RENAISSANCE COUTURE
BEYONCÉ X BALMAIN
Balmain Creative Director Olivier Rousteing has teamed up with an unexpected design partner, his good friend and long-time muse Beyoncé, 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 Beyoncé’s 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 Beyoncé’s longtime 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.
All Images Courtesy of Balmain
“Obviously, Beyoncé’s a strong woman of substance — and with lyrics and a message like these, well, making the choice for which way to go for this first design was a very easy one. Knowing exactly the message that we wanted to give, we turned to sculptor Elie Hirsch for this sublime sun-meets-crown metal bustier (I especially love how these spikes impart a perfect frisson of danger).”
Olivier Rousteing
“To channel the stirring spirit of Cozy—Beyoncé’s intoxicating, ballroom-flavored, love-yourself anthem—we pushed the artisans at Maison Fevrier to do something that they had actually never done before, despite their history of creating the most astounding plumage for Paris’ spectacles de cabaret and haute couture collections. Working closely with them, Beyoncé, her stylist Marni Senofonte, my Balmain team and I managed to ultimately paint the world pussy pink—arriving at the perfect solution for embroidering an impressive number of pink plumes de coq de poule bouquets—creating the exuberant sensation of being completely enveloped by multiple explosions of fireworks. At the same time, we worked to ensure that we could still see and celebrate that perfectly tailored black-velvet body, below. We utilized that same black-velvet for the Balmain turban and shoes, providing the needed backdrop of continuous evening sky for this feu d’artifice crescendo.”
Olivier Rousteing
All Images Courtesy of Balmain