The House Olivier Rousteing Rebuilt

PARIS – In Olivier Rousteing’s workplace perched on the sixth flooring of Balmain’s Paris headquarters, stark white partitions and black marble surfaces are coated with fragrance bottles, baggage, and blown-up marketing campaign imagery. Order rubs shoulders with accumulation within the Balmain model, which Rousteing continues to champion as the home’s artistic director since 2011: a silhouette that marries highly effective shoulders to body-hugging curves and opulent particulars, projecting womanly glamour and galactic flamboyance.

Raised within the bourgeois metropolis of Bordeaux, the designer now reinterprets the codes of French glamour for a cosmopolitan, radiant lady who is aware of neither taboos nor borders.

“Heritage, modernity, and inclusivity are the weather which have fuelled my longevity in the home and sum up my profession at Balmain,” Rousteing says.

From partnerships with Kim Kardashian and her household to Beyoncé, for whom he has designed costumes for music movies and excursions, Rousteing has renewed Balmain’s historic ties to superstar whereas taking them to new, world heights. These partnerships have electrified the designer’s Instagram account — which now counts 10 million followers — in addition to powering exponential development for Mayhoola-owned Balmain, the place gross sales have elevated greater than ten-fold throughout his tenure.

In an unique interview with BoF, the designer talks about his imaginative and prescient, his longevity, the energy of his doubts, his relationship to social media fame, and the aftermath of a hijacked cargo simply days earlier than Paris Vogue Week.

You joined Balmain in 2009, and have been artistic director since 2011. How do you account for this sort of longevity in a trend world dominated by short-term bets?

I’ve been in these partitions for 14 years. I began because the right-hand man [of Christophe Decarnin] in 2009. Being one of many gamers with out being in management allowed me to immerse myself within the DNA of the home.

Since I took over, we’ve structured the challenge round a number of key factors: heritage by means of know-how and couture craftsmanship, modernity, inclusivity, up to date variety. The dichotomy between previous and current has been on the coronary heart of Balmain’s rebirth. I realised that contradiction could be the pressure that might outline the way forward for Balmain.

It wasn’t only a dream. The turnover elevated from €20 million to €300 million ($322 million). The corporate has grown from round 40 workers to greater than 600.

I owe my success to the very fact of getting believed in a really exact imaginative and prescient and making it evolve, with out having tried to be another person. Lots of people criticise me as a result of I’m not into pleasing everybody. However my model is exact, even when some discover it ostentatious. I’m not making an attempt to persuade them.

How do you proceed to maintain up the thrill, your enthusiasm from season to season? What’s the basis you construct your assortment on?

I constructed it by myself flaws: I doubt myself on a regular basis. I reside with a dissatisfaction deep inside me that pushes me to transcend myself, in addition to this confidence that permits me to take dangers every single day.

I dedicate my life to this home. [In the story of Balmain] I can’t inform you if my tenure might be a big chapter, or its personal e-book, as I might hope. However I can say that I used to be the kid of Balmain, and now Balmain is the kid I’m elevating. It’s a particular relationship when it comes to emotion: all that Balmain gave me, I really feel I owe again to it.

How has this relationship advanced?

Persevering with right here is one thing I needed to do for myself as a lot because it was about loyalty: I needed to show to people who I wasn’t only a flash within the pan.

What issues most now could be embodying the home with very sturdy codes, with a mode that doesn’t succumb to traits. I imagine the status of a home is determined by staying true to itself. I performed with the home codes till these codes grew to become mine. Embodying a home means imposing a mode, then your individual: that is what makes your longevity.

How would you outline your model?

Flamboyant, Parisian. The latter extra so than ever since my tenth anniversary present, when the model advanced in the direction of extra sophistication, extra heritage. I don’t need individuals to suppose Balmain has existed since 2011 as a substitute of 1945.

Being anchored in popular culture can confine you to a given second, particularly with social media. However I’ve solely been the translator of a mode that already existed, utilizing my very own language. I used to be taken for a insurgent; I used to be solely a witness to my time.

What does Paris symbolize, for you?

Paris is the town of lights. It’s the worldwide capital. The one who at all times shines. Paris is Versailles, it’s Place de la Concorde, it’s Centre Pompidou.

The query of identification is on the coronary heart of your story — each as one among few black designers to have led a serious trend home, and as a toddler of adoption. How does identification proceed nonetheless play a task in your profession?

Once you don’t know the place you come from — I don’t know my organic father or mom — you will need to anchor your self in one thing. You have to combat to say your identification, to know the place you need to go.

My heritage now could be being a Frenchman of African origin — one who has been combating for twelve years to make a brand new France shine, past Balmain.

To shine — how does this notion of radiance, or brilliance feed into your work?

I dream of a world the place we shield ourselves with mild. I consider my clothes as shining armour. Being in opposition to all types of violence, after all I’m speaking about self-protection. We reside in a really hostile world.

There are designers who evoke safety with giant, black garments, very thick issues. If I’ve just one remorse, it’s having the sensation of being misunderstood, it’s seeing that my work has been interpreted as expressing a type of superficiality. Actually it has at all times been linked to the struggles of girls who needed to be themselves.

“There are designers who evoke safety with giant, black garments, very thick issues…I dream of a world the place we shield ourselves with mild.”

“After I was little, I solely had one worry: returning to the orphanage, as a result of I used to be afraid of not being adequate,” you say within the 2019 documentary “Surprise Boy.” What do you worry as we speak?

If there’s one factor that by no means modified, it’s that I’ve at all times felt like I needed to push myself greater than others.

I’m a part of the style ecosystem, now. I’ve a sense of being recognised. Maybe what I worry most is being forgotten.

Regardless of all this world of rhinestones and glitter, there’s a deep loneliness, a deep quest to be cherished.

You speak about eager to have a good time Balmain’s heritage. How are you going to hold that reminiscence alive with out falling into nostalgia?

What I’m making an attempt to create at Balmain is a recent and dwelling museum which doesn’t essentially encompass archiving, within the bodily sense, however of multiplying connections, activations, past social networks.

You maintain a competition by inviting 10,000 individuals [to your fashion show], you do a collaboration with Beyoncé for her Renaissance album (2023), creating along with her 17 couture items. You do issues stay in recollections and in hearts. The pattern leaves, the model stays. Balmain has its personal model, that’s what’s going to make Balmain keep.

Beyoncé is simply one of many stars you’ve partnered with. What are hyperlinks that unite you along with your muses?

These are bonds of affection. I’ll by no means enable myself to affiliate with individuals with out having a deep admiration for them. I consider Kim [Kardashian], of Beyoncé. These are connections that come from the guts. I wouldn’t be the identical particular person if I hadn’t dressed Kanye West 10 years in the past. Placing Rihanna within the marketing campaign in 2014, or Kim in 2015 wasn’t simple. On the time, individuals have been questioning about her affect in trend and luxurious. After I selected Kendall Jenner and Gigi and Bella Hadid to stroll for us, many doubted their legitimacy on the catwalk as that they had come from social networks and actuality TV. However I drew on their vitality and their expertise to construct for the long run.

Who might be subsequent?

I’m not asking the query of who would be the new Kim, the brand new Claudia [Schiffer]: they’re irreplaceable. However I’m wondering who this particular person might be who will captivate me like Kim captivated me. She might come from anyplace. This sort of magnificence is about self-confidence. Magnificence that permits an individual to shine, to light up a room. It’s an assertive type of magnificence that doesn’t correspond to any actual canon.

Was rising up in a metropolis thought-about by some as “provincial” a handicap in Paris trend?

Bordeaux is a rare metropolis which has its strengths and weaknesses, its sturdy heritage, its structure which ranges from Gothic to Napoleon, its vineyards. It is rather anchored in France. As a toddler, I suffered from a metropolis that was very conservative, with harsh clichés and prejudices, however I might not describe it as provincial.

I drew energy from it: if I perceive the world of Balmain, it’s as a result of there’s a very strict facet that Bordeaux gave me in my approach of being, of carrying myself, in my obsession with navy blue jackets with gold buttons. I put on my hair in braids, however I additionally at all times need sailor tops and tuxedos.

“I’m in love with tradition, with the concept that magnificence transcends gender, borders, time.”

You’ve grow to be massively well-known on social media, with practically 10 million followers on Instagram. How do you strategy this device?

Social media is as vital as ever, however I’ve realized to maneuver away to guard myself. Initially, there was a sure spontaneity and freedom. Now there’s an excessive amount of cyber-bullying. No matter you do, you already know there’s going to be an enormous neighborhood that can love you and an enormous neighborhood that can hate you. I expose myself much less.

Vogue has grow to be extra inclusive because of social media, which has referred to as out collections, stylists, campaigns, silhouettes. However the hazard as we speak is that a variety of hatred is rising.

A enterprise pushed by social media feedback forces sure homes to not be themselves, or to take positions which might be hypocritical — and so they lose credibility. What’s much more harmful is to disclaim the previous. To raised perceive the long run, that you must have a imaginative and prescient of historical past. Criticise the previous, sure, however don’t deny it. I’m in opposition to cancel tradition.

Let’s speak in regards to the theft Balmain was the sufferer of final season. What occurred?

A Saturday in late September at 2 p.m., my assortment director advised me that round fifty items for the Summer time 2024 present had been stolen throughout an armed theft, between Roissy [where Charles de Gaulle airport is located] and Paris. The driving force was traumatised.

We had to determine what to do: there have been a lot of fits lacking, in addition to denim, jersey, jewelry. We solely managed to redo among the items for the present. This expertise taught me that so long as the items aren’t on the runway, there’s nonetheless a danger. Nothing is assured. By no means suppose “we made it.”

The case remains to be ongoing.

We lately labored collectively whenever you created some items for Beymen’s “Golden Opulence” exhibition about Ottoman craftsmanship. You created a costume, a go well with, two pairs of terribly embroidered footwear. What was your inspiration for this challenge? [Laurence Benaim curated the exhibition; Beymen is owned by the same group as Balmain].

I’m in love with tradition, with the concept that magnificence transcends gender, borders, time. For me it isn’t linked to any identification or ethnic project. The challenge combines the heritage of Monsieur Balmain in Parisian tailoring with Ottoman splendour. They’re the abstract of what I’m: the combination of cultures, the fantastic thing about the East and the West collectively. Nothing provides me extra satisfaction than making two cultures shine and bringing them collectively.