As technology progresses in incrementally mind-bending bounds, old-fashioned ‘journalism’—or ‘content-creation’ as newfangleds foully term in—increasingly demands mastery (or at least competence) of more platforms than Elton John could ever imagine in his wildest dreams. This week in Paris, for instance, Vogue Runway started experimenting with broadcasting live from shows on Facebook. This critic was the guinea pig with the microphone, and this evening Olivier Rousteing kindly agreed to get involved. So before I left the venue, I had not only gleaned much more information from Rousteing than a typical post-show chateroo, but had simulcast it to an audience that, according to the comments pinging and ponging across the screen, were powerfully interested in Kim and Kanye but less so in the novelly organic crochet work we saw later in the collection, plus a hitherto unsuspected Rousteing-ian yen for Versace-challenging power color.
Since then I’ve seen another show. Inhaled some supper. Had a coffee. Checked Instagram. Felt sadness about the news of Bill Cunningham’s passing. And now sit here in front the screen wondering, what can be delivered with words that is more affectingly visceral and insightful than images? I suppose the answer lies in reporting and hunch. Proximity and focused attention should deliver insight.
Backstage among the models, these clothes—as I’ve perhaps written before—appear like some magnificent ceremonial attire of a luxurious and infinitely resourced potentate you never knew existed. But Balmain is about more than bling: It takes balls to wear a sports suit of silver mesh. And you need guts to wear a minidress in cascades of iridescent beading that charts your bodily contours more closely than a medical checkup. Thus the whole Olivier ‘this is my army’ thing makes sense. He is a boy from Bordeaux who his predecessor at the house, Christophe Decarnin, reportedly recalls was consistently the first worker in and the last out when he moved there after his first job at Roberto Cavalli. And despite the power of his cheekbones and the mastery of his image-creation, I get the sense that the burning ambition and commitment that we see in Rousteing isn’t necessarily a product of his own self-confidence—but of his desire to deliver a wearable form of that greatest of 21st-century assets to others. This is cod-psychology, but imagine if you could bottle confidence. Deliver armor and declare power. That is what Rousteing gives his audience. And now that he seems set to be turbocharged by investment, as infinitely turbocharged as his aesthetic—“my brand new day,” as he called it with tangible glee during that Facebook session—his empire will surely grow.
