“I don’t think there are many designers who can go back to a collection they created for their house ten years ago and refer to it in a new collection,” says Olivier Rousteing. He is right: with founders and designers such as Giorgo Armani, Stella McCartney or Junya Watanabe, 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 creative director in the catwalk world. Jonathan Anderson at Loewe, Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton womenswear and Stuart Vevers at Coach reached the decade milestone more recently than Rousteing. At Hermès, Nadège Vanhée should (again) quickly join that select group.
Although, in a business where commentary is increasingly abuzz with designer debuts, perhaps experience isn’t up for debate? Rousteing objected: ‘It’s important! You can’t tell a story or create a legacy in one or two seasons, or in one or two years. And it’s kind of scary when I look around the fashion industry today and see that there’s no time [being given] for designers to create their own legacy.”
Rousteing inherited an already resurgent Balmain from Christophe Decarnin in 2011, and has skyrocketed that growth for the house during his tenure, while designing a Balmain oeuvre that is also very much his own. This pre-collection was as oomph as ever, but also benefited from the designer’s deep experience. The overall vibe was Miami inspired – “yes, it’s always a good idea!” – and inspired by that city’s brash pastel Art Deco and by references to Pierre Balmain’s tapestry-strewn Elba villa by architect Leonardo Ricci, which was the subject of a house activation at last year’s Art Basel Miami. It was further enriched with many layered references to his spring 2013 Miami-meets-Cuba harlequin collection.
“This is a Real Balmain collection, I would say. Some I go with the aesthetic of the house, and some I go all out. This one is full! There is a lot of joy and a lot of trust. And at a time when there is apparently a lot of quiet luxury happening, we should not forget that not everyone may just want a camel cashmere turtleneck.” Meow!
Palm trees, those pastel colors and a few fantastic flying flamingos were set against the diamond check and silhouettes that were sometimes as wild and subversively exuberant as a lost Saturday evening on South Beach. “This is my silent luxury,” Rouesting said with an almost audible wink. And he’s still just 38 years old, so not only more experienced in his role than almost any other creative director in fashion, but also younger than almost any other.
