Balmain has just unveiled its Fall-Winter 2024-2025 ready-to-wear collection. The Parisian fashion house staged a fashion show around the theme of a country picnic, a real interlude after the theft of its latest spring-summer collections last September. The Bobigny court, which tried the perpetrators of the crime, held its deliberations on the same day.
For its Autumn-Winter 2024-2025 ready-to-wear show, Balmain invites visitors to lunch on the grass in the Bordeaux vineyards, a tribute to the roots of designer Olivier Rousteing. Rousteing later moved to the French capital to study fashion.
The bucolic inspiration follows in the wake of Rousteing’s previous spring-summer 2024 ready-to-wear floral collection, which was conceived as a catharsis following the traumatic theft of 50 pieces from that season’s show. The suspects recently went on trial, and the verdict was delivered on the very day of the show.
A return to Bordeaux roots
On February 28, a host of stars, from French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura to Californian star Cher and Turkish it-girl Hande Ercel, flocked to the Pavillon Cambon to watch Olivier Rousteing’s new Balmain collection parade under the glass roof.
This new show mirrors the Fall-Winter 2020-2021 collection, featured in Olivier Rousteing’s introspective documentary “Wonder Boy” about questioning his origins and searching for his biological mother. For his Autumn-Winter 2024-2025 collection, the young designer chose to celebrate the city of his childhood, Bordeaux, and his adoptive mother, Lydia Rousteing.
A mother to whom the 39-year-old designer paid a vibrant tribute, including a musical one in the form of the lyrical and poignant track “La Vita” by Philadelphia-born American trans singer Beverly Glenn Copeland, whose jingle “Enjoy Your Life… My Mother Said To Me” was recently covered by another LGBTQIA+ community figure, the member of indie band The XX, Romy, in her first solo album.
The gingham print, which reminds the designer of his fondness for picnics in his company, with a sheet decorated with those famous checks spread out on the grass, is the real thread running through the collection.
To evoke his Bordeaux childhood, Olivier Rousteing turned to two symbols of the region: the bunch of grapes and the snail. The former can be used as a handbag or printed in an all-over pattern, while the latter serves as a golden detail on a belt, jewelry or buttons.
Evoking Pierre Balmain’s signature “Jolie Madame” silhouette, emphasizing the waist with carinated shoulders, the pleated version of the trench coat was undoubtedly the centerpiece of the collection, playing on colors (black, beige…) and materials (cotton gabardine, leather…).
Most of the outfits in the wardrobe were accessorized with the Maison’s latest it-bag: the Jolie Madame bag and its singular isosceles triangle shape.
To cope with the first frosts, there were also plenty of sweaters and coats.
The beginning of a legal epilogue
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Featured Photo: © Balmain
