RENAISSANCE Couture by Beyoncé x Balmain

I could have been using my time to finalize all the details for the September runway. And I really should have been making more of an effort to disconnect, relax and enjoy my summer vacation. But I just couldn’t stop myself. Day after day, I kept dreaming up and sketching out new concepts inspired by Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE, the album that had been constantly blaring in my home, office, atelier and vacation rental — and in an endless loop in my head — ever since it dropped in July 2022 . There was no plan, project, or expectation. I had absolutely no reason to be dedicating so much of my time to those drawings, outside of the simple pure pleasure I got from creating something completely new, as I channeled her glorious, joy-filled art into my own.

When Beyoncé first released those extraordinary sixteen songs, she mentioned that she hoped that they would inspire all of us “to release the wiggle.” Actually, she managed to push me to release a whole lot more than that. By the time that we reached the rentrée — those end-of-summer days when French vacationers make their way back into the real world — I had been stirred to sketch out fifty new silhouettes riffing on the rhythm, spirit and voices of RENAISSANCE.

Obviously, having already collaborated with Beyoncé on so many memorable occasions, I already knew about her color, cut, fabric and accessory preferences, allowing me to seamlessly incorporate those, without thinking, into those initial rough sketches. But when I made the decision to call and share those very early stage concepts with her, well... what I was hoping to talk about wasn’t just another round of looks for the red carpet or concert stage. This time, I wasn’t asking her to simply be my muse. Instead, I was very much hoping that she might be up for something completely new: an actual, true collaboration between two creators who are both obsessed with pushing their art to the next level. I wanted us to be co-designers. Maybe it was because of the great importance that her first style icon, Beyoncé’s beloved uncle Jonny, had on the album, or maybe it was because I’ve seen, first-hand, just how much Ms. Tina Knowles Lawson’s taste, talent and training have ensured that her daughter Beyoncé is another great designer—but, this moment seemed to be the right time for Beyoncé to commit to working on the creation of a true Parisian couture offering, by assuming the role of design partner on our RENAISSANCE Couture Collection.

She loved the idea. I was beyond thrilled. And, once we hung up, we both took on a whole lot of extra work. B

eginning in September, Beyoncé, her stylist Marni Senofonte, my Balmain design team and I joined forces for five months, somehow managing—despite unforgiving fashion-week and concert schedules and some very difficult time-zone differences—to work through hundreds of WhatsApps, Zooms, and mails, in order to edit down last summer’s grouping of sketches into a reasonable number of true proposals, and then convert those into actual couture 2 creations. Then, in late January, my team and I took off for Los Angeles, transporting our Balmain atelier to the West Coast, in order to work full-time for ten days with Beyoncé and Marni on all the final touches, additions, fittings, shootings and edits.

From the beginning, we knew that this collaboration was going to be unlike any of the others that either of us had worked on before. We jumped in, headfirst, with no commercial game plan—for this is a collection that is based completely on our shared passion for melding together music and fashion. The lack of budgeting, roll-out and marketing plans eliminated the typical boundaries and constraints, creating a dream environment that allowed us to simply experiment, dream and push each other to the max. And that’s exactly what we did. Together, we created this one-of-a-kind couture collection, with each silhouette directly inspired by a specific RENAISSANCE composition.

At the same time that I was working on our RENAISSANCE Couture by Beyoncé x Balmain, my team and I were finishing up Balmain’s most recent Paris Fashion Week runways and presentations, which were strongly focused on our founder’s incredible legacy. For those men’s and women’s fall collections, we drew our inspirations directly from the house’s rich archives. That treasury is overflowing with more than 75 years of extraordinary creations— beginning with the designs from the house’s pivotal first presentation, when Pierre Balmain wowed the fashion world with his bold New French Style and helped set post-war Parisian fashion down a new pathway. Maybe it’s because I’ve been so focused on history lately, but I can’t help but be thrilled by the history-making aspects of this collaboration. This appears to be the first time that a Black woman has overseen the couture offering from a historic Parisian house. And those designs were created in partnership with the first Black man to ever oversee all the collections at a historic Parisian house. Let’s hope those two firsts help inspire plenty of others. In addition, I am certain that these RENAISSANCE Couture Collection designs, once they enter into the house’s archives, are destined to inspire generations of future Balmain designers. Thank you, Beyoncé for creating the infectious, joyous music that launched this journey— and for partnering with me to ensure that we designed the collection that perfectly reflected the power of those compositions.

Olivier Rousteing

24 March 2023

Paris