“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 on the high of Balmain’s headquarters in Paris’s eighth arrondissement, he pushes up the sleeves of his artfully shredded Breton knit to disclose forearms embellished 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 different arm is a extra modest and maybe sentimental choice, together with souvenirs from his uncommon moments off-duty and a string of black wood 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 mix of arduous luxurious tempered with accessibility has lengthy knowledgeable Rousteing’s method at Balmain, the place he has sought to open up the world of vogue since he was made the primary black artistic director of a serious French luxurious home in 2011, aged simply 25. Balmain’s turnover has elevated seven-fold since Rousteing joined, a milestone at a time when the speed of change of artistic directorship in luxurious vogue is so excessive, many barely get an opportunity to unpack their baggage.
On the one hand, Rousteing has positioned the home as a palace of high-octane, star-powered glamour, wooing superstar pals resembling Kim Kardashian and Rihanna — each of whom starred of their first excessive vogue campaigns at Balmain — in addition to former first woman of France, Carla Bruni, who closed the catwalk for his tenth anniversary present in 2021. On the opposite, he has peeled again the curtains on vogue’s internal sanctum, opening up invites to a few of his runway reveals from the standard 500 or so trade varieties to six,000 followers and rebranding the occasion as an annual Balmain Festival.
It is smart, then, that Rousteing would add one other class to his Balmain portfolio with the primary ever nice jewelry assortment within the model’s 77-year historical past — and his timing couldn’t be higher. McKinsey predicts that high-end branded nice jewelry is about to develop at a charge of 8-12 per cent yearly between 2019 and 2025, roughly 3 times larger than the general luxurious items sector. With the overwhelming majority of gross sales nonetheless going to unbranded objects, the class is ripe for a serious luxurious takeover. Since the beginning of 2019, LVMH has acquired Tiffany & Co for $15.8bn, Richemont has purchased Buccellati from Chinese group Gangtai and vogue homes Gucci, Prada and Giorgio Armani have launched nice jewelry strains.
Laid out in entrance of the designer, beside a bottle of Perrier Citron and a packet of cigarettes, is an edited collection of the brand new assortment, made up of 32 rings, necklaces, brooches, earrings and bracelets (most of it’s already on mortgage to shiny magazines to {photograph}) with costs starting from £1,600 to £31,000. The type is characteristically brassy, edgy however surprisingly glossy, realised in yellow gold, onyx and diamonds, the one color an electrical, chlorophyll-green tsavorite dotted right here or there. Each piece is made with 18k recycled or Responsible Jewellery Council-certified gold and traceable gems. The French workshops chosen to make the jewelry are additionally RJC-certified to make sure better transparency in the course of the craftsmanship course of.
Without a nice jewelry archive from which to attract, Rousteing riffed on previous designs from the home’s ready-to-wear, with the intention of constructing 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 assortment revolves round key home codes such because the coat of arms, typically pressed into the gold buttons that end the home’s signature blazers. In the jewelry providing it may be discovered on delicate, medallion-like discs that punctuate the finer items within the assortment 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 assortment of 2012. The home’s labyrinth monogram, paying homage to a Greek key sample, first launched by founder Pierre Balmain in 1970 in a nod to French Renaissance gardens, runs the size of bracelets, wraps across the finger or is abbreviated into single pendants or earrings. Finally, the gathering’s assertion necklace, half gold chain, half jet black beading interrupted by a coat of arms focus was impressed by the wood beaded bracelet from Rousteing’s father.
“What I love about this collection is that it is genderless,” provides 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 dad and mom and raised in Bordeaux is a uncommon instance of an individual of color in a high-ranking artistic place at a luxurious vogue home, an imbalance he’s 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 private acceptance have additionally been part of Rousteing’s personal journey. In October 2020, the designer suffered first and second diploma burns alongside the size of his physique. Though normally candid — a movie crew documented the seek for his organic dad and mom for Netflix’s 2019 characteristic Wonder Boy — Rousteing saved the accident and subsequent year-long therapeutic course of a secret, opening as much as his followers in an Instagram submit and an op-ed for Vogue, describing how the incident had compelled him to re-evaluate his obsession with authenticity and perfectionism.
Rousteing is enthusiastic about what a contemporary vogue and jewelry home ought to symbolize: “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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