For SS25, Balmain looked back. No, not to Pierre Balmain and the early years of the house, nor to Oscar de la Renta’s decade at the house in the 90s. Instead, Balmain looked back at Olivier Rousteing, the house’s current creative director who has now been in the role for thirteen years. The SS25 collection was a “riff upon the codes, themes and now-iconic styles of the 21st-century Balmain”, taking guidance from many of Rousteing’s earliest looks for the house. 

Every look in the collection was designed to be wholly indicative of the DNA of Balmain. And it’s true that the pointed shoulders of the coats and dresses, the gold chains bifurcating outfits, and the final “face” outfits were all unmistakably Rousteing’s Balmain. But the collection was also a celebration of Rousteing’s era. Looks 32 and 33, for example, were printed to look like make-up palettes, a reference to the recently inaugurated Balmain Beauty line. And many of the models clutched bottles of Balmain perfume as they walked the runway.

A new bag, the Anthem, was inspired by the nipped-waist silhouettes of Pierre Balmain’s designs from the 1950s. Its name highlights Balmain’s “deep connections with musical artists and their compositions.”