Just when we thought the churn of the fashion world waters had finally started to calm, another tidal wave has come through. On Wednesday, November 5, Balmain announced that Olivier Rousteing, the brand’s creative director, has stepped down after almost a decade and a half in the position.
“I am deeply proud of all that I’ve accomplished, and profoundly grateful to my exceptional team at Balmain, my chosen family, in a place that has been my home for the past 14 years,” Rousteing said in a statement. His departure from the brand marks the end of a partnership characterized by its creativity and cultural significance. It also ends one of the longest creative director tenures in recent fashion history.
Rousteing was successful in placing Balmain back in the cultural landscape, with highly energetic and embellished collections that caught the public’s fickle eye. His friendships with celebrities like Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Kim Kardashian helped to push his designs further into the mainstream. In 2014, Kardashian wore a pearl-covered mini dress from Rousteing’s fall 2012 collection to her Parisian bachelorette, a moment that had a significant impact on Balmain’s cultural street cred. It also helped to create the Balmain Army, the name associated with the following that soon materialized around Rousteing and the brand, inspired by Rousteing’s armor-adjacent designs.
During his time at Balmain, Rousteing was always moving the brand forward. Not long after joining the house, he facilitated the opening of the first Balmain stores outside of Paris and, in 2019, he presented couture as a guest designer on the schedule (and acted as the guest couturier for Jean Paul Gaultier’s fall/winter 2022 haute couture collection). In 2023, he launched Balmain beauty and fragrance with Estée Lauder, expanded the brand’s accessories category, and co-designed a collection with Beyoncé.
It wasn’t always easy. In his 2019 documentary Wonder Boy, Rousteing opened up about his adoption and the search for his birth parents. In 2021, the designer suffered an at-home accident, which left him severely burned. The incident inspired his spring 2022 collection, which featured gauzy bandage dresses. “My last show was about the celebration of healing over pain,” he said on Instagram. “I remember when they took out all my bandages it felt [like] FREEDOM.”
