Olivier Rousteing's Balmain Fall-Winter 2024 collection is inspired by Bordeaux

For Balmain’s Fall-Winter collection, Olivier Rousteing and his team, as always, started by delving into the house’s rich archives. After celebrating Monsieur Balmain’s beloved rose with a floral fantasy last season, they decided to explore the founder’s passion for gardening this time around by revisiting the fruit elements from his couture creations.

As Olivier Rousteing’s creative process unexpectedly led him back to Bordeaux, his hometown known for its vineyards, grapes became the star of the Fall-Winter 2024 collection. “Instead of Monsieur Balmain’s more familiar apple, nut and strawberry embellishments, I went all out with prints, embroideries and 3D representations of bunches of grapes—the symbol of the most famous product of my hometown, Bordeaux,” shared the designer.

A city dear to Olivier Rousteing, Bordeaux is described by him as classical and elegant. Its refined charm is expressed in the bold architectural lines and precise tailoring of Pierre Balmain’s 'New French Style'. And with Bordeaux’s rainy reputation, it’s easy to see why trench coat is the collection’s key design, reworked into a line-up of skirts, dresses, pants, and short jackets. “Throughout today’s runway, the artisans of the Balmain Atelier make very evident their mastery of traditional Parisian couture techniques, with impressive draping, perfect pleating, stunning embellishments and skilled leatherwork,” said Olivier Rousteing. “To fully appreciate their finesse, I suggest taking the time needed to make some close inspections for what might appear at first glance to be a pattern, print or cross-stitch, may reveal itself to be a remarkable, intricately beaded creation.”