“Own who you are” read the T-shirt in Look 13. Yet you can only own who you are if you know who you are, and until very recently, Olivier Rousteing had spent his entire life denied that knowledge. As the new documentary Wonder Boy shows, Rousteing has investigated his past and discovered that his biological parents are Somalian and Ethiopian: He had always assumed he was mixed-race rather than 100 percent African. As well as the question of identity, being adopted raises other profound issues, perhaps most profoundly a sense of rejection—of unwantedness. In previous seasons you could discern how these existential threads had woven around Rousteing to form a brittle shell that cracked easily under the weight of snarkiness from the online haters that the size of his digital profile and the extremism of his aesthetic attract.
Not this morning. Rousteing owned who he is in a collection that sometimes felt like a deliberate provocation to the haters—who don’t need much prompting—to flex their fingers, reach for their keyboards, and show themselves as hateful. Yes, very well spotted, there were riffs on Chanel and Mugler and Montana and more: Rousteing has spent nearly a decade as creative director at Balmain, he knows this stuff too, just like he knew Karl, and he knows you know. Fashion is a referential conversation refreshed by individual interjection. This morning, both the carpet and the monochrome looks that bookended the show resonated with Rousteing’s recent racial self-discovery. The collection as a whole was framed around his experience as a kid in the late 1990s and early 2000s listening to Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Destiny’s Child. Look 63 was an extremely Balmain-ified tribute to Beyoncé’s crop track top in the Crazy in Love video.
A lot of it was designed to divide opinion while guaranteeing attention: one-legged pants and jumpsuits (an echo of mid-’90s men’s street style); a Big Bird yellow jumpsuit in a shaggy fringe of fine-cut resin or a version in blue with the soft-tailored seams of a classic Chanel jacket outlined in black. The gazillions of I Dream of Jeannie gowns in panels of colored pleated silk often built around huge chunks of turquoise or circular mirror were not about subtlety, oh no, but strength. “I sometimes feel that the fashion that inspires the front row does not talk to the young generation,” observed Rousteing backstage. He’s most likely right. For anyone in search of an outfit in which to fluster, there is no better destination than Balmain.
