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Olivier Rousteing on his plan for world domination and why he spends 8 hours each day on social media



“A lot of people think that I’m the rebel in fashion, but I never tried to be that, I just follow my instincts,” says Olivier Rousteing, the disarmingly polite and handsome 32-year-old creative director of French luxury house Balmain.

So far, they have been instincts well worth trusting.

Since he took the helm of Balmain in 2011 aged just 25 – and became the youngest creative director in Paris since Yves Saint Laurent (who was 21) – Rousteing has been the driving force behind a major renaissance for the 74-year-old brand. The business has grown to four times the size it was in 2010, opened a host of boutiques in the world’s fashion capitals and launched new men’s, children’s, accessory and eyewear collections since he took the helm. Sales at Balmain, which was purchased outright by Qatari Investment group Mayhoola in 2016, are, according to Business of Fashion, expected to reach a cool €240 million in 2019.

Rousteing’s is an incredible story. Adopted by a wealthy couple from an orphanage at the age of one, he grew up in Bordeaux before moving to Paris to study fashion. On graduating in 2003, he took a job in Italy designing for Cavalli, where he spent five years before moving to Balmain and to head up their womenswear division. He had worked at the French house for just two years when he was given the top job.

To be such a young designer, and a gay black one at that, taking the helm at an established French fashion house was not without its challenges. “I faced a lot of hypocrites,” Rousteing explains, “I learnt that some people will ignore you for years and then only follow you when everything is fine. So I learnt to take a distance from certain people in the industry.”

Olivier Rouseting at the Balmain men’s 2020 show in Paris on January 18, 2019.(AFP/Getty Images)

When it came to the clothes, he didn’t waste any time injecting Balmain’s traditions of high-octane glamour with some sex and excitement. An AW14 collection featuring studded leather as armour and an SS15 heavy on themes of fetish and bondage are both good examples of his unapologetically daring approach.

Influenced by 21st century culture, and in particular music, Rousteing designs clothes inspired by and for his famed #BalmainArmy; a diverse cast of “strong women,” with an equally strong combined Instagram following, that includes Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Rihanna and Cara Delevingne. This army of fashion supers (and genuine friends) feature in the brand’s campaigns, on the runway and are also regularly dressed in Balmain for events.

Take Kim and Kanye. In 2014 they fronted Balmain’s advertising campaign, then the two showed up at the 2016 Met Gala in suitably embellished Balmain outfits and later that year Rousteing and Kanye released a joint music-cum-campaign video.

Kim, like most other members of the #BalmainArmy, also features regularly on Rousteing’s personal Instagram. With 5.4 million followers, he’s is the most followed French fashion designer on the platform, and he has made a very conscious decision to leverage his personal brand to further that of Balmain’s.

“I was so young when I started at the brand I thought let’s share something that the others [creative directors] don’t want to share… my morning routine, my behind-the-scenes. I wanted to show if it can happen to me it can happen to you. It was a really inclusive message.”

Senior members of the business were initially uncomfortable with this selfie-heavy strategy. “Working for a French luxury house people asked ‘is it luxury to share so much on social media?’ I was like if you are ok to sell luxury on the Internet, you should be fine with social media. Because it’s the future,” says Rousteing, who also steered Balmain to become the first luxury fashion house to hit the million follower mark on the platform (it now has 9.8 million followers).

“I just really tried to follow who I am and what I love and what I believe in. And sometimes people were like those are not the codes from the fashion system but I was like ‘who cares about a fashion system? Let’s create our own codes,’” he says.

Rousteing admits to spending between seven and eight hours a day on social media, and using an average of five filters on each immaculate selfie. For him, creating a universe around the brand is a fundamental aspect of the job. “The clothes on the runway are just ten per cent” of what the role of creative director entails, he says. “You have to explain what your world is. You need to have something to say. I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not.”

I meet Rousteing in the bar at the London Edition hotel. Looking every bit the insouciant rebel in skin-tight leather trousers and a further-than-halfway unbuttoned black and white silk striped shirt, he’s in town on a whirlwind trip to launch the brand’s first ever sneakers collection at a pop-up in Selfridges. Starting at £495, the trainers were launched to offer a more attainable – for Balmain’s jet-set customer at least – entry point to the brand.

Democratising high fashion has been a theme of Rousteing’s eight year tenure. “I never believed that luxury should go against democracy,” he says. “I feel like sometimes people think that luxury should just be untouchable, exclusive. I think we need to open to the world and that’s always what I try to do.”

Just weeks prior to our meeting, he’d shaken things up once again by opening the doors of the Balmain men’s spring/summer 2020 show in Paris to the public. Coinciding with France’s Fête de la Musique, the show, whose proceeds went to AIDS charity (RED), was a festival-like celebration of fashion and music that saw 2000 young Parisians flock to the city’s historic Jardin des Plantes to dance and scream their way through the high-gloss spectacle.

Olivier Rousteing at the end of the Balmain  Men’s spring/summer 2020 show on June 21, 2019 in Paris (AFP/Getty Images)

A desire to bulldoze the typically exclusive, industry-only fashion show format came from a general sense of ennui with the system. “I’m bored of all the journalists sitting on the front row for five minutes then jumping in their car when they haven’t even seen all the looks you have worked so hard on,” says Rousteing, hinting that this format was not a one-off. “If you’re not happy with going to a show, if you don’t like your job then just stay home. I’m just going to get people to come who enjoy my show.”

He’s also determined for Balmain to reach those he can’t physically host. In September, he launched a ground-breaking partnership with Facebook Oculus to allow a new audience from around the world join in for an exclusive 360 view of the collection, and when he debuted the brand’s first couture show in 16 years in January, he launched a special app so fans could watch the show live on their phone.

Inclusivity and diversity are subjects Rousteing refers to constantly, and has been fighting for since 2014. “I know that today diversity feels like an old topic but it’s not for me because back when we started in 2013/14, there was no diversity in fashion week. People were calling shows ‘modern’ because they had a neoprene sweatshirt, but they didn’t see that the casting was so old at the same time. How can you call a collection modern when you don’t represent the world and what it is today?”

Diversity is one of the things he says he loves most about the all-powerful Kim-Kanye union. “I remember when I was young I didn’t see a white girl with a black boy other than Boris Becker and his girlfriend. I didn’t have many people that I could recognise myself in. I think the fact they became so strong as a new power generation and there’s diversity, for me was really important.”

Best mates with Rihanna, J-Lo and the Kardashian-Wests (he even has Kris Jenner on speed dial), a scroll of Rousteing’s Insta feed paints a picture of a society darling always in arms reach of a glass of Cristal and a private jet. Instagram is however a notoriously good tool of deception, and Rousteing’s is no exception.  

“You probably think I’m drinking champagne with Kim every day in LA,” he quips. “The reality is I am someone who loves to go home and watch Netflix, and I never do dinners out during the week ‘cos I’m always working.”

In fact, Rousteing hits the tiles but once a month and the rest of the time his weeks are structured with 6am wakeups, two hours of working out each morning (mostly boxing, twice a week he will run a casual 20k before work) and sushi dinners in the studio. He sleeps for six hours a night, meditates regularly, practices yoga twice a week and is such a big fan of Barry’s Bootcamp that he recently designed its Paris branch some Balmain x Barry’s workout kit.

Perhaps in part to rectify this chasm between perception and reality, Rousteing is making a documentary about his life. Directed by Anissa Bonnefont Di Stefano and produced by Stella Maris Pictures, the film–set for release in September – will delve into his career and search to find his birth parents. “The documentary was about going deeply into where I came from,” he explains. “It was a way to show my moments of doubts, who I am, where I come from and why my parents abandoned me at such a young age.

“It was a way to show my real background and have no filter.”

Designer, influencer, events manager, and documentary director…does he ever feel overwhelmed by the to-do list I wonder? “No it’s never enough. I actually feel frustrated when it doesn’t go fast enough,” he says, matter-of-fact. “I think I’m more overwhelmed when I think that I can’t achieve a goal than actually being scared of a goal.” He pauses then: “The planet is so huge, imagine if the whole world could know Balmain.”

There’s a swirling rumour that he could be next in line for the Chanel throne. But, if Balmain manages to hang on to the tenacious talent of Olivier Rousteing, perhaps one day the whole world will.



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