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Who needs a good reminder of what Balmain used to be?
Once upon a time, Balmain was a dying house.
Oscar de la Renta created fabulous, old school haute couture for the house’s faithful, wealthy clients who dearly missed Pierre Balmain. (1993-2002)
Gilles Dufour who was Karl Lagerfeld’s former assistant was given the ready-to-wear collections in 1998. He was unscrupulously fired for trying to replicate a Galliano at Balmain, which did not sit well with the owners or the clients.
Image: Balmain RTW AW00
Image: Balmain RTW AW00
As De la Renta was sent back to New-York and Dufour thrown out, the house entered a period of total irrelevance. A few designers tried to perform CPR, but the old lady was ready to be buried. Then a duo of businessmen took over.
They put their bets on a relatively unknown fashion designer: Christophe Decarnin, a skinny, shy, 40-something who had made Paco Rabanne exciting in the 90s and hadn’t worked for a couture house for a while.
Decarnin presented his first collection for the AW06 season. It worked immediately. Gold. Money. Legs for days. Luxury. Embellishments. Natasha Poly. Anja Rubik. It screamed “Fuck the bourgeoisie but fuck poor people too!” Was it the excess that got people onboard?
The seed had been planted. The SS07 collection featured a destroyed —he meant it— top that was an insult to Pierre Balmain’s jolie madame look. But it excited the house’s new audience.
Dresses were skimpier than Donatella’s most slutty numbers. Decarnin’s Balmain became the incarnation of a new kind of insolent luxury that was meant for Parisian haute rock chicks — an equivalent to what Hedi was imposing with Dior Homme if you wish, but times 1000. (SS09)
In 2009, Balmain was selling out outrageously expensive destroyed spray on jeans (€6K) in the middle of a financial crisis and jackets that cost nearly €25K. Prices were almost aligned to haute couture’s to artificially manufacture crave. It worked. Sales skyrocketed. (SS09)
The Balmain girl was a disco ball, scintillating and twirling in Parisian clubs while splashes of Dom Pérignon and traces of cocaine stained her outfits. (AW09)
(disclaimer: I’m not glamorising drugs, I’m describing an era.)
(disclaimer: I’m not glamorising drugs, I’m describing an era.)
His SS10 was inspired by military uniformes. He also took the opportunity to instill the idea that a destroyed garment could be considered fashionable and luxurious again.
AW10 was ridiculously baroque. Christophe Decarnin profusely injected the most literal luxury code: gold.
Being a Balmain girl meant something. It meant that you were hot, blonde, skinny, rich, and a little bit of a bitch, and most of all, a cool girl.
Then SS11 happened... Then Emmanuel Alt left. Then the owners of Balmain felt the wind blow in a different direction post-financial crisis. Then Decarnin was told no. Then it was depression. Then he was out and his assistant took over.
