Apologies to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, but this must be said. I disapprove of drop-crotch jacquard biker pants teamed with mink topcoats lavished with ersatz regalia, but I will defend (although, maybe not quite to the death) Olivier Rousteing’s right to design them. Rousteing is a wunderkind who you’d think has it all: a flawless complexion and the wildly successful creative directorship of Balmain. Oh, my Lord, and he’s still only 30 years old. But hey, you knew that already. He’s got every Kardashian on speed dial, and an Instagram profile that rivals all of them put together. Balmain sales? Off. The. Hook.
Rousteing, however, is not entirely happy. We already had a hint of it in a New Yorker profile last year. Tonight, preshow, he expanded. The catalyst was a question: He was asked whether, since he seems to be so much about love and community and family, his constant emphasis on “the Balmain army” was just a little aggressive? You know, the army thing? He had something to say, point-blank into a recording device: “Fashion is sometimes aggressive. I love, love, love fashion. For me, there is no aggressivity about army. I go through such a hard time in fashion, because sometimes some people don’t get who I am and what I do and my way of seeing things. So I think I build my Balmain army because when you build the Balmain world, sometimes you need soldiers more than models. Because I think sometimes fashion can be really rude—and try to destroy some designers. I went through so many things in my life and work in fashion. You know when you deal with bad critics—when you are working ’til 3:00 a.m. every night with your team—and they kill you? Fashion is a business too. I can understand criticism when it is negative or positive. But I like constructive criticism. And sometimes, it’s not.”
He added: “Sometimes, they go really personal because of my age. Because I am not 50 and I did not show more than 10 shows. So sometimes, they keep thinking that I am the teenager of fashion. I grew up in the eyes of fashion and the eyes of the cameras, and sometimes it is really hard for me. I can understand if you don’t like my aesthetic: But don’t try to push me down. I am working so hard and my business is growing . . . I don’t understand when people say Balmain is not about reality—it might not be your reality, but it is a reality of today. And if you think in London some shops are already 99 percent sold out—I have the numbers. So at least if you don’t respect my aesthetic, respect that I am a businessman.”
As for the show: It was, well, definitive Rousteing Balmain. Within that context—and that is a key caveat—it was a goodie. Imagine some long-lost, isolated 19th-century statelet in which someone had used a time machine to travel into the future and bring back Liberace and drop-crotch pants. We were there. Rococo met Fabergé met War and Peace met Versailles met Claude Montana met Dune met Highlander, in a dizzying display of resplendence pitched at the aristocracy of money. Soldier-wise, Balmain conscripted a crack squad of sharp cheekbones: Baptiste Giabiconi not at Chanel? Jon Kortajarena, Sean O’Pry, Chico Lachowski, Lucky Blue? This was the masculine counterpoint to Balmain women’s Naomi-Cindy-Claudia campaign.
Rousteing says that those who snipe and gripe that his clothes don’t reflect reality stupidly miss the fact that enough people buy Balmain to bankroll that level of casting, so it must reflect reality. Perhaps the point is that Rousteing’s talent is to have woven a fantastic unreality, one that ignites the fantasies and desires and financial outlay of his customers. And that’s fashion. Three little girls, perhaps 7 years old, were at the show today: They said it was their first. Afterward, they appeared to be stunned, in rapture. You can’t have everything, Olivier: So don’t sweat the small stuff. Love the army you have.
