Beyoncé and Balmain Introduce Renaissance Couture
Olivier Rousteing should have been doing one of two things late last July; either finalizing Balmain’s spring 2023 collection, or heading off on vacation. Instead he found himself listening to Beyoncé’s freshly-released Renaissance on rotation. As he tells it down a call from Paris: “I was sketching and sketching as I listened, and sometimes you can’t control the emotion of your sketch. And I started to imagine the sketches inside her album, how they would relate to the songs and the lyrics—it wasn’t something I was supposed to be doing but I was just inspired by the music to do it. And that’s how this started.”
Once he did get to that vacation, Rousteing kept sketching his Renaissance-rabbit hole pieces, refining and shaping. Then when he returned to Paris at the end of August he made a decision. “I contacted Marni and B. And I said, ‘honestly, I want to create a couture collection with you.’ And they were like: ‘Wow, that’s a big surprise.’”
Added Rousteing: “My hope was that she would be up for something even beyond the work we have done together before… I wanted us to be co-designers.” To his delight, Beyoncé was into it too.
Over the last five months Rousteing has been working in partnership with Beyoncé and Senofonte. Their first task was to whittle down the 50 or so looks that Rousteing sketched in his musically-driven fever dream to a playlist of 17. And the second was to collaborate on the process of transforming those remaining sketches into a fully produced and realized Balmain x Beyoncé couture collection. The result is a suite of A-side looks that honor both the history of the house and the musical heritage of the performer. Two of them have been seen already—glimpsed at the Grammys and the BRIT Awards earlier this year—and a few others are soon to be revealed elsewhere.
Once he did get to that vacation, Rousteing kept sketching his Renaissance-rabbit hole pieces, refining and shaping. Then when he returned to Paris at the end of August he made a decision. “I contacted Marni and B. And I said, ‘honestly, I want to create a couture collection with you.’ And they were like: ‘Wow, that’s a big surprise.’”
Added Rousteing: “My hope was that she would be up for something even beyond the work we have done together before… I wanted us to be co-designers.” To his delight, Beyoncé was into it too.
Over the last five months Rousteing has been working in partnership with Beyoncé and Senofonte. Their first task was to whittle down the 50 or so looks that Rousteing sketched in his musically-driven fever dream to a playlist of 17. And the second was to collaborate on the process of transforming those remaining sketches into a fully produced and realized Balmain x Beyoncé couture collection. The result is a suite of A-side looks that honor both the history of the house and the musical heritage of the performer. Two of them have been seen already—glimpsed at the Grammys and the BRIT Awards earlier this year—and a few others are soon to be revealed elsewhere.
