Today, somewhere—most likely in Paris, given the hometown nature of Balmain—one very content supplier of pointed metal studs probably cannot quite believe their luck, for he or she will have already vastly overreached 2019’s sales target thanks to a Balmain collection that featured more spiked protuberances than a porcupine convention on a cactus farm encircled by a nail factory.
These thousands of studs—on the striking opening oversize black bouclé blazer, on origami-structured pagoda-roof skirts, on open-shoulder bikers, on slides, on vests, on newsboy caps, on bags, on sharp-toed boots, and on transparent trenches and jackets—were there to make a point. Alongside many other decorative dichotomies, they represented one side of the theme Olivier Rousteing said he was exploring in his articulation of the Balmain woman today: “She’s got attitude; she is a troublemaker, and she doesn’t care. She’s defiant, but she is a paradox: She can be sweet and romantic too; she can be an angel . . . or she can be a devil. She cannot be categorized.”
Rousteing has long rebelled against those inclined to categorize him, so this collection spoke directly to his preoccupation with the expression of self-determination through clothes—whatever the hell anybody watching thinks about it. The flip side of those studs—as echoed in the thorned bloom design on the show’s invitation—were the scrunched flower embellishments in lavender velvet on the skirt of a stud-topped dress, or the clustered rose embroideries on a backless one-shouldered bib worn above washed loose jeans, or the apocalyptic blossoming of more scrunched floral embellishments in the patent-leather clothing section.
Another “good” vs. “bad” or “soft” vs. “hard” dichotomy mined with abandon by Rousteing saw the codes of an uptown bourgeois Parisienne—with her fragranced wardrobe stuffed with hand-me-down couture bouclé and evening dresses in dramatically ruffled ’80s shapes—smashed against a punky, rock-y, leave-your-clothes-on-the-floor, highly anarchic (albeit highly solvent) sensibility articulated in those bikers as well as apparently picked-apart bouclé on denim outerwear, chainlink Alice bands, and long, embellished, frayed fishnet dresses in mohair (some of which snagged challengingly on the chain-link heels of Rousteing’s spiked boots). Yet another dichotomy was encapsulated in a recurring silhouette that was a sort of born-to-be-bad baguette: fitted—but full and frilled—at the chest and hip; the filling was a cinched and corseted section at the abdomen.
This recipe was adapted into variations that included black ruffled organza (plus cape) surrounding PVC-sheathed denim; white ruffled organza (accented with black PVC thigh highs and opera gloves) surrounding a transparent PVC; and a shoulder piece of layered black PVC petals above a black ruffled PVC skirt bisected by more transparent PVC.
Side stories include menswear codes colonized by the ostentatiously feminine (at least according to traditional categorizations) and a soundtrack that segued from “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics, to “Forever Young” and “Big in Japan” by Alphaville, to “It’s a Sin” by the Pet Shop Boys, and finally back to “Here Comes the Rain Again” by the Eurythmics. Fierce vs. flou, sharp vs. soft, and rebel vs. princess, this was both a Balmain-expressed cartography of the extreme outer reaches of the feminine archetype and an invitation for its wearers to exploit the codes it exposed without ever being defined by them.
