Balmain’s golden boy Olivier Rousteing breaks new ground
“Jewellery has always been part of my aesthetic, as you can imagine. It’s part of my DNA,” says Olivier Rousteing. From behind his grand black marble desk at the top of Balmain’s headquarters in Paris’s 8th arrondissement, he pushes up the sleeves of his artfully shredded Breton knit to reveal forearms decorated with stacks of bangles and bracelets.
“This, [he gestures to his right] is Balmain costume jewellery. This is my Rolex, this is my Cartier…” On his other arm is a more modest and perhaps sentimental selection, including souvenirs from his rare moments off-duty and a string of black wooden beads given to him by his father. “I love to mix my jewellery with some that, say, I got on holidays. I’m in Sicily or Mykonos or LA and I’m just going to get something that’s not too expensive.”
This blend of hard luxury tempered with accessibility has long informed Rousteing’s approach at Balmain, where he has sought to open up the world of fashion since he was made the first black creative director of a major French luxury house in 2011, aged just 25. Balmain’s turnover has increased seven-fold since Rousteing joined, a milestone at a time when the rate of change of creative directorship in luxury fashion is so high, many barely get a chance to unpack their bags.
On the one hand, Rousteing has positioned the house as a palace of high-octane, star-powered glamour, wooing celebrity friends such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna — both of whom starred in their first high fashion campaigns at Balmain — as well as former first lady of France, Carla Bruni, who closed the catwalk for his 10th anniversary show in 2021. On the other, he has peeled back the curtains on fashion’s inner sanctum, opening up invitations to some of his runway shows from the usual 500 or so industry types to 6,000 fans and rebranding the event as an annual Balmain Festival.
It makes sense, then, that Rousteing would add another category to his Balmain portfolio with the first ever fine jewellery collection in the brand’s 77-year history — and his timing couldn’t be better. McKinsey predicts that high-end branded fine jewellery is set to grow at a rate of 8-12 per cent annually between 2019 and 2025, approximately three times higher than the overall luxury goods sector. With the vast majority of sales still going to unbranded items, the category is ripe for a major luxury takeover. Since the start of 2019, LVMH has acquired Tiffany & Co for $15.8bn, Richemont has bought Buccellati from Chinese group Gangtai and fashion houses Gucci, Prada and Giorgio Armani have launched fine jewellery lines.
Laid out in front of the designer, beside a bottle of Perrier Citron and a packet of cigarettes, is an edited selection of the new collection, made up of 32 rings, necklaces, brooches, earrings and bracelets (most of it is already on loan to glossy magazines to photograph) with prices ranging from £1,600 to £31,000. The style is characteristically brassy, edgy but surprisingly sleek, realised in yellow gold, onyx and diamonds, the only colour an electric, chlorophyll-green tsavorite dotted here or there. Each piece is made with 18k recycled or Responsible Jewellery Council-certified gold and traceable gemstones. The French workshops chosen to make the jewellery are also RJC-certified to ensure greater transparency during the craftsmanship process.
Without a fine jewellery archive from which to draw, Rousteing riffed on past designs from the house’s ready-to-wear, with the intention of making future heirlooms. “Balmain is about the glamour, it’s about timelessness as well, that feeling of heritage of a house that was built in 1945 by Monsieur Balmain after the second world war. There is a sense of a couture-feeling in my clothes, of uniqueness and timelessness, and what more than a jewellery line to create something timeless?” asks Rousteing. “My [hope] with this jewellery will be that someone buys them and in 10 years gives it to their child or grandchild. This, to me, will be the biggest pride, bringing a memory to a family and becoming a heritage.”
The collection revolves around key house codes such as the coat of arms, often pressed into the gold buttons that finish the house’s signature blazers. In the jewellery offering it can be found on delicate, medallion-like discs that punctuate the finer pieces in the collection or stamped on chunky signet rings and cuffs. There’s an opulent crosshatch accented with a jewel at its apexes, first seen in Rousteing’s celebrated Fabergé-inspired collection of 2012. The house’s labyrinth monogram, reminiscent of a Greek key pattern, first introduced by founder Pierre Balmain in 1970 in a nod to French Renaissance gardens, runs the length of bracelets, wraps around the finger or is abbreviated into single pendants or earrings. Finally, the collection’s statement necklace, half gold chain, half jet black beading interrupted by a coat of arms focal point was inspired by the wooden beaded bracelet from Rousteing’s father.
“What I love about this collection is that it is genderless,” adds Rousteing. “I think modernity is not in the design. For me, modernity is a way of thinking. Because what can be modern for you might not be modern for someone else and, I have to say, [I’m not just talking about] the jewellery, it’s in relation to everything.”
Rousteing, adopted by white, middle-class parents and raised in Bordeaux is a rare example of a person of colour in a high-ranking creative position at a luxury fashion house, an imbalance he is vocal about. “I have pushed to change the codes, to be more inclusive, to talk about diversity when there was a lack of conversation around it,” says Rousteing. “Being the first French black designer in a French luxury house, I decided for those 10 years to fight and to make sure that we bring a conversation to the table and not keep it in silence. So I worked on my casting and campaigns, bringing music and the world of hip hop to the fashion industry. And by bringing different ambassadors from Kim [Kardashian], Rihanna, Justin Bieber, I had the chance to create that world that you call the Balmain Army.”
Transparency and personal acceptance have also been a part of Rousteing’s own journey. In October 2020, the designer suffered first and second degree burns along the length of his body. Though usually candid — a film crew documented the search for his biological parents for Netflix’s 2019 feature Wonder Boy — Rousteing kept the accident and subsequent year-long healing process a secret, opening up to his followers in an Instagram post and an op-ed for Vogue, describing how the incident had forced him to re-evaluate his obsession with authenticity and perfectionism.
Rousteing is passionate about what a modern fashion and jewellery house should represent: “Luxury doesn’t mean being exclusive. Opening the doors doesn’t mean not being chic. Opening the door means being inclusive, and the world needs inclusivity more and more. I would say that has been my fight and my obstacle in my decade, to make people understand. You see changes, but is it enough? No. At the end of the day, the fight is not over.”
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