PRECISION CRAFT AND ART AT THE BALMAIN SS25 RUNWAY

Under Olivier Rousteing’s creative direction, Balmain has been serving elegance and sophistication, and their Spring/Summer’25 collection showcased at Paris Fashion Week further shines a light on its artisanal craft. Breathtakingly incorporating photo-realistic faces on garments using delicate embroidery, and using classic black and red hues, the collection sets the tone for the brand’s future entwinement with class, art, and grace.

“We’ve kept this collection extremely focused, with the goal of ensuring that every design is immediately recognizable as containing key strands of the DNA of today’s modern Balmain,” stated Rousteing, and the looks that opened the show definitely screamed Balmain. Having showcased similar garment art during their menswear collection earlier this year, the looks this season carried the same delicate details that made those previous ones so impressive. Nose, eyes, lips, key features of the face, are beautifully transposed onto the garments, leaving a lasting impression. And though the designs may look photo-realistic, in actuality, thousands of beads were slowly embroided onto the clothing over the course of weeks.

Other silhouettes that continue to align with Balmain are the powerful shoulder and hip designs. Artisans cutting garments with surgical precision ensured that shoulders popped out of blazers and cropped jackets, and that angular hips were further amplified.

Rousteing also stated that part of the inspiration that fueled this collection was found in-house, and with that I don’t mean in house Balmain but rather in Rousteing’s own wardrobe. “The often-repeated combo of skinny leather pants and a DB jacket thrown over a simple tee or tank has been my go-to look for closing runways and meeting with the press for over a decade—and now it’s been adapted to form part of this season’s extensive daywear offerings.”

But perhaps the biggest inspiration was found in the diversity of the house. The show closed with a brigade of models walking in tandem whilst wearing minimalist silk sheathes. In turn, attention was drawn to the wide range of tones that make up the Balmain army, and that is exactly what according to Rousteing remains the modern Balmain muse: an inclusive and diverse set of people that consistently inspire each other and the brand.