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This was Olivier Rousteing’s first runway show for Balmain. He was 25, had spent two years working under Christophe Decarnin, and took over after Decarnin’s sudden exit. The pressure was huge, because the house had become a big business on the back of its short, tight, heavily beaded party look.
Rousteing kept that silhouette and cleaned it up. The hems were still short and the fit still skintight, but the trashy edge was gone. His references were the rhinestone Nudie suits of country music and the costumes of bullfighters, which he summed up as the tailoring of Mexico with the glamour of Vegas. The embroidery was rich and gold, on sharp little jackets and tiny dresses.
The most interesting pieces were the softer ones: a wallpaper floral in pastel silk embroidery on an hourglass dress, and the baby blue and white printed trousers that opened the show. There were only a few of them, yet they showed he wanted to bring some of the polish of Pierre Balmain and Oscar de la Renta back to the house.
It is a careful debut more than a bold one, and a confident start for someone so young. Everything he built later begins here.
More Balmain: read our guide to the Balmain collections, from Pierre Balmain to Olivier Rousteing.
Pictures courtesy of Vogue Runway
We do not own the rights to any of these images and they have been used in good faith. Every effort has been made to ensure that all images are used with proper credits. If you are the rightful owner of any image used on our site and wish to have it removed, please contact us at ayerhsmagazine@gmail.com and we will promptly remove it. We are a non-commercial, passion-driven, independent fashion blog and do not intend to infringe any copyright. Thank you for your understanding.
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