrative) myth of French fashion, the Parisienne.
“France likes to give lessons in fashion,” he offered, choosing his words gingerly. “Its aesthetic is very codified, the icons are always the same, and it doesn’t give any space to this new world we are building. We need to be careful about the world we want to live in. I think we should try to understand who the Parisienne istoday.We need to open the doors more.” Change, he hinted, is on the near horizon. No doubt the world will be watching.
17 June 2020
It’s no secret to Olivier Rousteing’s 6 million followers that the digital-scape is his runway, lockdown or no. “When you work in fashion, you’re creating a world,” the designer commented. His Instagram bio exclaims, “This Is My Reality!”Now, of course, we’re all in the same boat. Like many of his peers, the designer had to forge a new, “together-apart” process, sketching fluorescent lines on a flurry of photos in WhatsApp groups, tweaking toiles on Zoom, and checking in aspetites mainsembroidered pieces at home in Italy. Like virtually everyone, he spent off-hours going overboard on streaming.Anyone who’s keeping up has already gotten a glimpse of what happened next. A stylized logo as well as the ’60s/’70s-era clutch-slash-shopper it originally came on have resurfaced for a new generation. Just this morning, a video of the new “chocolate bar” bag clocked nearly 100,000 views in a matter of hours.To showcase menswear, Rousteing invited a handful of “Balmain army” friends to style themselves in his latest looks. The Colombian megastar Maluma and actors Rome Flynn, Nicholas Galitzine, Jorge López, and Jon Kortajarena all came on board, choosing jackets that would look at home onMiami Vice,paired with Vichy checks, or polka dots inspired by Julia Roberts’s famous dress inPretty Woman(the motif was scaled down for men, and up for women). Elsewhere, a mash-up of graphics and color on T-shirts, jackets, and sequined cocktail dresses nodded toThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.Sherbet denims, militaria in hot colors, and a vista done entirely in sunset-hued-thread embroidery brought to mind the early days of MTV. The heavily encrusted bustiers and lapels will send new-generationDynastytypes into overdrive.California dreams aside, the designer has parlayed this collection (and the look book shoot, at a manor house in Normandy) into a way of re-broaching old questions that, in the light of now, have new urgency. Environmental responsibility is one, and from resort’s small debut effort he plans to expand to a 50% sustainable collection for spring 2021 (new kinds of embroidery and sequins included). Examining the house’s DNA is another: Seventy-five years ago, Balmain was founded to cater to a high-society clientele in a different postcrisis context. Which, of course, raises the question of identity. Rousteing opted to stick to his home turf, but suggested that a reckoning may be in the works for that abiding (and lucrative) myth of French fashion, the Parisienne.
“France likes to give lessons in fashion,” he offered, choosing his words gingerly. “Its aesthetic is very codified, the icons are always the same, and it doesn’t give any space to this new world we are building. We need to be careful about the world we want to live in. I think we should try to understand who the Parisienne istoday.We need to open the doors more.” Change, he hinted, is on the near horizon. No doubt the world will be watching.
17 June 2020
As an adopted black child of white parents in conservative Bordeaux, France, Olivier Rousteing said, “I grew up obsessed with questions regarding heritage, race, belonging, and fitting in.” Earlier this week he dined with the president of France, and tonight at the Césars—the most prestigious awards in French cinema—Rousteing will discover whether his autobiographical filmWonder Boy(which charts his successful search to discover the truth of his biological parentage) has won in the best-documentary category. It’s fair to say when it comes to fitting in—to belonging—Rousteing has fulfilled his childhood dream.This he has achieved by cracking the codes of the citadel in which he has so successfully risen—Paris fashion—and in this collection, Rousteing displayed all his fluency. La Saharienne, foulard dressing, Rive Gauche camel, Rive Droite argyle, and country casualbon chic,bon genrewere just a few of the genres with which Rousteing played. There were also specifically Balmain gestures including the Jolie Madame silhouette jacket at look 76 and the six-button blazer that was returned to throughout the show, including at an opening salvo of 20 navy blazer-overcoats, slouchy at the shoulder and popped at the collar just as the designer wears them himself.While Rousteing is a native speaker in the language of French fashion, his pronunciation is distinct. His accent amplifies, emboldens, and serves to joyfully disregard the hierarchical subtleties inherent in the original meanings of his raw material. Here, for instance, he gave his argyle knit and Saharienne looks shoulders strong enough to force a door open. Also heftily shouldered were the horse-and-chain foulard-print looks, a print that was then transferred in crystal and bead embroidery onto loose-armed mohair miniskirts. Lighter touches included oversized Le Smokings, whose silk collars extended downward into dangling scarf-lets, tailored pullover “jackets” with kangaroo pockets, and two bold-shouldered, tight-at-the-leg looks in brownish PVC that replicated Rousteing’s personal silhouette.Rousteing’s story is both distinctly French and universally relevant—plus it’s a bit of a tearjerker too—soWonder Boyis well worth a look when it comes to the Tribeca Film Festival in April. In this collection the designer expressed his love for the patrimony of French fashion codes while simultaneously bending them to his will: harder, better, faster, stronger.
28 February 2020
“Olivier!Olivier!OLIVIER!” Once this show had wound to its end—via two full runs around the runway by Olivier Rousteing, his air-punching models, and the troupe of authentically fragrant male dancers that closed it—we could hear that chant booming out from backstage. According to a photographer friend who was with them, gleefully shooting, the dancers had lifted Rousteing aloft to crowd-surf above.Rousteing is already pretty well-known with—(checks phone)—5.8 million Instagram followers and counting. However the recent release of Wonder Boy, the documentary about his work which reveals his discovery that he was born to Somalian and Ethiopian parents before being adopted by the parents who raised him in Bordeaux, has made him much more broadly known in France.“I think I can deliver messages that are beyond business or beyond fashion,” observed Rousteing backstage before. Indeed, his recent appearances in French media have been focused on neither of those subjects. Instead he is emerging as a cipher of French multi-cultural identity, and indeed pan-cultural identity more broadly. Yet while that goes beyond his work it is also expressed through it, no more so than in tonight’s collection.As he said: “I think my vision has become bigger because I’ve discovered where I come from. I’m proud of my origin and I’m proud of who I am today thanks to my French parents in Bordeaux.” Rousteing’s agenda this evening was to create a collection of clothes that was a mirror of himself, a man whose upbringing and cultural identity is French and bourgeois, but whose recently established genetic code is bi-national and North East African. Or as he put it: “Half Ethiopian, half Somalian, and 100% Frenchman.”As a consequence of the path his fate has followed, Rousteing is much more intimately acquainted with the traditional costumes of France than he is of either African nation in his portfolio identity. Here he shifted affectionately and knowledgeably through aviator jackets (aLe Petit Princereference with post-colonial undertones, also); foulard cardigans, pea coats and blazers, smoking jackets, distressed uptown denim, some glorious wide-collar woolen overcoats, argyle sweaters (some in sequin), and marinière stripes (ditto).Alongside these were pieces that must predominantly have bubbled up from Rousteing’s imagined sense of the attire of Africa, but which thanks to his talent as a designer and his inherent inclination to the epic were no less convincing.
He draped silk and crepe to combine soft tailoring with princely raiments in a fashion that was sometimes quite beautiful and borderline revelatory. You could call it a breakthrough collection—and totally authentic too—amongst the genre of extra-tailoring we’ve seen so much of recently.This was a bit like that scene inThe Matrixwhen Neo just gets it, thus can effortlessly halt bullets mid-flight that would previously have felled him. Rousteing’s new self-knowledge has given him access to a hitherto unseen spectrum of expression upon which a key realization was that the multi-cultural identity he was haunted by when it was unquantified is, now that he knows, a superpower. This he used gently by reminding the hundreds in his audience—via map of the world prints and zodiac embroidered coats (he’s a Virgo, btw)—that all our differences are what we have in common. Or as he put it: “we are all together. We have one sky and we look at that sky together. We are just nomads, nomads of the world.” This made me think of an excellent line from Yellowman’s “Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt”: “he come from the planet of Earth.” Plus those sneakers were out of this world.
17 January 2020
God knows how Olivier Rousteing does it. Two weeks ago, he touched down in Los Angeles for less than 24 hours for the Puma x Balmain party with Cara Delevingne; now he’s already deep into pre-fall. “All I need is a little L.A. sun to recharge my batteries,” he said during a showroom tour of meaty red tweeds and next year’s Pantone classic blue, baroquely embroidered tartans, and multiple iterations of paisley—in print,dévorévelvet, gold sequins, and, of course, lashings of crystal. And it wasn’t just about the clothes: the crystal tiger-striped boots, rhinestone-etched satin mules, and sparkly evening bag/backpacks are statement pieces all on their own.Although (or because) Rousteing barely knew the ’80s, that era provides a never-ending wellspring of inspiration in all its padded-shouldered, glittery, maximalist excess. But he also lifted several cues directly from the Balmain playbook of the ’50s and ’60s. Logical enough, since next year marks the house’s 75th anniversary. Paisley, for example, was one of Mr. Balmain’s favorite motifs, and Rousteing gamely yanked it into the present on ethereal long dresses with wide, gathered waists, on a fully embroidered bodycon dress in Pop colors, and winningly on adévoréblouse paired with ultra-high-waisted flared trousers. “Paisley may be about French-granny nostalgia, but it’s all in how you use it,” the designer said, calling the richness of the house archives his “Proustian madeleine.” He may dress Kim, Rihanna, and Beyoncé (the deep-V party dress with a pink skirt was designed with her in mind), but Rousteing speaks of Balmain as an old soul. People forget, he noted, how rule-breaking icons like Brigitte Bardot, a Balmain loyalist, were in their heyday. “Understanding the future is all about looking to the past,” he pointed out, not for the first time.Meanwhile, for a present whose seasons are out of whack, Rousteing made a broad case for trans-seasonal dressing, sweeping from a mint lace blouse with a charmeuse jabot and trailing sleeves to crisp houndstooth suiting, a tweed-tartan bomber, and dramatic capes, one of them a reiteration in leather of the house’s hit B Bag. While hewing to house codes—a pullover means tulle with crystal, beads, and sequins, for example—the overall feel was gentler, more romantic, and not quite as bodycon, but without going so far as to alienate a base that likes dressing short and tight. “We’ve shed the armor,” Rousteing allowed.
All things being relative, of course: there were plenty of shapely bodysuits and sweater dresses—criss-crossed with panthers—to keep his ladies happy.Rousteing fused his own sensibility with some of Pierre Balmain’s signature cuts, for example, bringing his strong shoulders to the Jolie Madame jacket from 1956, a nip-waisted number now revisited in an archival black fabric with lustrous leopard spots. Or by integrating a hoodie into a bourgeois quilted jacket, or delivering a pared-down halter-neck tuxedo gown. Elsewhere, he offered up classic Parisian staples—a purple lavalliere blouse, navy peacoat, or a greatcoat with gold buttons—priced, like his recent men’s capsule, to reach a new clientele.Speaking of new territory, Rousteing is one designer who eschews real fur in favor of faux, seen here on a denim jacket. Now, he says he is working on “real awareness,” brushing up and staffing up to align his designs with clean materials and sustainable production. “That’s not a trend,” he said. “It’s the real world, and once you change your mind, there’s no going back. It’s way beyond clothes.”
6 December 2019
More than any designer of his generation Olivier Rousteing has proven himself savvy at rousing fashion into a megaphone for outreach. At last June’s menswear show, the (RED) ambassador threw a music festival to benefit HIV research, in September he ventured into inclusive beauty with Kylie Cosmetics, and on the eve ofVogue’s Fashion Forces conference last month, he was in Lyon—with President Macron, Bill Gates, and Bono—for The Global Fund Replenishment Conference. His autobiographical documentaryWonder Boyrecently aired to impressive reviews in France too. “If I can push fashion into a different place to help the world, that’s how I love fashion,” he said.For Pre-Fall, the designer is nudging Balmain into a different world too. With Gen Z coming into its own, Rousteing feels that now the time has come to let a broader audience in on the fun. That starts with a return to the house’s traditional strength, tailoring, with a concise lineup of suiting staples at prices that will be easier for many to embrace. Rousteing said that his “new dandy” is inspired by friends and colleagues in the C-suite. “Those guys are strong; they’ve got great careers—they expect something different from Balmain,” he said. “Even if I love embroidery and embellishment, I’m starting to get how a man can love a double-breasted navy and serge jacket with simple buttons.”The results spanned a simple, sharp-shouldered jacket to a deconstructed jacket with an integrated waistcoat and white lapel—daring in some circles, but tame in comparison to what might be expected from Balmain. As an exercise, it was utterly convincing. “I’m getting older, as well,” Rousteing offered with a pragmatic shrug. “It’s great because I’m starting to expect other things from my wardrobe.” To wit, he wore a blue-and-white striped shirt and a long, tailored jacket over the futuristic moonwalker sneakers he’s been sporting of late. “Streetwear is important, but luxury needs to be based on timeless pieces, not trends,” he said, slipping into a sweeping cashmere greatcoat with expansive lapels, one of his favorite statements this season, and a sartorial homage of sorts to slouchy-chic as lensed by Peter Lindbergh.Not that Rousteing would hew so minimalist as to forsake Balmain’s outsider-y status.
His “rock ’n’ roll, sexy man” may be perfectly aware that he lives in a jeans-and-black-turtleneck world, but he’ll top it with an extravaganza of a “cable knit” jacket fully embellished with crystals, or perhaps a Bonapartian “couture” peacoat stacked with gold frogging, or a black satin bomber with the planets and constellations mapped out in crystals “for the glamour traveler.”On that note, the black evening jacket with a geyser of crystals was for the man who knows perfectly well that diamonds are a guy’s best friend too. In a more streetwear vein, a husky baying at a full moon against the Aurora Borealis was this season’s spirit animal, on various iterations of oversized T-shirts. “It’s about escape, the beauty of nature, and being blown away by the most beautiful landscape you can see,” Rousteing said. For those headed that way, he’s got a sneaker-ranger hybrid shoe that can help get you there.
14 November 2019
“Own who you are” read the T-shirt in Look 13. Yet you can only own who you are if you know who you are, and until very recently, Olivier Rousteing had spent his entire life denied that knowledge. As the new documentaryWonder Boyshows, Rousteing has investigated his past and discovered that his biological parents are Somalian and Ethiopian: He had always assumed he was mixed-race rather than 100 percent African. As well as the question of identity, being adopted raises other profound issues, perhaps most profoundly a sense of rejection—of unwantedness. In previous seasons you could discern how these existential threads had woven around Rousteing to form a brittle shell that cracked easily under the weight of snarkiness from the online haters that the size of his digital profile and the extremism of his aesthetic attract.Not this morning. Rousteing owned who he is in a collection that sometimes felt like a deliberate provocation to the haters—who don’t need much prompting—to flex their fingers, reach for their keyboards, and show themselves as hateful. Yes, very well spotted, there were riffs on Chanel and Mugler and Montana and more: Rousteing has spent nearly a decade as creative director at Balmain, he knows this stuff too, just like he knew Karl, and he knows you know. Fashion is a referential conversation refreshed by individual interjection. This morning, both the carpet and the monochrome looks that bookended the show resonated with Rousteing’s recent racial self-discovery. The collection as a whole was framed around his experience as a kid in the late 1990s and early 2000s listening to Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Destiny’s Child. Look 63 was an extremely Balmain-ified tribute to Beyoncé’s crop track top in theCrazy in Lovevideo.A lot of it was designed to divide opinion while guaranteeing attention: one-legged pants and jumpsuits (an echo of mid-’90s men’s street style); a Big Bird yellow jumpsuit in a shaggy fringe of fine-cut resin or a version in blue with the soft-tailored seams of a classic Chanel jacket outlined in black. The gazillions ofI Dream of Jeanniegowns in panels of colored pleated silk often built around huge chunks of turquoise or circular mirror were not about subtlety, oh no, but strength. “I sometimes feel that the fashion that inspires the front row does not talk to the young generation,” observed Rousteing backstage. He’s most likely right.
For anyone in search of an outfit in which to fluster, there is no better destination than Balmain.
27 September 2019
“Howfucking amazingwas that show?” asked Darren Criss. Maybe a thousand or so people roared in reply, a human cacophony that indicated they thought it was veryfucking amazingindeed.How clever of Olivier Rousteing’s Balmain to lean into Paris’s longest night, the summer solstice tradition of street drinking and live music to present this season’s menswear (liberally sprinkled with womenswear) collection as a free show/concert. Criss had just finished a cover of Prince’s “Kiss” and was about to launch into Joe Dassin’s “Champs Élysée” when he asked his critical question. Shortly afterward, Rousteing shimmied out from backstage to belt out a verse via his signature sumptuous pout.Just before Criss opened tonight’s musical entertainment, Rousteing led his models onstage, and it was fascinating to watch from our privileged wristband position the hundreds of arms raised in smartphone supplication towards him and them. Yes, this was a benefit gig from which all profits went to Bono’s RED HIV-tackling charity (the margin-generating Parisian food and drink stalls on site smelled very good indeed), but the Insta-cloud of hashtagged positivity will surely be highly positive for Rousteing’s brand. From our little raised gantry at the side of the stage in which tattooed rappers smoked weed and scowled in studied delight as sinuous model types shimmied thigh to thigh and moued with intent, it was pretty hard to see the clothes. Luckily a preview, with Rousteing in full flight, set us straight.There were some bananas biker jackets in mirrored PVC or embroidered cut transparent plastic and a lot of very strong slouchy tailoring—I adored a draped double-breasted suit in black silk and the cut of built-in-cummerbunded pleated pants. Rousteing said he wanted to imagine the Balmain man (and woman) 50 or 60 years hence, which made sense. The trench-coat skirts for men were hilariously subversive (in a good way), especially when pastelized.A side note: It was so good to see Rousteing at the Off-White show earlier this week, because this snooty fashion world often overlooks what a catalyzingly powerful force he was—before any other designer in Paris and way pre-Abloh—in activating Paris fashion’s delayed and, one suspects, systematically reluctant lurch to diversity. On the big screens to the side of the stage this evening it was signaled thatce soirwas “V01” of this idea. Very good, and bad luck to the rest of you for not thinking of it first.
This could be a great staple event for Balmain to run at June menswear, and—when refined—will suck the oxygen from other much more portentous and less adventurous concepts on the calendar. Bravo, Olivier.
21 June 2019
Olivier Rousteing is on a roll. Pre-collection sales are up a hundredfold in just five years. Suffice to say, that opens the door to all kinds of opportunities. Take menswear, for example: The brand’s new shop on the Rue Saint Honoré confirmed the designer’s hunch that Balmain appeals to all ages, whether it’s through classic tailoring or the more elaborate, special pieces, like the full-on embroidered dinner jackets or a poncho with a beaded, crystal-studded Western desertscape in sunset colors. “The American dream can never die, no matter what’s happening,” he quipped, slipping into the poncho himself.“I’ve always had a very inclusive idea of what fashion means,” the designer mused, as he ran through a crib sheet of how he sees dressing now. “Men are daring more,” he noted. “With #MeToo, women are really confident, but men are also showing even more pride in their own femininity and aspiration without fear of being judged about their sexuality.” That, he said, is a sea change, adding: “Before, men were reluctant to listen to their feminine side. Now, to feel strong, you listen to your feminine side. Embroidery is no longer reserved for women. Men can be glam.” These days, those men may gravitate toward tailored jackets with upright, sometimes layered lapels and biker trousers, for example. “After 10 years of streetwear, I think people are recognizing the chic of tailoring,” Rousteing said. “For me, it’s all about the tailoring.”That goes for his womenswear, too, whether it’s what he calls his “Parisian” or “Deauville” selections of black and white tweed, or the savvy capsule of yoga pieces he slipped in this season. “I spend a lot of time listening to our customers,” he said. “When you listen to how they live, you realize that they need things to wear to yoga class, as well as pieces for work or going out.” On that end of the scale, the designer pushed into knitwear, echoing his heavily sequined, graphic pieces in black and white lightweight knits, giving a cropped tweed jacket a certain Rue Cambon-meets-Coachella cred with long sweeps of fringe, or tweaking the military leanings on a khaki jacket. One of Rousteing’s favorite pieces in this collection is what he calls the “butterfly jumpsuit,” a black and white number with loopholes at the hips to give the wings full rein.
10 June 2019
Today, somewhere—most likely in Paris, given the hometown nature of Balmain—one very content supplier of pointed metal studs probably cannot quite believe their luck, for he or she will have already vastly overreached 2019’s sales target thanks to a Balmain collection that featured more spiked protuberances than a porcupine convention on a cactus farm encircled by a nail factory.These thousands of studs—on the striking opening oversize black bouclé blazer, on origami-structured pagoda-roof skirts, on open-shoulder bikers, on slides, on vests, on newsboy caps, on bags, on sharp-toed boots, and on transparent trenches and jackets—were there to make a point. Alongside many other decorative dichotomies, they represented one side of the theme Olivier Rousteing said he was exploring in his articulation of the Balmain woman today: “She’s got attitude; she is a troublemaker, and she doesn’t care. She’s defiant, but she is a paradox: She can be sweet and romantic too; she can be an angel . . . or she can be a devil. She cannot be categorized.”Rousteing has long rebelled against those inclined to categorize him, so this collection spoke directly to his preoccupation with the expression of self-determination through clothes—whatever the hell anybody watching thinks about it. The flip side of those studs—as echoed in the thorned bloom design on the show’s invitation—were the scrunched flower embellishments in lavender velvet on the skirt of a stud-topped dress, or the clustered rose embroideries on a backless one-shouldered bib worn above washed loose jeans, or the apocalyptic blossoming of more scrunched floral embellishments in the patent-leather clothing section.Another “good” vs. “bad” or “soft” vs. “hard” dichotomy mined with abandon by Rousteing saw the codes of an uptown bourgeoisParisienne—with her fragranced wardrobe stuffed with hand-me-down couture bouclé and evening dresses in dramatically ruffled ’80s shapes—smashed against a punky, rock-y, leave-your-clothes-on-the-floor, highly anarchic (albeit highly solvent) sensibility articulated in those bikers as well as apparently picked-apart bouclé on denim outerwear, chainlink Alice bands, and long, embellished, frayed fishnet dresses in mohair (some of which snagged challengingly on the chain-link heels of Rousteing’s spiked boots).
Yet another dichotomy was encapsulated in a recurring silhouette that was a sort of born-to-be-bad baguette: fitted—but full and frilled—at the chest and hip; the filling was a cinched and corseted section at the abdomen.This recipe was adapted into variations that included black ruffled organza (plus cape) surrounding PVC-sheathed denim; white ruffled organza (accented with black PVC thigh highs and opera gloves) surrounding a transparent PVC; and a shoulder piece of layered black PVC petals above a black ruffled PVC skirt bisected by more transparent PVC.Side stories include menswear codes colonized by the ostentatiously feminine (at least according to traditional categorizations) and a soundtrack that segued from “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics, to “Forever Young” and “Big in Japan” by Alphaville, to “It’s a Sin” by the Pet Shop Boys, and finally back to “Here Comes the Rain Again” by the Eurythmics. Fierce vs.flou, sharp vs. soft, and rebel vs. princess, this was both a Balmain-expressed cartography of the extreme outer reaches of the feminine archetype and an invitation for its wearers to exploit the codes it exposed without ever being defined by them.
1 March 2019
Since taking over the creative direction of Balmain nearly nine years ago, Olivier Rousteing has proven that the world is his oyster. To cover what he has achieved—the global brand growth, design identity, inclusive messaging, and far-reaching popularity—would run the length of this review. Thus, the revival of the maison’s haute couture atelier must have been his pearl; a rare and valuable manifestation of beauty, its iridescent nacre akin to layers of workmanship.And so it’s not for nothing that pearls played a central part in his first couture collection. Right from the start, they appeared as giant Balmain-emblazoned orbs encircling wrists and carried in hand; they were the obvious reference for bulbous skirts molded in leather; and they were applied in bounteous quantities to lattices of ornamentation, from suits to jeans. They were the only reasonable explanation for the models’ filmy white makeup.In a preview of the collection, which took place next to the busy in-house atelier, Rousteing explained that he sees his haute couture as bridging the Balmain of the past with today. “Of course, the house is known for being edgy and sexy and glamorous. Here, it’s all about bringing back Balmain to the elegance oflaFrance,” he said, adding that the maison’s archive proved essential. “Everything you see will give the sense that it’s taken from the ideas of Mr. Balmain.” This much is clear; the tiers upon tiers of frothy tulle, theatrically pleated fan shapes, and figure-swallowing bows looked nothing like Rousteing as we know and love him.By adding the new Balmain logo as a graffiti treatment to a superhero peplum or encrusting denim in embellishment, Rousteing said he was answering the question: What is couture in 2019? That his answer missed the mark might be owing to a few understandable considerations. The statement pieces in his ready-to-wear, as well as last year’s 44 François Premier red carpet collection, already approximated couture, leaving him with little creative oxygen. Haute couture also carries such historic, weighty precedent that growing pains will be inevitable. Finally, Rousteing has been in awe of fashion since a very young age, when he marveled over the creations of Yves Saint Laurent for Catherine Deneuve and those of Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel. Maybe these exaggerated, reimagined ’80s volumes and ultra-pretty pastels were the fulfillment of a long-held fantasy. “Let’s be dreamy and inspirational,” he enthused during the visit.
There was, alas, nothing much dreamy about the venue—the forthcoming flagship on Rue Saint-Honoré, still in a state of incompletion. This can be forgiven and soon even forgotten. The part that lingers is that, for someone who has formed such a solid connection through his #BalmainArmy, who just launched an app meant to democratize the Balmain experience, and who has ensured that you can’t go four blocks in Paris without being made aware of Balmain, the collection went backward not forward. On the plus side, the line is so exclusive that it won’t change the course of Balmain’s history—or fashion’s.So for now, one can only ask, Who is the Balmain couture woman? Cue Rousteing’s reply, which can be interpreted as you wish: “It’s an interesting question because we don’t know.”
23 January 2019
“You only know my name, not my story.” “Your comments I don’t mind. Hate with passion is love.” “Don’t put your blame on me.” “I’m under no obligation to reply.”These phrases, and others similar, featured on bikers, hoodies, bags, and more in this evening’s Balmain show: What was Olivier Rousteing getting at? Under no obligation, he replied. “I think we are living in a world where everybody starts to pick a fight for no reason, just for the sake of the comments. And I think this is dangerous. Freedom is important. But the freedom of the people who just want to destroy and ruin . . . in France we say ‘la liberté des uns s’arrête là où commence celle des autres’ [the freedom of some ends where that of others begins]. Being young—but not super young either—I think I understand the difference. And let’s remember that we have journalists who have the experience to actually understand the past, experience the present, and see the future. And sometimes I am scared of the non-experienced—how we can become . . . the cows.”At this point, obviously, Rousteing was nodding to Suzy Menkes—the best of us, and certainly the most experienced—who had just arrived at this new out-of-town venue by Métro (no pay-to-play fees for digital campaigns based on efficiently farmed Instagram followings forher).Rousteing, after Ozwald Boateng at Givenchy, the second creative director of color in Paris, and a man raised by (loving) adoptive white parents in a predominantly Caucasian town, knows a fair bit about being on the outside looking in. He has worked his way from the fringes to the heart of the fashion world he loves, and tonight he used his collection to make a statement not only about perspective in a digital world—many of his models wore iPhones on metal-hardware leather harnesses, faced out on the chest, to express a sense of scrutiny returned—but about gender.“I want women to have the same power as the men and I want men to be able to discover their feminine sides . . . in the collection there is both men and women and you cannot necessarily tell by the clothes who was the woman and who is the man. It is kind of like there is one gender.”
18 January 2019
For the past two weeks, Olivier Rousteing has been teasing images of the Balmain Pre-Fall collection on his personal Instagram feed. While this reduced the element of surprise for review purposes, it gave an early indication of the direction—first impression: architectural Asia fantasia—and also underscored Rousteing’s social network savvy. With over 5 million followers, his reach is more than twice as large as the population of central Paris.From the showroom today, surrounded by all those fierce, three-dimensional minidresses and a new logo, he said this wasn’t so much a strategic decision as the excitement that comes from arriving at a point that bridged Balmain’s past with its future.“I’ve been obsessed with making Balmain a strong French house. And when everyone is really struggling to understand where fashion is going, I wanted to look back and remember why fashion has been relevant,” he said. “And of course, it’s important to understand what people want today; people want to be real but they want to dream as well.”The lookbook gives a sense of how he delivered on that duality: The color images draw attention to some of the crazy craftsmanship that transformed sleeves into spiky scaled dragons, juxtaposed plastic pieces with crochet, and showered surfaces with large crystal confetti. The embroidery patterns were packed with Japanese characters, nature elements, and mythological motifs derived from traditional tattoos, or else comparatively minimal as glistening geometries against backdrops of velvet or quilted leather. Exaggerated volumes that suggested rigid, deconstructed kimonos added to the drama. Rousteing demonstrated how the shapes did not actually restrict the arms—they simply provide a high-impact photo op. He did not demonstrate how a dress exposing half the torso might be worn; no doubt some exhibitionist celebrity will show us sooner or later.Black jackets contrasted with sharply jutting lapels and oversize cuffs in white stood out as ’80s-redux chic, especially when paired with stonewashed denim in cuts that were slouchy but sexy. The fancy denim puffer coat was an excellent idea—so good that it is bound to be copied repeatedly. Along with the boldly colored corduroys, forgiving tweeds, and pajama pants that sparkled, this was Rousteing giving current or prospective Balmain customers the go-to pieces, not just collector’s items.
Ultimately, though, he seems to still care most about making Balmain “iconic”—as in, defining Beyoncé’s style or being included in museum exhibitions. As in, the new B bag and a forthcoming couture collection (for January, themaisonhas been invited as a guest member). “We’re starting to get such a strong identity,” he said. “We’ve reached the level where you see who I am and who is the brand.” Indeed, they are indistinguishable.
3 December 2018
“It’s Paris meets Egypt,” said Olivier Rousteing before his Balmian show: “because every morning when I wake up I see the Obélisque on La Concorde, and the Pyramide du Louvre . . . . I think it’s really important to mention that so much of the beauty of Paris is in its history, and its history is not only what we call French.” Egypt is a significant part of the visual dialect of postcolonial Parisian architecture thanks in part to Napoleon Bonaparte’s small-man-complex warring there: The Foire du Caire was built in 1798, while the Fontaine du Palmier and the Fontaine du Fellah followed a few years later. The Luxor Obelisk, over 3,000 years old, a mighty sliver of heritage, was given to France in 1829 by the then-Ottoman ruler of Egypt—so they didn’t just steal it, British-style—and those pyramids were put in place as recently as 1989 by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei.Rousteing returns every season to Paris as the prime inspiration for his collections because it is here—after his upbringing in Bordeaux and precocious apprenticeships in Italy—where, during the last eight years, he has defined his professional métier. By exploring the identity of the French capital he is, on various levels, also exploring his own—and interrogating it, too. So while this episode was heavily Egyptian in flavor, it retained certain key symbols, foundations, ofLa Patrimoine de Paris et de Rousteing: Marinière stripes; bourgeois bouclé jackets; assertive tailoring with hard Balmain shoulders; and, of course, the very handwork of the Balmain atelier that is intrinsic to the fabric of the Rousteing whole.As for the Egyptian elements? Well, there was a Nile valley’s worth, all playfully expressed and all with an absolutely Rousteing-esque sense of drama. Cara Delevingne opened the show in a gleaming beaten-metal bodice—fantasy Cleopatra attire—as she sang along to “When Doves Cry.” There were funny, sexy mummy jeans and dresses in ribbons of wrapped, draped, and distressed muslin. Rousteing called the bagscoffres—coffers—like mini sarcophagi for the internment of deep, dark Balmain-girl secrets. Pyramids were reimagined in plexiglass panels of different colors that went into the construction of hard, fierce, creatively rich, and invariably high-hemmed dresses.
White triple organza, stiffened and rippling with pleat, was used in extreme, sculptural shapes—fanned in huge arcs around the body or across the shoulder—as both reference tokalasiris(pleated ancient Egyptian garments) and art. Black woolen tops and skirts were inscribed with white hieroglyphs.
28 September 2018
“Don’t you black-or-white me.” Growing up a black child of white adoptive parents in Bordeaux and then coming up as the only black creative director at a legacy Paris fashion house (Boateng was long gone, and Abloh yet to rock up), Olivier Rousteing listened to a great deal of Michael Jackson. His favorite song? “They Don’t Care About Us,” he said before today’s heavily Jackson-flavored Franco/American Thriller at Balmain.Bubbles was not featured, however along with the soundtrack there were lots of fun, loving references to Jackson and the way he makes Rousteing feel; the red jacket in look five, the Balmain/Badcover tee in look eight, the “Dangerous”-style panorama illustration in look 71, the mirror-frogged sweatshirt in look 100, and—of course—all the black socks and white loafers. There were also a lot of less-specifically Jackson references to the vision of Americana Rousteing viewed through his distant Bordeaux lens while growing up: oversize vintage collegiate football sweaters and cardigans, some great loose pleated denim-alike jersey trousers and ripped denim jeans, and jackets whose holes were lined in atelier-applied crystal.So this was a red, white, and blue collection, yes; but ultimately it was way more tricolor than star-spangled. Rousteing also name-checked Serge Gainsbourg, that Gauloise gravel-voiced exemplar of the patrimony of La France, as a key lifetime listen. The fabric of French tradition was woven (and studded, pinned, and printed) into this collection. Marinière tops in paillette, low-slung, were worn above shockingly neutral (for Balmain) but totally French-preppy narrow straight-cut unwashed indigo jeans. This carried over into the women’s “Episode” collection in body-con minidresses in Marinière stripe with powerful ruffling on the shoulder. There was a fitted bouclé jacket in tricolor weave (navy dominated) and a lot of Deauville or St.-Tropez nautical tailoring in more bouclé. Other excellent details, neither specifically French nor American but très Balmain, were the broken-glass-effect clear paillettes and the high-rise, CONS-reminiscent, Balmain-tagged sneakers.Near the end there was a tight little section, nearly all-black, that gave soft silk evening jackets and tailcoats hoods that extended out their lapels—this looked almost Japanese, way off-theme, but sleekly ninja. Balmain’s atelier is in fine form: Both for men and for women the house’s trademark mega-embellishment was excellently executed.
One silhouette was intriguing but elusive: Expressed nearish the start (look 23) via a blue, shinily Balmain-buttoned rain cape and slim-fit washed jeans over white socks and loafers, it was repeated in black leather with biker-jacket touches in look 95. This felt like a specifically French reference that was frustratingly beyond this non-French eye’s parsing.This show was apparently the first-ever in the salons of a historic Seine-side building belonging to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Possibly (and I’m totally speculating) this was a result of Rousteing’s meeting with French President Emanuel Macron at last womenswear week’s dinner at the Élysée Paris. It certainly made for an extra layer of resonance to a rich collection rooted in a very French perception of cultural difference that was simultaneously a celebration of assimilation and multiculturalism.Of course, there are many who still don’t care about Rousteing. Equally, he doesn’t care about them. He said: “I know we are living in a world of menswear where everyone is going in one direction, but the growth of my brand is now 40 percent in menswear. Men are looking for something else, I feel. You cannot reduce them to one story, so what is important is to keep the identity of our menswear, and to have a point of view.”
24 June 2018
“It’s about an infinite summer—one with no ending,” said Olivier Rousteing of the Balmain Resort collection. Given an offering that apparently comprises some 900 pieces, that conceit holds up; you could dress for months in the latest rococo minidresses, achingly glam daywear, and broadened range of bags and shoes without any risk of wardrobe repetition. Yet in real terms, such an astounding output can be explained by a crescendo of supply and demand: Ever since Mayhoola’s 2016 acquisition of the brand, the pumping up of product and points of sale have been matched by fans of all stripes who remain overwhelmingly faithful. Amidst the geopolitical cracks destabilizing the world at large, escaping to #BalmainNation with its army fashion plates seems pretty tempting, if pricey. It’s no coincidence that Rousteing has been followed by a film crew over the past year for a documentary from the producers ofValentino: The Last Emperor.From his relatively new and undeniably tony showroom, he explained how this vast collection could be viewed through an overarching message of contrast and paradox. As in, sculpting jute toile and raffia into a sexy silhouette and paneling a body-con dress in geometric wood tiles like an ornate Venetian floor. Marquetry doesn’t exactly come to mind when you think of a red carpet statement, and anyone who buys in must understand the preciousness; but as surface treatments go, the workmanship and impact were awesome.Several other key looks felt as though they emerged from a fever dream in which a trunk of outfits from circa 1980s Paris got soaked in Vegas excess and washed up on the shores of a Pacific Island. Translation: haute, hot, and highly seductive. For every saturated sunset (and there were plenty; on bombers, kimonos, even boots) and mirrored mosaic, he delivered a fair amount of ease. Relaxed jackets and menswear pants covered in faded tropical scenes; fresh, stretchy versions of the classic black-and-white herringbone; and a Balmain spin on the humble marinière and overalls (lustrous; shredded) were comparatively chill. The nautical spirit continued with a new swimwear range that featured coin buttons arrayed like his classic double-breasted jackets. Whereas previous bags have been boxy and caselike, the latest style could have been birthed from a beach ball. But ultimately, it was the constant push and pull of humble and futuristic materials that proved most playful.
If not evident in the collection itself, Rousteing’s vim and vigor remain bottomless. “It always feels like a beginning; there is always a new chapter at Balmain—it is never boring,” he insisted. Still, the blazing beachy backdrop that figured throughout the lineup very closely resembled the staged landscape of Resort ’17 collection—almost like a recurring destination of his imagination. Indeed, anyone who works this hard deserves a bona fide vacation.
4 June 2018
The Balmain army was deployed to an Olivier Rousteing–imagined future this morning, a 90-strong detachment of sci-fi sirens uniformed in neon-spectrum plissé, holographic PVC, and holographic paillettes. This might be reaching just a little, but as they transported back and forth down the deep-pile carpet, his cast looked like time travelers sent back from 2050 (the year in which Rousteing imagined this collection) to alter the course of fashion history. Their mission?Umm: to sabotage any plans to lure Rousteing from Balmain—and thus ensure that army’s HoloGlamazon destiny.Time travel apart, maybe that’s not entirely far-fetched. In 2050, Rousteing will be 64. Should he still be at Balmain, he will have put in a 39-year shift. There are plenty of designers older than 64 still working strongly in Paris today. And Karl Lagerfeld is currently in his 35th year chez Chanel. Suck on that notion, Balmain-haters.Rousteing himself is far more serene when it comes to criticism these days. What used to rile him now helps drive him. He said he went for today’s futuristic theme to move the Balmain conversation on from legacy, to force him (and his atelier) to challenge themselves with new materials. On the whole, they rose to that challenge: The sections of metallic-finish tailoring, sequinned trenches, and pieces in black PVC that glinted with prismatic color retained a softness in movement despite the synthetic shine of their finishes. The neon fringed boucle looks and holographic raffia-fringed dresses all amped up the light-reflecting impact. Given that about half of the audience seemed to be streaming the show—and Rousteing used it as a platform to announce his own filter on Snapchat—presenting a collection that would sparkle and shine on the small screen made sense.“We are the new generation” read a T-shirt in sequins. Yet, as a piece of knowingly OTT future-facing science fiction, this was not a total rejection of the past but more a fashion steampunk that referenced it along the way. The plissé section dresses were inspired by Madame Grès, for instance, but were presented in colorways she could never have imagined. Later, a trompe l’oeil version of the patch-plissé look was printed onto T-shirt dresses. There was also plenty of ripped denim (sometimes encased in PVC) plus a strong Balmain shoulder.
The music included Yazoo’s “Don’t Go,” A-ha’s “Take On Me,” and Kim Wilde’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”—all tunes that sounded like the future when they first landed around when Rousteing was born. The last few looks—including Rousteing’s own when he came out to take his bow—were futuristically finished Breton tops lined in studs or more holographic-shimmer metallic: nods to the everlastingpatrimoine. Said Rousteing: “I had—I wouldn’t say ‘fun,’ because I know that fun is not allowed in fashion—but I took a lot of pleasure in creating this collection.” Whether via Snapchat, Instagram, or plain old in-the-room-with-your-own-eyes, it was fun to watch, too. Roll on 2050.
2 March 2018
Balmain’s vibe this season was of a ragtag army of in-the-future, ethnically diverse, hot-as-hell, and well funded survivalists who gradually morphed into night creatures ready to hit the clubs. What were they surviving? “Too much partying?” wondered Olivier Rousteing backstage. The key thematic pieces here were two T-shirts, one in embroidered beading, which proclaimed: “Fashion is not Evolution but Revolution.” This, said Rousteing, “I took from Mr. Pierre Balmain. But he said the opposite: fashion was not revolution but evolution. Now, though, things are very different. I think we are all living a revolution, and trying to survive that revolution. You can see from the press and you can see from the designers that there is a revolution happening. We are all scared to talk about it. But it’s what is happening. Digital is getting more and more important. How are editorials going to talk to people? Who are the next models? Everybody is trying to look for millennials—what’s gonna be next? This is what I think is the most interesting part of fashion at the moment.”You can’t fault Rousteing for saying what he sees. And it’s true, too. His answer to the limbo of who-knows-what’s-happening right now was to double down on his codes while playing with some new ones along the way. The opening section of militaria contained some awesome outerwear, pants and sweaters that mixed jersey, nylon, paracord, and quilted nylon with the samepar mainprecision the atelier usually applies to beading and chain mail. “I worked that jersey as hard as any embroideries,” said Rousteing, and it looked like this opening chapter shift in the lexicon might bring him a new menswear audience attracted to virtuoso-but-rugged technicality.Of course there were many beaded, embroidered, and chain mail looks. The twist this season was to insert a lot of PVC—including, rather audaciously, a PVC drop-crotch men’s pant, teamed with a by comparison conservative flattened camel cashmere topcoat. This added its slick shine to the high glint of Rousteing’s fall-off-the-body slither dresses and powerfully shouldered gem-punched jackets for men quite effectively. There were appealing sheath sneaker boots, minimal and sprightly looking, a section of fringed dark blue bouclé outerwear, and then more graphic T-shirts—sort of French retro-futuristic—some worn under transparent PVC outerwear.
Was there womenswear? Yes, there was plenty, from a new capsule called Episode that incorporated elements of the men’s, plus some pieces that seemed to be from Pre. Before the show, Cindy Crawford arrived to watch her son Presley Gerber on the runway. She said of Rousteing: “I’m a fan of his artistry. I really think he’s a creative talent: Good designers are not just designing clothes, right? They make you dream and they have a vision. I like that Olivier obviously sees women as strong and very powerful—and that really comes across in the looks he designs for women.” Presley and the rest of his menswear-wearing coworkers looked pretty strong alongside Rousteing’s powerful women, too.
20 January 2018
From a showroom abuzz with buyers placing their Pre-Fall orders six weeks earlier than usual, Olivier Rousteing appeared stoked by all the developments owing to Balmain’s new owner (Mayhoola for Investments) and new CEO (Massimo Piombini). In addition to preparing for a forthcoming flagship in Milan on Via Monte Napoleone, he’s been encouraged to expand both the ready-to-wear range—including the debut of men’s Pre-Fall—and accessories. Sales from the Spring season are up 30 percent year-over-year, with emerging categories such as knitwear now representing 30 percent of the business. The latest bag offering, which spans classic box shapes with gold chains to extreme novelty styles (glitter floating through clear acrylic; purses modeled after Starbucks cups), occupied an entire room.“It’s hard for a designer after seven years to feel like there can be a new chapter,” admitted Rousteing, ever youthful. “They’re making me feel that there’s a new story to tell.” But all this internal reinforcement wasn’t the only story behind such a dazzlingly Parisian collection. With his take on the French tricolor—that is, blue, silver, and red—the designer was seizing on the positive energy so palpable in the French capital right now. He electrified the motif as zigzag and chevron patterns so that the results registered equal parts patriotic and Ziggy Stardust. Dialed up, this David Bowie via Pierre Balmain vibe played out as fresh velvet versions of his maximalist rock star jackets, which he paired with embellished concert tees, and strass-studded velvet leggings, masculine trousers, or patent jeans. Dialed down, it was present in comparatively wearable Prince of Wales suiting and herringbone cotton tweeds. The heritage aspect was most apparent in the liberal use of a medallion referring to themaisoncrest created roughly a half-century ago. Consider the emblem an updated way for his Balmain army to signal their continued allegiance.He reiterated, however, that Meryl is as much a muse as Kendall; and with Brigitte Macron wearing his sharp-shouldered jackets, it’s increasingly apparent that the glam gal perception of the brand might be too narrow. Indeed, for all the glitz of the intricate constellation patterns, the emphasis on statement knits and velvet jersey proved a welcome message. While many pieces remained resolutely body-con, there were also structured knit jackets, tunics, lacquered quilted pullovers, and oversize bombers.
Altogether, they presented a unified front against the clear plastic, lustrous leather, glossy PVC, and hologram effects that were more of a piece with his recent cameo at Victoria’s Secret than what his broadening customer base will ultimately wear.The marinière theme that he introduced on the Spring runway reappeared as new baroque interpretations: Think fringed Lurex miniskirts or toppers dripping with embroidery. If not for every day, the looks crystallized the heartfelt vision Rousteing was eager to project as a native French designer. “France is way more attractive these days; we should keep pushing that attraction and being proud,” he said. “We have a chance right now to shine, so let’s keep shining.” In that respect, women will be spoiled for choice.
11 December 2017
Backstage at Balmain, Olivier Rousteing fielded a kiss from Pamela Anderson, hugs from his models—Natalia Vodianova opened, Natasha Poly closed—and a gazillion urgent congratulations from the rest of us, the gently sweatingmwah-mwah-darlingthrong. Waiting quietly nearby were Rousteing’s elderly parents, who adopted, raised, and loved him. The designer registered them as he was being pulled away to some other vitalciao: He diverted, swooped, and planted a huge kiss on his mother’s cheek. His father gleamed on benevolently. They have a good vibe.Rousteing’s surface life is there for all to see on Instagram. Today, he gave us a rare glimpse into his internal landscape. Immediately before the show he said, “I am trying to impress myself but also trying to impress my audience. Because I think I have a sensation in my body that I always had. When my parents adopted me, at night I was always putting on my pajamas before [going to bed] because I was scared that they would bring me [back to the orphanage] again. I always need love, to be loved and appreciated.”As root causes of fear of rejection go, that runs straight to the heart. Of course, Rousteing’s parents never did reject him. And many love his Balmain—the sales figures reveal it. Today, Rousteing was discussing his parents because of his choice of venue, the Palais Garnier. It was here, at age 10 on his first trip to Paris with them, that he had his Damascene conversion to fabulousness.He said: “We came first for a visit, and we saw the ballet. I wasreallyimpressed. I said, ‘That’s what I want in my life, that’s what I feel . . .’La splendeur Parisienne. And I would never have believed that 20 years later, I would have the chance to show my collection here. To have the chance to design for the ballet—I went on the stage with the dancers in front of 2,000 people! It was the dream come true . . . and having Brigitte Macron wear my clothes!”For Rousteing to perform in the building that first fired his desire to design was both satisfying and revealing. For Garnier’s opera house is, not unlike Rousteing’s fashion house, an unabashedly opulent quintessence of decorative grandiosity. The collection followed summer’s menswear in paying homage toLa Francevia Breton marinière stripe rendered in monochrome paillette and softer stripes sometimes worn, also in sequin, over frayed bouclé shorts.
These shorts were part of an unusual-for-Balmain section of daywear—but not every-daywear—that featured sweaters with V necklines so deep they ran almost to the ankle, atelier-encrusted frayed crop tops over gold studded leather pants, and check bouclé dungarees.At the end, Rousteing came out with all his models behind him, a blur of feather and tuft and pin and gold and frayed graphic (meant to reflect the ripped flyer posters with which Paris is always plastered). Rousteing had played with new shapes, and one was a close long dress with a spurt of layered ruffle at the hem. Totally eye-catching, but movement-constricting, too. Luna Bijl wore the tightest example, her legs closely encased in black mesh, and simply could not keep up with her fellows—but with wry game face, she persevered up the pale deep-pile carpet. As she did, and we clapped, we started to laugh: not at her, or the dress, but with her and the dress. Rousteing does not have to worry about his pajamas any more.
28 September 2017
Olivier Rousteing has more than one reason to be cheery. He’s about to jet off for Los Angeles where he’s opening a new Melrose Avenue store and announcing an as-yet-undisclosed collaboration; he’s working with L’Oréal on a small makeup range set for a September debut; he just designed costumes forRenaissance, a new ballet by Sébastien Bertaud at the Paris Opera; and France elected Emmanuel Macron. “With the election, the good vibe is back,” Rousteing said, noting that he takes particular pride in dressing the country’s new First Lady Brigitte Macron.And so, the pro-France sentiments he expressed with his Spring 2018 menswear collection—heavy on the marinière stripes, heavier on the chain-accented tweeds—extended into the Resort offering he showed by appointment today in a temporary showroom. Oh yeah, the company is moving into bigger headquarters, too. Rousteing’s Balmain has always been about exuberance—there were Americanisms like fringe and Western shirt detailing in the mix here, too—but this collection benefitted from a new sense of softness and ease. Though there was plenty here that was still wildly over the top, the most compelling pieces didn’t have the carapace-like quality of some of his recent runway work. Chalk that up to a) the collection’s informality and b) itsParisiennefamiliarity. Of his men’s show he said, “It was more me. It used to be I started the collection trying to please the customer, now the customer is buying what I wear.” The takeaway: It never hurts to add jeans.
3 July 2017
As Johnny Hallyday belted out “L’Envie” at the finale of this show, Carine Roitfeld looked to be in utter ecstasy, swaying softly side to side and singing along.La rédactricehad been just as into every previous tune in a set that included “Tous Les Cris Les SOS” by Daniel Balavoine, “Bonnie and Clyde” by Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg, Indochine’s “L’avanturier,” and “Lettre à France” by Polnareff. Alongside Roitfeld sat the Long Island hip-hop artist Lil Peep. He looked completely mystified.Yes, this collection featured plenty of U.S. elements—Western fringed shirts and a U.S. flag jumper and more besides. That, though, was more of a side dish: Today Olivier Rousteing was making like Polnareff—his was a wistful love letter to France.Why? Well shortly around the time of the recent French presidential election, Rousteing appeared on a French TV panel show calledC à vouson which he declared his support for Emmanuel Macron. Afterwards he received a comment on his Instagram (now up to 4.6 million followers) from someone congratulating him on speaking French so well. “He said, ‘Oh, you so speak so well French.’ But I am French! And I was like, ‘Wow I think people think that I am an American now.’ ”Thus in this collection Rousteing etched his Frenchness in Balmain’s florid couture cursive. He translated Marinière Breton stripes so beloved of Gainsbourg into monochrome, then Balmain-ized them still further but translating them into glittering sequined jackets. He accented these stripes with a nautical anchor logo, sometimes delivered in crystal. There were also some gently loving homages to canonical chapters of French fashion: Chanel-esque jacketspour les hommes; high-jacketed tuxedos à la Mugler; a spot of Safari—and even a recurring glasses style—that whispered of Yves Saint Laurent.The lace, beading, and embroidery work on women’s dresses and men’s jackets was both exact and extravagant. Yet sprinkled within the sparkle were looks like a black leather biker worn over a long fine neutral toned knit, black jeans, and boots: very much Rousteing’s own day-to-day wear. He wanted to reflect his own dress in this collection, he said.Rousteing came out for his bow in a monochrome Marinière-striped cardigan—the only way he could have sent his message more clearly would have been to wrap a string of onions around his neck and wear a beret. However, as previously mentioned, there was an overt U.S.
element to this collection too; those flags, those hammered Western relief jackets, a stars-and-stripes biker, and a look of fringed probably-not buckskin over blue denim: Rousteing was being patriotic but not protectionist. Said he: “I have to say I’m more proud than ever of my country for what they did [in the election]. Because I do believe they gave the hope for the new generation and the generation after me. France in the ’80s was shining around the world, pushing boundaries. . . and today I am really believing in the country and how it can shine around the world again.”Roitfeld, meanwhile, was still feeling Rousteing-boosted an hour later at a Birkenstock presentation in the Tuileries. She said of the show—and the soundtrack—“We were almost dying you know! It was very strange to have a show in Paris with just French music. Because usually it is English music and this time they were big French titles. . . . So we were really out of control! It makes us in a good mood—it was smart of him to do this. It was fantastic.”TrèsBalmain,trèsRousteing,très Français. And you don’t have to be fluent in French to appreciate the va-va-voom of the clothes.
24 June 2017
These days, designers stand or fall as much by their conviction as by their talent. And when it comes toBalmain’sOlivier Rousteing, conviction is something he has never lacked. In our digital era, the designers who stand for something, aesthetically, culturally, and politically, are most often the ones who people develop the strongest affinity with. The global fashion-obsessed can spot a phony at 20 paces—or, perhaps more accurately, a single swipe. Rousteing has always been a proud and vocal, not to mention a long-standing, advocate for diversity on the runways. Sometimes it has been in terms of shape (to him, curves have never been anything but good) or age (he created a whole campaign that revolved around Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Claudia Schiffer, who are still very much in their prime, thank you very much). Yet mostly, Rousteing’s push for diversity has been dedicated to celebrating all sorts of ethnicities. It’s a laudable move in an industry that’s still all too often sadly, lamentably, shockingly, Caucasian-centric in its representations of beauty. Balmain, despite the hyper glamour, is, at its heart, all about inclusivity.Yet there’s another kind of diversity Rousteing has started to explore, sparked by the burgeoning success of his menswear collections: a wider range of dressing than the super-tight, super-short, super-constructed look he made his name with. (If you’re a fan of that, though, fear not; there’s still plenty of it for Fall.) What dressing men has taught Rousteing is to loosen up, if not exactly lighten up: These were clothes embellished and embroidered to within an inch of their lives. Echoing the gods of rock theme of his menswear show this past January, Rousteing’s new idea was to take the humble tee and turn it into a thing of extravagance; garnished with gold chains, strewn with garnet beading or matte gold sequins, gleaming in tortoiseshell-print velvet, and oftentimes emblazoned with a wolf-pack motif—and that was just one dress.Elsewhere, Rousteing layered up, in shades of black, brown, and gold, with filmy panels of mohair knit, grommet-decorated suede miniskirts, supersize sleeveless shearling vest coats,looooongsuede or snakeskin legging boots, and tie-dye tees and dresses (the latter coming from the notion of ’90s grunge).
Designers have been revisiting the sonic landscape of Seattle in their collections soon after Pearl Jam picked up their first guitars, but Rousteing intuited that grunge was also about gender fluidity; who better defied rigid definitions of masculinity and femininity than Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain? Cobain might not have recognized Rousteing’s version of the musical movement that promoted him to eternal idol status, but he would have been open-minded about it. He was never anything but inclusive, too.
2 March 2017
Balmain then, Balmain now,Balmainnext—Olivier Rousteinghas taken the storied house through a radical transformation, to put it mildly, in his six years of being in charge, making changes that seem to have flashed by as fast as a kid scrolling through Instagram and tapping to like every third post. It had gotten to the point where Rousteing’s shows felt like a virtual orchestration of every pop cultural, zeigeist-y, This-Is-How-We’ll-All-Remember-This-Era facet of life today. There were Kim and Kanye and Kendall and Kris, rubbing up to a runway casting that was rare in the fashion world for its progressiveness and plurality—and all of ’em, even Mr. West, in unapologetically glamazon ensembles that felt larger than life, or at least any life that was being led off-camera. It was ballsy, for sure, in its clarity of strategic thinking and self belief, and it certainly drove the brand to the visibility it has today.Yet in Rousteing’s very early shows there was some street realness—or clothing more relatable in terms of its wearability, if you prefer—which had all but disappeared in the past few seasons, at least from the runway. Now he is eyeing that again. He’s in evolution mode. The new thing? What you’ll wear for day. “I think I want Balmain to feel fresher and younger,” Rousteing said in the house’s showroom the day after his menswear show. “We all know the glamour woman of the evening, but why don’t we bring a bit of couture to daily life? Even if we’re in the bubble of a dream, we have to show a different side.”Like so much of what Rousteing does, it is both shrewd and timely. The shrewdness is tied to the acquisition of Balmain by Mayhoola, which also owns Valentino. It’s evident that everyone chez Balmain now has their sights set on a bigger prize. Outnumbering the wall-to-wall teeny-tiny dresses weighed down with lavish embellishments and embroideries, were bold, bright bouclé check tweeds in red or green used for sculpted coatdresses inset with knit panels, nip-waisted, gilt-buttoned jackets, and tapered cropped pants. The house-classic blazers might be rendered in distressed, splattered cotton drill, with metal studs running up and down them.
Even the evening section, which Rousteing showed on the men’s runway, dismantled the typical armor like construction of the dresses in favor of what were essentially, he explained, supersized heavy-metal tees from the ’80s that had been spangled and sparkled—thisisBalmain, after all—to within an inch of their seams.As for the timeliness in shifting to a more accessible and inclusive daytime look. . . . For a designer who dubbed his runway models the Balmain Army, the recent tectonic political shifts, resulting in the women’s marches and demonstrations being held worldwide weren’t lost on Rousteing. “Everything that you see in the news, in the world around you, helps you create,” opined Rousteing on the shifting and expanding gender definitions and the importance of and need for diversity. “Fashion isn’t always the most open-minded—I think the music world is actually more so—but it can help, it can really push boundaries.”
24 January 2017
“The show must go on,” sang Freddie Mercury bombastically on the Balmain sound system—and boy, did this show go on. It was huge, immense, epic. And that’s not a complaint: This felt Chanel-scale. Not only because it was full of Pre-Fall looks (how great it is to see women and men together on the runway), but because this menswear collection was the most baroquely bananas blitzkrieg of densely different designs Olivier Rousteing has thus far mustered. He said the show was “a hymn to music meets fashion”; that, of course, he’d been mourning the passing of so many musical legends in 2016; and that he’d been thinking a lot—but not exclusively—about heavy metal.And then his mighty Slash solo of eye-bleed Balmainia began. The un-ironic overblown-ness of heavy metal iconography was re-created on jagged Balmain logo T-shirts worn under camo jackets and Rousteing-signature blazers heaped with couture-precise beadings of roaring big cats, ascending phoenixes, and curled serpents. There was a fabulously lavish set of gold knit pajamas worn over a beaded phoenix sweater. On several looks, including an extrovert aviator, Rousteing played with a multi-furled collar shape that had an orchid-like extravagance to it. The T-shirt prints were translated via bead, stone, and pin into the most outrageously ornate oversize tees perhaps ever seen on this planet, whose sheer insanity of richness reminded me simultaneously of Kanye West and King Henry VIII.There were many asides, including a beau geste of gold-studded woven houndstooth jackets in either monochrome or scarlet and white: Rousteing said they were a nod to the freedom in androgyny of Prince and George Michael—the sexiness of not caring. Then there were the almost Cardin-esque retro-futurist knits in cream or black, long and oversize, for rock star hermit moments kicking back on the jet. As looks kept coming, you could easily imagine the multimillionaire rock star ciphers who informed this collection wearing these clothes. They had a delirious grandeur that demanded to be in a Luc Besson movie.In attendance were some people who think Rousteing’s brand of sincere abundance is too ornate and heartfelt to be compatible with their vision of fashion as something that needs to be obtuse, maybe even a little morose, to be good: Their eyes were almost visibly rolling. Whatever, guys. Rousteing rocks, just like Freddie.
21 January 2017
In June, news broke that Mayhoola, the investment group linked to the Qatari royal family, boughtBalmain—just days before the fashion house’s menswear show in Paris. Mayhoola also acquired Valentino in 2012. And if that brand’s trajectory is anything to go by, Balmain and its creative director,Olivier Rousteing, have a big expansion in their future—with new stores opening around the world. Rousteing was backstage, talking up this turning point before today’s show and taking aim at his critics. “The Balmain Army has shed its armor," he said. “Whatever I do, even if I cover up my girls, people can say it's vulgar. But this is what it is. I think it's really chic, really French. It's Paris how I see it.”The first step towards growth was bumping up the number of runway looks this season: from 60 to 80. That’s not an insignificant change and as a result, the show dragged on for too long. Another key difference between his previous outings and this one was the absence of embroideries. For years elaborate beading, crystals, and threadwork was the Balmain way—before and after Rousteing’s arrival. It was as synonymous with the brand as sexy, body-con dresses. Not anymore. But that doesn't mean this was a minimal collection. The excesses were just of a different sort. There were cut-outs on bodices that revealed a good bit of underboob, fashion's new erogenous zone. Slits extended way up the front of both thighs. And provocatively placed sheer bits drew the eyes to the hips and derrière.This was still plenty body-conscious. But in place of glitzy embroideries, Rousteing let color do the talking. After the tawny desert tones and cargo greens of the opening numbers, he showed a jungle's worth of brights: in solids, mismatched snakeskin prints, and graphic stripes. There were also a lot of knits. And that seemed strategic: They're not only easier to wear than the label's famous bandage dresses, but also kinder on the wallet—two factors that could count for a lot as the label pushes into new territories. Lightening up worked in his favor on a Missoni-esque crocheted caftan and skirt.For evening, he proposed long split-seam dresses pavéd with multicolor crystals in Art Deco motifs and slinky chain mail dresses à la Versace. The former proved too difficult to walk in; they didn't pass the lightness test, but the chain mail numbers did. That's the kind of growth that the critics he was talking about backstage could believe in.
29 September 2016
Imagine waking up asOlivier Rousteingthis week: The luxe maison that he’s creatively steered for five years, attracting an elite group of celebs and an #army of followers, was sold just a few days ago to a Qatari sovereign wealth fund for roughly $550 million. Leaving aside any personal gain, his horizon is rich with possibility. The “new day” vibes he’s opted to project ontoBalmain’s Resort collection must now feel very real. “I obviously can’t say all the details, but I can say that we are going to expand Balmain to the world. It’s something I’m really happy for and I can’t wait,” he offered, between showing off a diaphanous tiered dress in mousseline printed to resemble rainbow moiré, and a body-con number in color-blocked macramé bordered with gold chain. Here’s betting that multihued crochet has never looked this hot.Several of these sunset-to-sunrise looks were teased out in the men’s runway show. But it can’t hurt to look closer. Some pieces cascaded (flared, fluid knits; dramatic ponchos; and quilted capes); others clung (cutout suiting inspired by bombshell swimwear, the signature corset bustier minidresses). If Rousteing reveled in vintage ’70s glam, he also couldn’t resist a nod to the ’90s, and this mashup conjured Bianca or Veruschka starring in a Busta Rhymes video by Hype Williams. Electric tweeds, striated beading, and vibrant striped woven knitwear and slickened lacing treatments showed how color can be controlled rather than psychedelic, just as the military coat in denim spliced with nude organza, and a parka that patched denim suede and python adhered to Rousteing’s guiding principle that denim need not be basic. A number of looks shown here have already been requested by celebrity stylists, which attests to the realm that Balmain occupies, no matter what the future holds. A world in which far more of us dress with such forceful élan is almost impossible to imagine. But he seems determined to make it so.
30 June 2016
As technology progresses in incrementally mind-bending bounds, old-fashioned ‘journalism’—or ‘content-creation’ as newfangleds foully term in—increasingly demands mastery (or at least competence) of more platforms than Elton John could ever imagine in his wildest dreams. This week in Paris, for instance, Vogue Runway started experimenting with broadcasting live from shows on Facebook. This critic was the guinea pig with the microphone, and this evening Olivier Rousteing kindly agreed to get involved. So before I left the venue, I had not only gleaned much more information from Rousteing than a typical post-show chateroo, but had simulcast it to an audience that, according to the comments pinging and ponging across the screen, were powerfully interested in Kim and Kanye but less so in the novelly organic crochet work we saw later in the collection, plus a hitherto unsuspected Rousteing-ian yen for Versace-challenging power color.Since then I’ve seen another show. Inhaled some supper. Had a coffee. Checked Instagram. Felt sadness about the news of Bill Cunningham’s passing. And now sit here in front the screen wondering, what can be delivered with words that is more affectingly visceral and insightful than images? I suppose the answer lies in reporting and hunch. Proximity and focused attention should deliver insight.Backstage among the models, these clothes—as I’ve perhaps written before—appear like some magnificent ceremonial attire of a luxurious and infinitely resourced potentate you never knew existed. ButBalmainis about more than bling: It takes balls to wear a sports suit of silver mesh. And you need guts to wear a minidress in cascades of iridescent beading that charts your bodily contours more closely than a medical checkup. Thus the whole Olivier ‘this is my army’ thing makes sense. He is a boy from Bordeaux who his predecessor at the house, Christophe Decarnin, reportedly recalls was consistently the first worker in and the last out when he moved there after his first job at Roberto Cavalli. And despite the power of his cheekbones and the mastery of his image-creation, I get the sense that the burning ambition and commitment that we see in Rousteing isn’t necessarily a product of his own self-confidence—but of his desire to deliver a wearable form of that greatest of 21st-century assets to others. This is cod-psychology, but imagine if you could bottle confidence. Deliver armor and declare power. That is what Rousteing gives his audience.
And now that he seems set to be turbocharged by investment, as infinitely turbocharged as his aesthetic—“my brand new day,” as he called it with tangible glee during that Facebook session—his empire will surely grow.
25 June 2016
Kris Jenner and Kanye West were in the front row atBalmaintoday. And Kim Kardashian West was on the runway. Well, not in the flesh. ButKendall Jennerand the rest of Olivier Rousteing’s supermodel crew were certainly doing their best impressions of her. There were the blonde extensions Kendall was sporting (Kim went platinum for Kanye’s fashion-show-slash-record-listening-party in New York last month). There were the head-to-toe monochrome neutrals (icy gray, pale pink, and beige) that Kim prefers to wear. And there were the padded bubble miniskirts, modeled, it seemed, off of Kim’s pneumatic curves. “Curves are really important today,” Rousteing said backstage, “because the women of today are really curvy, and they’re an inspiration, like hip-hop stars, reality stars.”Rousteing has often touted diversity on his runways, not just in terms of race or nationality, but also of age. Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell—50, 45, and 45, respectively—star in hisSpring ad campaign. He gets props for that. But if he’s really going to tackle the shape issue, he should put his money where his mouth is and enlist truly curvy girls next season. And we don’t mean Victoria’s Secret curves, we mean curvy curves. Kim curves. After all, as Kanye West put it afterward: “She’s the source; the whole collection is based on Kim.”The show’s corsetry and its metallic waist-shaper belts put the emphasis squarely on the rounded and uplifted derriere. Beyond that, Rousteing’s message for Fall was about the decorated body: pearl-encrusted and tasseled poitrines, lacy legs undulating with ruffles, rococo beaded embroideries on clingy velvet and sheer mesh, and hyper-fitted tailoring in tapestry silks. Like Kardashian West, Rousteing’s Balmain provokes love-it-or-hate-it reactions. There seemed to be more of the latter in the crowd assembled today. But, also like his famous muse, he isn’t giving an inch on his super-flashy vision. And why should he? Sales are up season over season, and the New York store is finally opening this Spring.
3 March 2016
Like 9/11 in New York, the November terrorist attacks were a defining moment forParisand the people who lived through them. The subject kept coming up last week at themenswear shows, and this morning at a Pre-Fall appointment,Balmain’sOlivier Rousteingacknowledged their impact on him and his new collection. “Paris is the City of Light, and I want to switch on the lights again,” he said, rattling off a list of influences that included Versailles and Madame de Pompadour, the official chief mistress of Louis XV. The rococo influences came across in lavish jacquards, fringed tassels, and an emphasis on pastel hues, but especially in Rousteing’s new use of the corset, which was layered over a long ruffled lace dress and built into a fitted jacket with hook-and-eye fastenings. Either way, it’s likely to appeal to the body-conscious Balmain girl. The exaggerated pannier hips on miniskirts might be a bit more of a leap for her, but not so unusual as to be intimidating.The other development was a strapless, décolletage-baring gown with a narrow skirt of densely beaded fringe. When it was suggested to Rousteing that it looked almost like couture, he hinted that the idea of a Balmain couture collection is not such a far-off possibility. The brand is definitely in expansion mode; anew children’s linewas announced today. Made to measure or not, there’s a high likelihood that the embellished dress in question will end up on a red carpet before awards season is over.
25 January 2016
Apologies to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, but this must be said. I disapprove of drop-crotch jacquard biker pants teamed with mink topcoats lavished with ersatz regalia, but I will defend (although, maybe not quite to the death)Olivier Rousteing’s right to design them. Rousteing is a wunderkind who you’d think has it all: a flawless complexionandthe wildly successful creative directorship ofBalmain. Oh, my Lord, and he’s still only 30 years old. But hey, you knew that already. He’s got every Kardashian on speed dial, and an Instagram profile that rivals all of them put together. Balmain sales? Off. The. Hook.Rousteing, however, is not entirely happy. We already had a hint of it in aNew Yorkerprofile last year. Tonight, preshow, he expanded. The catalyst was a question: He was asked whether, since he seems to be so much about love and community and family, his constant emphasis on “the Balmain army” was just a little aggressive? You know, the army thing? He had something to say, point-blank into a recording device: “Fashionis sometimes aggressive. I love, love, love fashion. For me, there is no aggressivity about army. I go through such a hard time in fashion, because sometimes some people don’t get who I am and what I do and my way of seeing things. So I think I build my Balmain army because when you build the Balmain world, sometimes you need soldiers more than models. Because I think sometimes fashion can be really rude—and try to destroy some designers. I went through so many things in my life and work in fashion. You know when you deal with bad critics—when you are working ’til 3:00 a.m. every night with your team—and they kill you? Fashion is a business too. I can understand criticism when it is negative or positive. But I like constructive criticism. And sometimes, it’s not.”He added: “Sometimes, they go really personal because of my age. Because I am not 50 and I did not show more than 10 shows. So sometimes, they keep thinking that I am the teenager of fashion. I grew up in the eyes of fashion and the eyes of the cameras, and sometimes it is really hard for me. I can understand if you don’t like my aesthetic: But don’t try to push me down. I am working so hard and my business is growing . . . I don’t understand when people say Balmain is not about reality—it might not be your reality, but it is a reality of today. And if you think in London some shops are already 99 percent sold out—I have the numbers.
So at least if you don’t respect my aesthetic, respect that I am a businessman.”
23 January 2016
Olivier Rousteing’sBalmainshow has become such a magnet for fans and paparazzi that the police shut down the street outside the entrance to his Hotel Intercontinental venue today. WithoutKim Kardashian WestandKanye Westin the front row, the scene inside was much more subdued than last season. Rousteing’s own social media fame may not be at the level of the Kardashian clan, but when it comes to designers, few can touch him. OnlyJeremy ScottandRiccardo Tiscicome close.His online following made him an ideal candidate for theH&M collaborationgoing on sale next month, a point Rousteing made explicit in his notes: “While this 15-minute presentation is designed to create strong impressions and reactions, it’s during the upcoming six months when the designs will make their mark. Social media’s embrace of Balmain will provide us with daily reminders of the excitement of those who have found a new way to bypass traditional gatekeepers.” Implicit inthatstatement was a riposte to his fashion-world detractors, of which there will likely be many after today’s show.Rousteing toned down the color this season to focus on shades of nude, but there was no equivalent dialing-back of the embellishments that have weighed down his recent collections. The macramé was as full-on as ever, and often in crystals or beads, and the tiered ruffles were even more flamboyant than last season’s silk plissé. Those ruffles notwithstanding, the silhouette was super clingy, loaded with cutouts and sheer paneling, and cinched with waist trainer–size belts. Joan Smalls slithered down the runway in short, stretchy green suede, the show’s best look, but the restrictive, tight-fitting tube skirts gave other models problems.As excessive as it all came off at today’s show, these clothes look great in pictures. Rousteing’s macramé really resonates on a tiny iPhone screen; the proof is in the Spring ’16 outfitsKendall JennerandGigi Hadidwore last night on the town in Paris. #BalmainBooties and #BalmainBeauties temporarily replaced #BalmainArmy as Rousteing’s hashtag du jour. Who needs gatekeepers? The guy’s going to sell millions at H&M.
1 October 2015
In between his men's show two Saturdays ago and today, Olivier Rousteing was in London working on the campaign for his Balmain x H&M collection. He was still on a high this morning when he swept into the showroom to present his Resort offering. But it's not just the collaboration with the fast-fashion giant he's excited about. There's a New York Balmain store set to open in late 2015, and with sales rising, the brand is eyeing locations farther flung, like L.A.; Doha, Qatar; Dubai; and China.The Resort lineup will look at once familiar and fresh to his growing global audience. Knitted suede dresses are lower-key, neutral-colored updates of colorful braided styles that first appeared on his Fall '14 runway. Not unlike his recent menswear collection, a good part of his new womenswear was rendered in earthy tones. The lace-front jumpsuit and dress looked like callbacks to Yves Saint Laurent's famous Saharienne. Elsewhere, he tried new things, like a graphic lace in the shape of coral branches that appeared on a strapless dress and fitted separates. Even more unexpected: the tiers of frills on a floor-length dress that almost qualified as romantic, and other ruffles that swished and spiraled down palazzo pants. Rousteing has been experimenting with flou lately, with somewhat mixed results. Fall's palazzos were a bit challenging. The ruffled ones here looked surprisingly right paired with a tough-chick, zip-front black leather bustier.
6 July 2015
"That's my first menswear show," said Olivier Rousteing afterward: "And to tell you the truth, the first question that I had—more than, 'What am I going to do as a story?'—was, 'What is the show that I want to remember in five years? What is the Balmain man?' And these guys are exactly like who I am—they are discovering the world, traveling as anaventurier, trying to find treasures … being a strong man discovering the world."The journey metaphor has eclipsed even that hardy stalwart Wes Anderson to become the most-cited show spiel of the Spring '16 menswear season. In Balmain's case, though, it seemed apposite. Rousteing has taken Balmain very far very fast, and he continues to gain momentum. His youth, his evident relish for the road he finds himself on, and his delightful openness would make him a marvelous protagonist for a fashion-set bildungsroman.For his debut men's show, Rousteing didn't tread softly but strode boldly—opting for that Ralph classic of a runway theme, Safari. But this wasn't just Balmain in khaki. For while this house has made heavy embellishment and an almost sickly richness its bread and butter, there was a lightness of touch in the way Rousteing reacclimatized it today. Desert boots were transformed into sandals by the removal of tongue and toe. Drill combat pants were upgraded with a drop crotch and cosmetically hanging suspenders; the house's Fabergé lush military braiding was reissued in a jute-ish organic twine.Obviously this was not an achingly literal suite of safari attire: The attractive caramel bikers in thickly woven leather ribbon, the black leather combats, and the Balmain-resident jewel-speckled golden chain tank top would not get you far in the field. But then, who actually goes on safari? When Union Jack flags on track pants and sweaters appeared, it could almost have been a maximalist nod to colonialist tropes: Rider Haggard does Nikki Beach. And when the body of a jacket is of tiger-print pony skin and its arm features an embroidered face of a lion, one suspects irony. Absolutely without it, the superlatively safari-cool backpacks in perforated suede, canvas, and nubuck that these Balmain explorers carried were up among the lushest, most straightforwardly desirable runway accessories of the season.When menswear shows feature womenswear looks—here it was Resort—the menswear editor's standard move is to check Instagram as they pass.
But Rousteing insisted the inclusion of those looks, most of them dresses as tight as his men's pants were baggy, was a key part of this men's universe. He said: "Forty percent of the business of Balmain is the menswear. So I think it was important to do my first show, and at the same time have my girls, which is really an important part of the business, and connect them together. I think it is really interesting because at a lot of the brands, the men and the women are really different. My Balmain men and my Balmain women are really synchronized and I'm really happy with that."Five years down the line, Rousteing should be able to look back at his first menswear show with a rosy glow of fond remembrance. As a contemporary Balmain proposition, all it really lacked was Kimye in the front row—but blame Glastonbury for that.
27 June 2015
Olivier Rousteing, child of the '90s, was looking back at Paris in the '70s this season. The era has a tight hold on designers at the moment. It might have something to do with the dueling YSL biopics released last year: The one that starred Gaspard Ulliel as a particularly dissipated Saint Laurent was pretty intoxicating. Rousteing mentioned YSL's muse, Loulou de la Falaise, backstage, and he plucked prints from the Balmain archives from the period. The way he sees it, it was a particularly exotic time in Paris, full of exuberantly hued clothes. And it got his motor running.On the runway this afternoon, violet, yellow, green, and black were color-blocked on jersey knit separates; orange and fuchsia came together on a wraparound blazer and enormous pleated palazzo pants; and a red and blue beaded fringe skirt was topped by an electric yellow belt. Like we said, exuberant! Rousteing applied the same more-is-more attitude to his silhouettes, which is where he ran into a serious snag. With good old Yves, there was an unmistakable lightness to the clothes. Here, the high-waisted flares, especially the plissé versions topped with extra-wide belts, tended to drown the supermodel bodies beneath them. Throw a duster coat on over the whole shebang and you'd never know there was a Victoria's Secret Angel lurking underneath all the layers.For the most part, Rousteing has done away with the embroidery that was the house signature when he arrived, but there hasn't been the corresponding lightening up of the clothes that you'd expect. There were exceptions to that rule: a body-con dress in stretchy lace, a tailored velvet dress with a spill of ruffles below the waist, a minidress in color-blocked beaded fringe. Despite their finery, they had a slip-on-and-go simplicity that will make them popular on the party circuit. It's no surprise that, at the dinner Rousteing threw at Lapérouse late this evening, Balmain frocks outnumbered Balmain flares 10-to-1.For Tim Blanks' take on Balmain, watch this video.
5 March 2015
Olivier Rousteing may have a Balmain army, as he likes to say on his very active Instagram account, but with a new store bowing in London's Mayfair next week and a shop in Soho expected to open in New York before the end of 2015, it's one he has to keep building. "You can't put Balmain in a box," he said amid the bustle of his showroom. With an eye to expanding his customer base, he touched on something new in his four-year stint at the house: flowers.Rousteing inherited a label known for hard-edged glamour—emphasis on hard. Over time, he's played up the glam side of things, the disco knits from Spring being the most recent example. For Pre-Fall, his floral prints in hothouse shades of red and ultraviolet had a louche, overgrown quality. Fluid, generously cut flares and backless halter-neck tops made you think of Jerry Hall and Guy Bourdin, while a fitted blazer in the red version of the print and a matching draped silk skirt seemed destined to be a hit with the street-style crowd. The news was the softness. See the pleated jumpsuits cinched with wide belts high on the waist (he mentioned Madame Grès), the slouchy black velvet evening pj's, and an oversize cashmere coat that wrapped and belted like a robe. With the '70s trending everywhere, Balmain is in good company, but that's not to say Rousteing is following. The collection looked very much like him, with rich touches such as long fringes of beads and gold-dipped pleats. We expect him to continue down this path on his Fall runway in March.
26 January 2015
At his New Year's Eve party in Dubai, Olivier Rousteing threw Kendall Jenner into the sea—even though she was wearing the trousers she'd recently been shot in for U.S.Vogue. Rousteing recounts: "She said, 'But babe, they're Balmain!' I said, 'Yes, but I am the designer, so I can do whatever I want.'" This snippet might seem tangential to a menswear review, but the 28-year-old Rousteing's dedication to big-budget debauchery is, he reasons, as good a way of researching his market as any.So what do Rousteing's male party people desire for Fall '15? Going by the evidence of this collection, they are hoping to resemble louche, skateboarding sea captains with a penchant for sparkle. Naval peacoats and greatcoats trimmed with gold frogging and oversize ersatz roaring-lion heraldry were layered over judo-belted velvet waistcoats. Trousers were either tight bikers—knit and leather—or supersize. The shoes were Balmain does Vans, in leather, sometimes gold, buckled, tasseled, or quilted. A green velvet blazer-facade jumpsuit was marvelously wrong, maximal androgynous. There were, of course, several jackets studded with crystal. No head was left un-beanied. Rousteing is confidently negotiating a fine line between extravagance and vulgarity. The Methuselah-drinking man who will want these pieces will need to be equally sure of himself to wear them well.
22 January 2015
Balmain's Olivier Rousteing said his starting point this season was last season's after-party. Scroll back through the months and you'll recall Rihanna, a sheer mesh top, and a much-liked Instagram pic. "Let's free the nipple, you know what I mean?" he said backstage. As it turns out, there were no exposed nipples here, but there was a lot of skin and no shortage of transparencies—from the plastic inset on the hem of a mini, to the plissé mousseline of swishy flares, to the sheer nylon knits that have been popular on other runways as well. But for a show that was about "pushing the boundaries of sex," as Rousteing bluntly put it, it didn't always read as sexy. The issue, in most cases, was the fabric. As eye-catching as allover crystals can be, they're hard to slink in—harder still, we imagine, to sit down in. And the same goes for Rousteing's leather. It was most convincing in small portions, like the striped bandeau worn with belted, high-waisted pants. When he balanced his instinct for embellishment with simplicity, things started to click—see the draped white tee tucked into a pencil skirt made from a Mondrian-ish grid of intersecting crystals. But in the end, this collection was at its best when Rousteing was thinking streamlined (a black bandage dress with cutouts that bisected the midriff) or sensual (Joan Smalls' strappy, plunge-front dress and sheer pants in fiery red).
25 September 2014
Olivier Rousteing found a recent trip to Los Angeles endlessly inspiring. Not necessarily the landscape or the architecture, both of which are gorgeous enough, but the people and what he described as their generosity and playfulness. In L.A., he said, "they embrace fashion, not like in Paris, where they're in fashion, so they run away from it." Rousteing used the experience as a jumping-off point for his Resort collection, which blended the globalism of his Fall show for Balmain with a seventies vibe.The season's key item was the poncho, the outerwear of choice for all things wild and free. Rousteing's came lavishly beaded in Native American motifs, or more low-key in sweatshirt fleece. If embracing different cultures and mixing ethnicities are important messages for the designer, diversifying the price point is essential for the company. That's one reason you'll find a big emphasis here on knits. Especially fab were a pair of graphic black-and-white chevron-stripe high-waisted flares worn with a snug sleeveless shell. Stretchy knit lace separates were as body-con as anything Rousteing has done, but more covered up.Discretion will never be the Balmain way, but hemlines are getting longer, and Rousteing seems genuinely jazzed about the prospect of his gals wearing their leather slipdresses over leather pants. It remains to be seen if they'll go along for the ride, but it was satisfying to see the designer confidently stretching the boundaries of the brand.
6 July 2014
The athlete-as-superstar message could not be any stronger than it is right now, two weeks into the World Cup. "You feel it, right?" said Balmain's Olivier Rousteing during a concise appointment-only show of his Spring collection. But if the designer was thinking ahead to the players who might eventually sport one of his tricked-out Perfectos or graphic bomber jackets, he certainly steered clear of a soccer-derivative theme. As he described it, the offering was "more me than ever," even while drawing inspiration from seventies-era skiers and race car drivers. Rousteing has found his comfort zone with a range that favors streetwear over suiting.As with his women's collection, the silhouettes here were body conscious—and sweatpants and sweat-blazers don't usually fit this well without a lot of tailoring. The embellished jackets covered in elaborate Navajo patterning required three weeks' worth of workmanship. All that beading and leather weaving amounts to an irresistible showpiece for conspicuous consumers; but really, it also represents Balmain's history of savoir faire. And Rousteing is not above paying respect; the number 44 stood out from the crest of a blazer, signifying the house's longtime address on rue François I. He also mentioned his respect for Jean-Claude Killy, a three-time Olympic gold medalist at the 1968 Grenoble Games; apparently, the designer conceived his open-toe sport boots with the ski champion in mind.The testosterone-fueled vibe, meanwhile, was meant to feel as American as it did French, thus aiming the collection squarely at the music performers and athletes who help maintain Balmain's street cred—although Rousteing's own Q score is likely quite high. It's funny how the model in the photos bears an uncanny resemblance to the designer, which may or may not have been intentional. Either way, wearing Balmain is an exercise in ego flexing.
25 June 2014
"Welcome to my jungle," Olivier Rousteing pronounced backstage, declaring this fearless mash-up of safari chic and hip-hop style to be his most personal collection ever. "I'm French, I'm black, and I'm proud to be at Balmain, but this is a message of freedom and globalism," he said. Rousteing's new Fall show for Balmain continued in the groove of his pre-collection, which marked a departure from the glitz of his previous outings. In January he was talking about a more all-inclusive Balmain—one that embraces different ethnicities and cultures, and is reflective of his latest campaign face and new friend, Rihanna. Riri was supposed to be the guest of honor in his front row today, but she was waylaid by Paris traffic. Even without her, though, Rousteing's new message was hard to miss. From here on out, he'd be doing things his way.So, the baby pink and sky blue pied-de-poule of last season was out. In its place were cargo jackets and pants, leopard spots and zebra stripes, leather latticed with silk cord and gold chain, oversize motorcycle jackets, and electric pops of red and yellow lamb's fur, all showed on one of the most diverse castings of the season. Bare skin has been a big thing at Balmain since the house was revived in the mid-aughts, but Rousteing made a conscious break with that here. "In 2014, you can be sexy without exposing two meters of legs," he said. Sometimes that meant his layered looks erred on the heavy side—but that's nothing that Rousteing and Rihanna can't iron out before her next photo op.
26 February 2014
A more all-inclusive Balmain. That was the takeaway from Olivier Rousteing's Pre-Fall collection. Not only in terms of dollar signs—although he is adding cotton sportswear separates to the lineup and making new forays into knitwear to bring the high prices down—but also in terms of whom it's made for and who's buying it. "Sometimes fashion is a bit close-minded," he said at his showroom. "I'm black, and I want to push [the idea] that Balmain is for different cultures, different ethnicities. It's for all the girls in the world."To get his message across, Rousteing looked to boundary-crossing photographer Peter Beard, especially the pictures he took of a young Iman in Africa. The collection blended the zebra and leopard prints Rousteing found in the Balmain archives and safari-inspired Saharan jackets with hip-hop chic crop tops and track pants. "That's me, my generation," he said, pointing to the lattermost pieces and alluding to his recent affiliation with Rihanna, who stars in the label's Spring campaign.The 28-year-old designer has done a lot of growing up over his three years at the helm of Balmain, but he's only really coming into his own now, a point he made literally clear by those track pants. They're borrowed from his men's line, and they're what he wears on a day-to-day basis. "Girls are always asking me what they are in my Instagram pictures," Rousteing reasoned of their inclusion among his women's offerings. Like those pants, the variety of sweaters here proved he has a real affinity for everyday cool.But of course, Balmain wouldn't be Balmain without party clothes. The designer, who does some nightclubbing of his own, confirmed that Beard's playboying ways also factored into his appreciation of him. Rousteing's freshest idea in this department was a long-sleeved leather tee tied high at the waist above a little mini—a good fit for a woman like RiRi.
19 January 2014
Before Inez or Vinoodh, Mert or Marcus, Mario or Mario, Peter Beard was the photographer snapping by day and living fabulously by night. A recent monograph on his work has thrust him back into the public eye, but it's his life story as much as his oeuvre that spoke to Balmain's Olivier Rousteing. "A man who goes to Africa who discovers the culture and goes back to America to be glamorous at Studio 54!" he marveled at a presentation in his offices.What Rousteing appreciated was the mix of cultures Beard represented: the adventurer looking into the heart of East Africa (and finding Iman there, for good measure), bringing with him an East Coast American culture of smart-dressing prep. "Today it's all about the balance, the mix," Rousteing said. Beard was the Balmain man before the Balmain man.In homage to Beard, Rousteing worked a safari theme. The collection arrived in tones of green, khaki, and camel, and a more-than-fair amount of exotic animal prints from leopard to zebra. That in itself balanced the realistic with the extravagant. Leather jackets and drop-crotch jodhpur trousers in olive drab have staple potential; printed leopard Perfecto jackets in ponyskin and slip-on sneakers and evening shoes to match were anti-camouflage.It all amounted to an expansion of the Balmain world. Print is new; a universe without denim front and center is new. The whole gamut of the collection was retrofitted to the theme, from the highest end (paillette-encrusted jackets in woven cord in an attempt to suggest traditional African weaving techniques) to T-shirts. Rousteing insisted that it merely represented his new direction—he's remaking Balmain: "It's being more myself; my music, my style, my generation," he said. His customers, especially his men's customers, who are more loyal and less fashion fickle than his women's, should support him. The arguments in his favor include the celebrities he's successfully courted to the brand (including Rihanna, star of his new campaign) and the opening of the new Balmain boutique in New York's Soho, planned to open in summer 2014.
15 January 2014
Overalls at Balmain? Two years ago, when Olivier Rousteing stepped into his creative director role, it was bling, baby, bling. But after a Fall show that often landed on the wrong side of audacious, Rousteing is reconsidering the house's signature intense beading. "I wanted to explore something casual and sporty," he shared backstage. "It's less evening and more real. It's more me."Cue Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" on the soundtrack and the first look out—a cardigan, of all things, belted over a ruffled skirt that fell all the way to the knees. True, it was black leather, but a skirt that grazes the models' knees qualifies as headline news at Balmain. And there was more where that came from, including quilted bombers, sweatshirts, and baseball tees.We're not saying that Rousteing gave up entirely on glitz. Not at all. The silhouettes were more relaxed than usual, but there was still plenty happening on the surface of things. For Spring, he likes pied-de-poule in black and white and Vichy prints in baby blue or pink, accented with necklaces and wrestler's belts. Denim got the deluxe treatment, quilted and trimmed in chunky gold chain, or reproduced in a silk print. Crystals came in at the end, but because they're so familiar at Balmain, they felt predictable. Best in show was a pair of those overalls fitted all the way up above the bust in glossy black leather.
25 September 2013
Balmain's showroom today was thick with buyers and models showing off the skinny jeans, second-skin tees, and body-worshipping minidresses that the French label is known for. But designer Olivier Rousteing was busy pulling clothes off the racks with not just a new silhouette but also a different sensibility. The houndstooth tweed overalls were the biggest surprise, their boyish slouch summing up the relaxed new vibe Rousteing was going for."I always love the dream, the fantasy, but at the end of the day, reality is important," he said. "As a designer, you need to push yourself. After five seasons, I wanted to go to another story." He's got the party girl hooked, in other words, but what about when she's not partying? In addition to those overalls (guaranteed crowd-pleasers, considering salopettes are trending with the street-style set), his other propositions included dentelle button-downs tucked into pleated menswear trousers barely clinging to the models' hipbones, oversize bombers with confectionery embellishments, and, in a first for the brand, flat boots. In quilted black leather and metallic toe caps, natch.Maybe the sensibility wasn't that different after all. Those teddy bombers hardly lacked for embroideries, and neither, for that matter, did a denim minidress with a bodice quilted in a Vichy check, or a pair of tiny little frocks with ballerina-esque tutu skirts. In the end, though, it was the off-duty ease of those overalls that made the collection a winner.
30 June 2013
Serge Gainsbourg is the renewable resource of French menswear, an ever-charged battery of inspiration. For Spring, Olivier Rousteing availed himself of the volts. He loved Gainsbourg's shuffling way with a dancer's shoe, the thrown-on jacket, the essential Frenchness of it all.But source material mutates in the making. The essential elegance of the slip-on ballerino flats Rousteing designed was undeniable. (For a 2013 touch, he threw monk straps on a few.) And nautical details likemarinièrestripes and sailors' appliquéd badges remained, in homage to one of Gainsbourg's preferred playgrounds, Saint-Tropez. But the main thrust of the collection came from the clash of workers' overalls and mechanics' jumpsuits worn with tweed jackets that had a whiff of vintage Chanel. Only Coco never wove hers with metal chains the size of bike locks, or, for that matter, appliquéd denim on denim to create houndstooth motifs. Whatever the original inspirations, the final product was squarely Rousteing's. "It's moreme," he said, than any men's collection he's done.
26 June 2013
Olivier Rousteing name-checked Paul Poiret and Christian Lacroix in addition to his label's founder, Pierre Balmain, today. Put them all together and you still wouldn't match the irrepressible exuberance of this young designer. Backstage he was asked if the hip-high suede boots the models wore (he called themcuissardes) were hard to put on, and he replied, "No, it's fine. At Balmain, everything is fine." The point being, Rousteing makes blingy clothes designed for going out and having a good time; if you come looking for pantsuits or a winter coat, you've got the wrong idea.This season, even more than in the past, Rousteing embraced extremes of silhouette. Imagine Klaus Nomi performing behind David Bowie onSNLin 1979, mixed withOne Thousand and One Nights, and you begin to get the picture. Shoulders were pronounced, so were hips, and sleeves flared out at the elbows before tapering to the wrists, the yin-for-yang complement to the hourglass silhouettes. Embellishments, meanwhile, were utterly next level: Leather came quilted and embroidered with diamond-shape crystals, or was cut into narrow strips and elaborately woven to resemble tweed. Some of the tailoring looked as stiff as upholstery—not even 5'11" Karlie Kloss could pull off the square-back blazer she wore over another belted jacket—but Rousteing balanced things out with draped silk charmeuse miniskirts and metallic moiré harem pants. Fuzzy angora knits, cut into a dropped-lapel blazer or one-sleeved sweaters, softened the picture further. But, like we said, these aren't clothes made for lounging. Led Zeppelin on the soundtrack cued the vibe. Where Rousteing's girl goes, the party follows.
27 February 2013
"Elegance is refusal," Diana Vreeland famously said. The legendary editor was the inspiration behind Balmain's latest collection, but in the end it channeled a lesser-known remark of Vreeland's: "Extravagance is my only reality." Under Olivier Rousteing, Balmain has re-embraced its couture opulence. For a sales-focused pre-fall offering, this one sure was loaded with details. There were minidresses pieced together from mosaics of brown leather lacquered to look like the Oriental screens in Vreeland's office; double-breasted blazers worn without pants that were cut from multicolor, metallic-shot jacquards; chiffon halter dresses in a burnished bamboo print; and more velvet, suede, and lamé than the editrix could wear in a year.Rousteing made it all look modern with Balmain's trademark, sky-high hemlines and the boxy, masculine cut of his jackets. This time around the tailoring had a distinct Japanese look with obi belts, wrap closures, and sculptural, rounded sleeves. Pants could be second-skin tight, or loose and flowing in a directional sarouel style, which felt more Arabic. "I love to mix cultures—that's my thing," Rousteing said. His customers clearly feel likewise: It was the busiest showroom we've seen since pre-fall appointments started two months ago.
20 January 2013
The studio soundtrack at Balmain these past few weeks has been David Bowie's "China Girl." There's the collection in a nutshell. "Asian fusion. East and West," Olivier Rousteing said at his presentation today.The use of that is twofold. For one thing, riffing on non-Western modes of dress allowed Rousteing to completely change the Balmain silhouette. He made doing so one of his goals of the season, and to that end, created drop-crotchsarouelpants and side-fastening kimono tops; even the leather jackets, a Balmain best seller year-round, got looser and loucher. Buttons were mostly banished. His outerwear and even jackets now mostly wrap on the bias, fastened with judo belts and oversize, embroidered obis. Asian-inspired dragon beadwork put a glamorous spin on tuxedo jackets. The summa of handwork was a gilded jacket whose workmanship Rousteing compared to couture. It has analogues in the womenswear collection, but more and more hero products like these are making their way into menswear, thanks to demand from rock stars who come into Balmain's boutiques and request the women's versions in larger sizes to wear onstage. There's a shopper for whom flashy is the highest praise.But there are plenty of customers besides rock stars, and the question of who Balmain's customer is and what he wants is one Rousteing wisely keeps asking. On his travels around the world in the employ of the brand, he's learned a few things. "When you go to Asia, it's the young, young guys who are buying Balmain," he said. There's another reason to try the Eastern theme. If you can snare the new customer, you can broaden the base, and an investment in Asia is an investment for the long term. Will it work? Questions like these don't have immediate answers. Lowering the prices on Balmain's most entry-level product, as the label has done this season, may not hurt. But for extra insurance, there happens to be a suit made in the Chinese color of good luck and prosperity: red.
16 January 2013
Olivier Rousteing fell hard for Miami on a visit there earlier this year; the trip influenced his lively Resort collection. For Spring, he dug into the Latin theme, calling out Cuba as an inspiration backstage and using its black-and-white tile floors and wicker chairs as reference points. They rematerialized on his Balmain runway today as graphic harlequin prints in the spirit of Gianni Versace and as dresses painstakingly created from basket-woven raffia. Rousteing's other touchstone: the early-nineties heyday of Linda Evangelista and her fellow glamazons, working major shoulders and men's trousers with high waists for photographers like Peter Lindbergh and Steven Meisel.That era has become a major flash point this season, and it makes sense that it should resonate with Rousteing. At 27, he's too young to remember those days personally. Two decades later there's still a lot of power in those power suits, and there's absolutely no arguing with the persuasive appeal of a simple skin-baring black leather bandeau and miniskirt. What tripped him up here was twofold. To start, he could've shaved an inch or two off those shoulders—they would've read as more modern. And for another thing, the embellishment factor was a factor too high. Some of the dresses didn't look all that different from the Cuban chairs that inspired them.Rousteing's exuberance is hard to fault. But he was on to something with those simpler leather and denim pieces. A little less couture aspiration and a little more cool would be a good place to start next season.
26 September 2012
Olivier Rousteing has developed a bit of an America fixation. A year ago, at a presentation of his first collection for Balmain, he was talking about Las Vegas. When he was working on this Resort lineup, a trip to Miami made a big impression. You saw it not only in its South Beach colors (yellow, peach, and mint) and oversize Don Johnson proportions, but also in its Latin influences. "I'm mixed race, too," he said, "so it was beautiful to see the connection between Cuba and the U.S. there.""Fun, happiness, and hope" were the endearingly earnest Rousteing's talking points for Resort, and we'd say he nailed all three, without killing off the sexy edge that defined the Balmainia moment under his predecessor, Christophe Decarnin.The key silhouette here was an elongated blazer that buttoned well south of the navel and fell to about the hips, worn with loose, pleated, and cuffed trousers. There was no such oversizing with the dresses, though, which remained as mini as mini gets. Rousteing is really getting behind a silhouette with a folded-over skirt construction that creates a flaring volume at the sides of the thighs. He also gets this season's prize for novelty for a dress made from basket-weave raffia.
1 July 2012
"It's out from the jeans now." Fighting words. Olivier Rousteing inherited a house built on denim. Over the course of a few seasons at the helm, he's worked to steer it in a new direction. For his Spring menswear, he's making his biggest break yet. At the label's showroom on Rue Francois 1er, there were, admittedly, articulated moto jeans lining the racks. But what Rousteing was far more eager to spotlight were the new, Saharienne pieces inspired by a recent trip to Miami, where he took in the city's expat Cuban culture. That set him thinking more broadly about the alternative to traditional city dressing and into safari wear—"capturing the lion in the jungle," so to speak.The house-favorite military gear took easily to its new inspiration. It's tweaked rather than overturned: The new jacket of the season is the Spencer, short-sleeved and rolled, with epaulets and pleated pockets in jungle-going khaki, the new top a black leather camp shirt, the new pièce de résistance, a hand-woven raffia jacket, inspired by café seats in Havana. Tailoring is a new point of focus. "I would like to open Balmain to another customer, too," Rousteing said, adding suiting details to nontraditional pieces (like the silk lapels that sprung from a Perfecto jacket) and creating more traditional tailored pieces: longer, rounder-shouldered jackets with a vintage feel ("like your granddad's," Rousteing said) and two new pant silhouettes, one with deep double pleats, one in a jodhpur shape. The pants didn't, you had to admit, quite work. It could be that he needs a matter of time to develop them, or it could be that they're a misstep—but, if you will, a misstep in the right direction. Rousteing deserves credit for personalizing—even at the risk of jeopardizing—Balmain's steady business, a sacred (cash) cow. He's been an able steward so far. The lion hunt continues.
27 June 2012
About a third of the way through the Balmain show, Karlie Kloss strutted out in an outfit that made the women in Olivier Rousteing's crowd sit up and take notice. "That's how I'd like to look tonight," they were thinking about an off-white crewneck sweater tucked into a pair of low-slung velvet pants embroidered Fabergé egg-style in thousands of pearls and crystals. Couture, but effortless.Rousteing is in his second runway season for Balmain, and he's on his way to establishing a promising new direction for the house—one that retains the elaborately hand-worked pieces the label is known for but is imbued with a fresher, easier spirit. The first look out, a leather sweatshirt embellished with a needlepoint cameo that was worn over a snap-front top and simple black pants, captured the new vibe, as did a bottle green leather camp shirt worn with matching embossed velvet flares.The Balmain jacket has been redesigned by Rousteing. It's as boxy and oversize now as it was shrunken then; from the back, it's almost a perfect square. To cut their masculine look, he paired the jackets with fluid velvet pants, either dévoré or stamped in the Fabergé patterns.That's not to say there isn't room for improvement here. The least thrilling part of the collection was a series of stretchy dresses embroidered all over in pearls and crystals. They were predictable compared to those high-low mixes.
29 February 2012
Olivier Rousteing traded Las Vegas for St. Petersburg and Nudie suits for Fabergé eggs. Balmainiacs will recognize some elements of his new pre-fall collection—the Perfecto encrusted with pearls and crystals, the long-sleeve minidress with the famous strong shoulders—but Rousteing is determined to redefine the house codes.To start, he looked to czarist Russia. There's nothing scruffy about the Imperial Palace, and there's nothing scruffy about the new Balmain look, either. Sure, he showed plenty of jeans, but in place of holes he printed them with wallpaper florals and tea-dyed them for a lived-in look. He's also feeling for oversize, which is not something you could ever ascribe to his predecessor, Christophe Decarnin. Blazers and bombers came in men's proportions, and he showed loose pajama pants in quilted silk or dévoré velvet."Comfy" was the word he used at an informal presentation at Balmain's offices. And believe it or not, comfy is connecting with buyers; the showroom looked as busy as ever. It helped that Rousteing keyed in to the bigger picture, re-creating Fabergé eggs as head-to-toe watercolor prints and adding pretty colors like blush pink and deep emerald green to his lineup. But the most important thing is that he hasn't forgotten about the sexy factor—the stretchy dévoré dress is proof of that.
22 January 2012
Slowly but surely, Olivier Rousteing is inching away from the house that Decarnin built. The young designer's second menswear collection for Balmain continued to squeeze the shred and scuz from the collection, taking it in a more refined direction. The progression is happening by degrees—according to Rousteing, by design—which is either savvy conservation of the favor the brand already curries, or a revelation that bikers and Byronic heroes share more sartorial ground than you might imagine. Maybe both. Rousteing chose the latter as his inspiration. He was thinking, he said, of the elegant officers of Russia's Imperial Army, mixed with a dash of Nureyev. Voilà! Soldierly double-breasted waistcoats and long cotton band-collar shirts.But in many pieces, Rousteing's troops meet their grittier friends, the flash-and-trash rock gods of old Balmain, in the middle. They can still wear the padded motorcycle jeans Decarnin developed as a signature piece, apparently, only they take theirs in red velvet and silk. And they'll wear the double-breasted officer's coats, which are also a label staple, only accented with passementerie, braided and beaded details taken from curtains and interiors—the sort that hung in the czar's palace.
18 January 2012
It was Olivier Rousteing's big moment at Balmain. The young designer, having worked under Christophe Decarnin for two years, assumed the design reins at the house after his former boss' sudden departure in February. Rousteing presented his Resort collection during the Couture shows in July, but this was his first time putting the clothes on the runway in front of the entire fashion world.Considering his tender age (he's just 25), and the stakes (Balmain became a relatively big business in its boom years), we'd say Rousteing fared fairly well. He has clearly absorbed the babes-in-beads look that Decarnin and his stylist Emmanuelle Alt made famous, but he sagely put his own spin on it. Despite the familiar skintight silhouettes and the short hems, the trash factor was gone.Still, elaborate embroideries remained the name of the game here. Rousteing looked to Nudie Cohn's rhinestone-covered Nudie suits and traditional toreador costumes for inspiration. "Mixing the tailoring of Mexico and the glamour of Vegas," was how he described his MO for Spring backstage. He also name-checked Oscar de la Renta, who preceded Decarnin, and Pierre Balmain himself, indicating, in so many words, that he'd like to bring a bit of class to this act.So there was a new softness to a wallpaper-floral motif rendered in pastel silk embroidery on an hourglass dress, one that was echoed in the baby blue and white print of the opening trousers. Ultimately, those pieces made up a small part of the collection, but they may prove the key to Rousteing's success. Despite what the business guys at Balmain are looking for, the crowd assembled today doesn't want a watered-down rehash of Decarnin's successes. They want a new kind of sizzle. Negotiating that divide will be Rousteing's big challenge going forward.
28 September 2011
If Olivier Rousteing had a case of the nerves before his first collection for Balmain hit the showroom, the scene at the company's Paris headquarters today likely fixed him right up. Buyers at every table busily wrote orders. Maybe you couldn't call it Balmainia, but it came pretty darn close. The 25-year-old knows the house formula—he worked under Christophe Decarnin for two years—and his Resort lineup is very much in the rock 'n' roll spirit that his former boss was known for.Elvis in Las Vegas was a reference point for an evening jacket beaded in red, navy, gold, and white and trimmed in gold chains, but the King could never fit himself into its super-narrow sleeves. Smokings and military-sharp blazers had similarly attenuated proportions; shoulders were strong but not "tennis ball"-big. Still, the silhouette wasn't always so demanding: Eagle-print jersey tees and track pants literally slouched off the body, and a matching bomber and running shorts look in the same Americana/biker girl motif had a chill sensibility—not that you'd want to work out in clothes with price tags like these. Under Rousteing, elaborate, couture-grade handwork will continue to be a calling card for Balmain, and the sun-bleached Native American embroidery covering a jacket, a miniskirt, and an itty-bitty dress will command big bucks. But he smartly made inroads on the lower end of the price spectrum, too. A newly launched bathing suit range will be an easy sell to fans of the label's sexy vibe.Can Rousteing generate the sort of excitement that Decarnin stirred up at the height of the label's popularity a couple of years ago? It'll take a runway show or two to tell for sure. In his favor is the fact that fashion already seems to be over its brief minimal phase. Another thing he has going for him: Like his predecessor, he cuts a mean jacket.
28 June 2011
The house of Balmain is in new hands, but fans of Christophe Decarnin's moto-roué look won't be disappointed by the first collection from his former assistant Olivier Rousteing. Whether Rousteing stages a farther departure from his boss' example in women's remains to be seen, but for menswear, he hewed close. Trim tux jackets (slightly longer than usual), paneled biker jeans, and leather jackets will always have a place here. New this season is a range of pieces in pastel: tees, scarves, and even those biker jeans now come in ice cream colors (lemon, mint, and orange), mottled to look sun-bleached. Also new: swimwear, printed denim (in an abstract feather pattern that will also figure in the women's Resort collection), and a boxy new jacket shape, shorter and shorn of its lapels.But all in all, this was a continuation, not a break. Maybe you could see the student stepping away from the teacher in the way he snipped off sleeves from jackets (tuxedo and denim), open-weave knits, and polos. Then again, maybe that's just a summertime concession; even the cool Balmainhommecan get hot. The luxe, at least, remained ever apparent; a motorcycle vest in full python saw to that. So did a shawl-collared jacket in croc, for the man who has everything but his own game preserve.
22 June 2011
The story that will inevitably linger about the Fall Balmain show is that its creative director, Christophe Decarnin, failed to show up. The designer is under doctor's orders to rest after being treated for an unconfirmed illness, alternately rumored to be depression or exhaustion. But there was news on the runway as well. Decarnin and his new stylist, Melanie Ward (who replaced Emmanuelle Alt after the latter was elevated to the editor in chief role atParis Vogue), traded the punk influences of last season for glam rock, swapping Sid's version of "My Way" for David Bowie's "Lady Grinning Soul" offAladdin Sane. Bowie's Thin White Duke was all over the Fall men's collections, but it was Ziggy Stardust in his spangled glory who seemed to be the inspiration behind today's crystal-encrusted jumpsuits. The all-in-ones were a first for Decarnin's Balmain, hard as that may be to believe given how thoroughly the designer has plumbed the seventies for ideas.There has been much speculation about the extent of Ward's involvement (she is best known for her work with the nineties fashion god Helmut Lang). Her influence perhaps accounted for the loosened-up silhouettes of the house's signature minidresses (this season painstakingly hand-embroidered with mosaics of mirrors and ribbons) as well as for the borrowed-from-the-boys proportions of bib-front tuxedo shirts. Decarnin kick-started the current craze for nineties-era boot-cut flares a year ago. The new pant is deeply cuffed and cropped below the knee and above a lace-up boot; what's more, it's not second-skin tight. When this collection hits the stores, some of the first pieces to go will be the metallic leather peaked-lapel blazers, one ice blue, the other yellow gold. They delivered the trademark house sizzle, but in a fresh, powerful way. And without all the embroidered glitz, they'll ring up quite a savings at the register. As questions swirl, it's a new day at Balmain.
2 March 2011
Christophe Decarnin likes to sayBalmainHomme isn't a collection; it's a wardrobe. That's a useful way to think about its offering, which reprises successes season after season, as well as adding some new tricks to the bag along the way. Like its sister label, Balmain Homme is fabulously—even a bit shockingly—expensive. But unlike Decarnin's women's collection, the menswear is more restrained. The military jackets that were such a sensation for the ladies have their analogues here in silver-buttoned peacoats. There's a big emphasis on outerwear in this Fall collection, including a raccoon-hooded parka and an enormous shearling coat. The brand's big splash came from its stretchy, paneled Biker jeans, which are here again, but so is a simpler, straight-leg model of Japanese extraction. Styled in piled-on layers, Decarnin's look can be very aggressive. But piece by piece, its simplicity is its strength. One fashion editor whispered that Balmain is his go-to for dressing "real guys," those who object to capital-F fashion, for shoots. That might raise the eyebrows of Balmainiac mademoiselles, but the label's expanding U.S. fan base won't be surprised. That's what they're buying it for, and amortized over time into cost-per-wear, they might even tell you it's a bargain.
19 January 2011
The sunny mood of the Milan collections? It was au revoir to all that on day two of Paris fashion week. A few hours after Balenciaga's teddy-boy girls strode out this morning, Christophe Decarnin was putting twenty-first-century proto-punks on his Balmain runway. They wore biker jackets studded and safety pinned to the hilt; tight, bleached jeans or shredded cut-offs; and holey T-shirts to match their torn fishnet stockings. "It's a look I've always liked," the designer said backstage. "I keep pictures of it all over my office."With his brocade pantsuits and gold leather mullet gowns, Decarnin went glam baroque last season. This collection felt more in keeping with his previous Spring show: plenty couture (someone had to attach those safety pins to that white leather bustier one by one, presumably), but with a seriously offhand result. The message on the soundtrack—first, Frank Sinatra crooning, then Sid Vicious croaking "My Way"—would seem to indicate that this is what Decarnin prefers doing. That single-mindedness always gives his clothes energy to burn, but the question will be: Is Balmainia still so strong that women will shell out the serious bucks that a crystal- and metal-studded jacket is going to cost, when the look is so DIY? (After all, she could, as one editor sharply put it, pick apart a Perfecto, re-stitch it, and save herself $25,000.) We'll have to wait and see.
29 September 2010
Sober, pared-down minimalism? Well, somebody has to kick against it, and there's no more likely a candidate to keep hot and sexy alive than Christophe Decarnin. This season, he's gone Baroque 'n' roll, with a Balmain outing pitched somewhere between Prince'sPurple Rainpomp and Louis XIV at Versailles. Gold, brocade, frock coats, Louis-heeled ribbon-laced boots, sequin and lamé dresses galore: Decarnin went for it.Clever move, on lots of levels. For one thing, shifting Balmain away from the distressedMASH-militaria of summer to a classier, dressier theme puts this notoriously expensive collection on a path where the value of the original can be clearly distinguished from the cheap knockoff. This show's highly elaborate, high-collared seventeenth-century cutaway coats and gilded jeans did that. From a cutting-expertise point of view, so did Decarnin's seventies/nineties tailored pantsuits, which showcased the return of the leg-lengthening, over-shoe flared pant. The idea, the designer said, came to him while looking at a seventies photo of a woman "in an impeccable Balmain couture menswear pantsuit," but the spirit was closer to the Tom Ford for Gucci look that is rising as part of the nineties redux theme of the season.Still, those gold-buttoned pinstripes (albeit with a gold Lurex stripe, in one case) were the closest this collection's ever likely to come to workwear. Really, what the Balmain woman's hooked on is the competitive evening opportunity to flash as much leg and bosom as possible. She'll be thrilled to see there's no wavering in that department. Decarnin's short and tight paillette-smothered dresses kept the faith with the big-shouldered silhouette he's made a signature for several seasons—actually, one too many. A less obvious choice (if that's not a contradiction, in this context) would be the other Balmain mainstay: the long-in-back, short-in-front lamé gown, which still puts everything satisfactorily on display, while registering winter's play on length.
3 March 2010
Christophe Decarnin is the man on whose glittery, highly padded shoulders rests the success of the whole of the mass market as it currently stands. It's a known phenomenon that the cost of a single one of his jackets ($9,000 or thereabouts) could pay for an entire wardrobe of Balmain knockoffs for ten teenage girls, but no matter: He is hot. His models are scorching. And if what he does is the opposite of intellectual, it's also so clever it's simultaneously fueling spending frenzies up-market and down-. In terms of the general sequins-for-day trend, Balmain's influence is visible almost every which way you care to look in a chain store.For Spring, Decarnin brought out another whammy of a no-brainer blockbuster: disco cavewoman goes to the front. His army of sizzling, sleek-limbed supergirls strode out with huge-shouldered, metal-epauletted military tailcoats. Their T-shirts were tattered; bullet belts were slung around artfully "destroyed," stained, and holed jeans or, yet more sensationally, minute, hypersexed, raggedy suede and leather loincloths (the term "skirt" hardly covers it). Patching together seventiesMAS*Hand early Versace chain-mailed goddess-dressing, the show moved from camouflage to sequined camouflage to patchworked gold-sequined camouflage without a flicker of irony or the slightest fear of treading on politically sensitive ground. Some schools of thought will condemn that outright. Others will argue, purely on taste grounds, that wearing a belt with bullets arranged in a flower pattern or a military shirt with shrapnel holes filled in with gold patches is a fashion misdemeanor worthy of ten days in the slammer. And yet, none of that is likely to have the slightest effect on the runaway success of this Balmain collection.
30 September 2009
Was it just coincidence that Christophe Decarnin showed his Balmain collection in the same room—the swimming pool at the Ritz—that Gianni Versace used for his couture spectaculars? There was certainly an almost Gianni-like gaggle of fans jostling outside, and a heated buzz of anticipation in the house for the man whose frank embrace of rock-chick bling, rounded "tennis ball"-shouldered jackets, and elaborate jeans have shot him to the position of No. 1 most copied designer in the space of two seasons. The choice of venue only added to the sense of expectation heaped on Decarnin's performance as fashion's latest appointed savior of good-time, high-sparkle, downright sexy dressing.Decarnin certainly proved he's the leader of the disco fever he has single-handedly triggered this season. He had the shortest, tightest body dresses witnessed anywhere: smothered in Swarovski crystal, flouncing up at the shoulder, tightly bound in satin drape or quilted, chain-wrapped black leather. The cult peaked-shoulder Balmain jacket was reiterated in force: same signature shape, now manifested as a leather biker as well as a tuxedo jacket, and often paired with new drapey harem pants or skinny jean-cut black trousers. Every look was thrust into deep-cuffed suede boots with a stack of silver buckles running up the side.All that probably threw on enough fuel to keep Balmain on fire for the next season, not just with trophy-hunting girls who can afford the red-hot prices but also with the knock-off merchants who will be laughing all the way to bank while making an easy killing with stick-on glitter and the minimum yardage of Lycra and fake leather. In that way, Decarnin deserves acknowledgement for keeping the wheels of fast fashion turning. Exactly how far it's going to go is open to question, though. By halfway through the show, Decarnin's looks—the jacket, pant, and drapey T-shirt; the minuscule dress; and the half-train gown—were already into heavy rotation. If he's really going to win a place as the Versace of tomorrow, he'll have to come up with more than that next season.
4 March 2009
If you're hot, don't stop! The buzz around Christophe Decarnin's Balmain is a smack in the eye for fashion doom-mongering. With vintage Madonna on the soundtrack, his Spring show—all bling and rock-chick fabulousness—gave the opening of Paris fashion week a shot of pure adrenalin. For a girl looking for an instant backstage pass, this is the wardrobe that will send her sailing past the heaviest security on sight.Drummer-boy Michael Jackson jackets with the frogging picked out in crystal, souped-up stonewashed jeans, bandage-wrap dresses, sequin-smothered sheaths, teeny tutus, teetering sky-high diamanté-and-stud sandals: Every after-party dream is answered here. It's the kind of shameless pop-bedazzled energy that won Gianni Versace a reputation for tackiness in the high eighties, but also took him to the top. In other words, yes, it's a cliché, but so well done only a true miserablist could fail to smile.The thing that separates Decarnin's Balmain from rehashed tat is the execution. The guy has Parisian couture skills up his sleeve—a super-skinny sleeve, finessed upwards into a brilliant new shoulder with a bump-peaked swagger on jackets and dresses. (The eighties never looked like that.) He's also got to be credited as the person who's set the wagons rolling on western (his fringed high-heel ankle boots were last season's most-hunted objects of footwear desire). Now he's following on with something in the same direction: A black suede gown with a rawhide train blazed a trail that copyists will be following overnight.
27 September 2008
"It's more hard rock and punk this season," said Christophe Decarnin backstage before the show. And as promised, Spring's haute hippie feathers, fringe, and tie-dye were replaced by an all-Billy Idol soundtrack and enough leopard-print chain mail, python-pattern denim, and crystal-embroidered lightning bolts to make you wonder if there was anything at all left on the shelves at Trash and Vaudeville. To be fair, Decarnin's creations are much finer than the East Village emporium's, but they appeal to a similar kind of chick, one with a killer body and an active nightlife.This designer doesn't put much stock in day clothes. In a word, his show was about legs. Bare legs. But there were a few cool looks that model types could pull off reasonably well during traditional business hours. They usually involved narrow-shouldered little jackets, loose cotton tanks or tees, and skinny tuxedo pants or jeans cropped a couple of inches above moccasin-fringe ankle boots. Dhoti pants were back again, this time in a substantial leather. Four seasons in, Decarnin is building a following: Earlier incarnations of those tricky dhotis could be spotted on a number of influential editors in the front row.
23 February 2008
"It's a mix of Native Americans and India," said Christophe Decarnin before the Balmain show. "It's also about freedom." Jumping headlong into the season's nouveau boho trend, he opened with a strapless dress, its bodice densely beaded and its long, flowing skirts rendered in a soft, pastel floral shot through with gold Lurex. From there, Decarnin wandered through ponchos, one with a beaded eagle emblazoned on the chest, as well as sequined smocks and mirrored mosaic suede vests worn with slouchy tees and flaring jeans. He carried on into more familiar body-con territory, though even his signature hourglass dresses got the hippie treatment. Barely grazing the models' bums, they came in tie-dye, a feather print, or beaded macramé. Evident throughout was the designer's unbridled affection for embellishment. Confronted with an unadorned surface, he'll add studs, fringe, or lacing—anything to make his girls sparkle after dark. As one editor put it, should Roberto Cavalli's clients need a fix now that he's gone all gentle on them, Decarnin just might be their new man.
29 September 2007
Christophe Decarnin struck this season's come-hither/don't-mess-with-me tone smack on the head. The temptress part of his mixed message came courtesy of the thigh-grazing dresses that have become a house motif since its relaunch a year ago; these are now more fitted through the waist, with the help of eighties-Alaïa cinching girdles. The tough-chic element came via silver armor embroidery at the neckline of a sequined number, metal coils at the shoulder of a short white frock, and a swooping cape of feathers that attached around the neck with a rope of shining crystals. Metal studs on suede platform booties completed the picture.Decarnin has made this collection a strictly after-dark affair, and his work has a decidedly more louche tone than the ultra-elegant one that was Pierre Balmain's signature. But he did chivalrously show some pants alongside all the minidresses and the strapless goddess styles with slits coursing up the thighs. His low-slung bumsters clung to every inch of the models' legs from their backsides on down to the mid-calf, where they flared out in big swooshes of fabric to the soles of their platforms. You couldn't call them practical, but they were certainly bristling with swaggering attitude.
24 February 2007
Since relaunching Balmain last season, designer Christophe Decarnin has scored his share of red-carpet coups—a freshly cropped Audrey Tautou in a short white number at the Cannes premiere ofThe DaVinci Codebeing the most notable. So it's no surprise that his focused sophomore effort concentrated primarily on abbreviated party frocks of the sort favored by young Hollywood. His olive, white, or black strapless, one-shoulder, and halter styles continued to inch up the legs, and he also laid on the hardware for spring. Gold chains dripped from one shift, brass studs decorated chain-mail hems, and coils of silver sequins snaked around the neck. "I was going for an armor look," said the designer, whose predilection for such materials may have come from a late-nineties stint at Paco Rabanne. Arching bell sleeves and lantern cuffs, meanwhile, were inspired by Balmain's eighties archives. It's hard to see what the show's metallic leather dhotis and tattered and deconstructed tees—some with panels of sequins, others held together with safety pins— have to do with the house's legacy. But will those same starlets soon be wearing them? You bet.
30 September 2006
It began with snow falling in a Russian wood and ended with a front-row ovation—Deeda Blair, Lee Radziwill, Susan Gutfreund, Ivana Trump, Cornelia Guest and all the ladies on their feet—to honor Oscar de la Renta’s final couture show for Pierre Balmain. As he has done consistently for the last 10 years, de la Renta combined the best of American design with a deep understanding of European luxe.De la Renta’s belief in the principles of wearability and practicality was made abundantly clear in his daywear—impeccable coats with a Russian flavor, fastened with frogging, trimmed with fur and topped with Cossack hats. His sable-trimmed knee-length suits, meanwhile, dovetailed perfectly with the femininity and propriety so dear to his American clientele. For cocktails, dinners and grand evenings, de la Renta ran through a light-handed reprise of everything that has made him so loved. A demure little black lace dress. A white lace ruffled blouse, striped with minute rows of pearl and crystal, worn with a slim black lace skirt. Pantsuits made of rich Oriental fabrics. A giant, wine-colored duchesse satin opera coat thrown over a gray ribbed cardigan and brocade pants. An angelic bodice made out of gold feathers.Accessorized with a horde of precious antique jewelry from Fred Leighton, this was an elegant and fitting conclusion to another chapter in the history of Paris couture. Judging from the look of the ladies, de la Renta will be sorely missed.
8 July 2002
Oscar de la Renta’s collection for Balmain was an essay in simplicity. With a restricted color palette and a minimum of embellishment, De la Renta rendered a vision of a couture house—and of a woman—that was crystal clear.A navy blue and white daywear section featured a neat double-face wool jacket over an arctic-white lace blouse and wide gabardine trousers. A white bouclé tweed coat was trimmed with navy at the four-button cuff, while an ivory tweed tailored suit featured a skirt that flipped ever so slightly at the knee. As daywear gave way to evening, kimonos, ponchos and caftans became the focus. One short kimono jacket in woven bone silk featured a belt of tressed pearls; another came closed with a grosgrain ribbon and diamanté brooch. Sky-blue silk ponchos, meanwhile, seemed perfect for poolside in Malibu. Caftans were cut close to the body in white over a silk pantsuit, in navy blue embellished with gold and belted with shiny bugle beads, or in deep turquoise finished with pavés of multitoned velour.Ball gowns were, as always, exceptional, from an asymmetric layered organza gown that floated around the body to a simple sleeveless black organza shirtdress, embroidered with lace flowers, that billowed out to extravagant proportions. Extravagant, but not over the top—as de la Renta has reminded us, sometimes couture is about knowing when enough is enough.
20 January 2002
For most mortals, the concept of everyday couture is an oxymoron. But for Oscar de la Renta's devoted Balmain clientele—which includes the likes of Princess Firyal of Jordan, Ira von Furstenberg, Georgina Brandolini and Deeda Blair—it makes perfect sense. With his gentleman's sensibility, the Dominican designer understands better than anyone their need for clothes that are subtle yet dramatic.Centered around Spanish and Russian motifs, de la Renta's collection was concise and impeccably executed. Racy boleros, flamenco hats and profusely beaded skirts stole the show; even a draped tuxedo jacket and satin shirt looked like they could have been worn by an off-duty matador. De la Renta also supplied richly embroidered coats, massive fur hats and generous muffs reminiscent of Catherine the Great, as well as an outstanding gold damask long-skirted suit, decadently trimmed with sable. Not quite the thing for lunch at Swifty's? Don't panic: De la Renta's double-faced wool coats, muslin blouses and precisely cut tweed tailleurs with ruched side-fastenings should do the trick.
8 July 2001
There is nothing more important to Oscar de la Renta than giving his international clientele exactly the type of clothing that they have come to expect—and his faithful followers will have no trouble finding plenty of options at Balmain this Spring.For informal luncheons there are piped gabardine and linen suits with fitted waists and pencil skirts cut just above the knee, double-faced cashmere coats, and a relaxed ivory shantung caban. Classic proportions and smart details like embroidered cuffs and collarsBut everyone knows that show-stopping evening dresses are what de la Renta is famous for (it's a shame he missed President Bush's inauguration ball by just a few days). The gamut of eventful gowns he showed ran from a slinky white satin crepe skirt with a feathered top to a feather-trimmed tulle-and-muslin extravaganza. It all amounted to a veritable smorgasbord of possibilities from which to pick and choose; clearly, de la Renta would never dream of limiting his ladies.
22 January 2001
At Balmain, Gilles Dufour takes the house's staidJolie Madameimage and filters it through the eyes of a younger generation. There is a limit to how rebellious his gildedParisiennewants to get, however.Grandmère'sdraped black-jersey cocktail dress from the '40s? Punk it up a little with colored hose and spike-heeled satin ankle boots.Maman'ssun-ray-pleated, giant-dot print '60s chiffon frock? Shrug a slim leather coat over it, and pin your hair into a messy French twist. Those dappled double-face country tweeds (nip-waist jackets and short, full skirts)? Spice them up with a graffiti print T-shirt or a skinny cashmere sweater with a saucy message emblazoned across the front.Dufour takes an old leaf from Schiaparelli's book too, sprinkling beaded butterflies, satin M&Ms or coils of "pasta" on fitted evening jackets, or sequin eyes, lips and even bright-colored false nails on knits. Flying with the season's "more is more" mantra, and leaving the editing to the editors, Dufour throws little mink matinee jackets (reinvented in cartoon colors and shrugged over cut-velvet and chiffon kilts), firework embroideries and Dickensian cutaway jackets into the frantic mix.
26 February 2000
It was quite a dramatic presentation at Balmain, featuring everything from feather paste-on brassieres to rough-cut cavegirl-like skirts and microskirts, and Jackson Pollock-inspired prints. Of course, there were also plenty of more sedate pieces—pretty twinsets in pastel shades, a broad range of soft, flowing chiffon dresses and candy-colored short suits with exposed seams, perhaps influenced by Gilles Dufour's years at Chanel. Evening had a distinctly '80s flavor: Acid orange, fuchsia and green minidresses shared the runway with feathered tops, handkerchief slips with trains that served as scarves and paillette gowns. And who better to show them all off than Claudia Schiffer?
2 October 1999