Balmain Creative Director Olivier Rousteing has teamed up with his good friend and long-time muse Beyonce, who worked closely with him over six months to co-create a truly modern couture offering. Each of the collaboration’s designs is specifically inspired by one of the sixteen songs on Beyonce RENAISSANCE, the artist’s seventh solo album. With that record’s songs, lyrics and beats brilliantly melding together a remarkable selection of styles, artists and samples, it’s no surprise that the couture offering that it inspired is equally inventive. The collection’s co-designers, working closely with the Balmain design team and a longtime friend of Beyonce, stylist Marni Senofonte, played with Balmain house signatures, classic Parisian savoir-faire and a wide range of unexpected materials and techniques, to ingeniously translate RENAISSANCE’s joy and genius into a couture collection that makes clear that something powerful can result when music and fashion are combined into one unified whole.
The dress above reflects Energy 02 by Beyonce. “This gown began as a series of sketches combining African motifs and complex geometries. Then we turned to our artisans to translate those patterns, via brown and black lurex threads. As you can see, their skilled embroidery and careful braiding replicates the look of traditional techniques. This was one of this collection’s most complicated designs and it took the team over a month to complete that intricate creation process. The fantastic earrings build upon that same braiding artistry. We were especially happy with how the silhouette stands out, due to the powerfully rounded shoulders and hips.” – Olivier Rousteing
“To perfectly channel the glorious, disco-flavored groove of the sultry PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA [by Beyonce], we turned, once again, to the Balmain craftsmen, who helped us seamlessly meld together three very different concepts: An extremely sensual silhouette that relies on impressively curved front-and-back boning to create that impeccably fitted, body-con tulle bustier • A dazzlingly lustrous shine achieved by galvanized, pink-chrome fabric (allowing us to perfectly channel the slippery and slick title material). The unexpected combo of two iconic Parisian couture signatures: the bow and le smoking. Beyonce and I were very inspired by the Balmain archive’s many mid-century examples of Monsieur Balmain’s brilliance in creating surprising couture silhouettes via new twists on bow sizing, shape and placements. Building on that legacy, we decided to flip our glossy pink bow 180 degrees, allowing for the perfect front slit and transforming what normally would have been a bow’s hanging fabric edges into the most reduced version possible of a classic smoking’s lapels.”
– Olivier Rousteing
Images courtesy of Balmain
