How incredibly traumatic: Olivier Rousteing revealed recently that in October of 2020, a freak fireplace accident badly burned his face and body, and he’d been hiding it from the public while he tried to recover. That is awful. So, it’s little wonder that he turned his late September show into a celebration of his recovery and his tenure at Balmain — he was, when he took the job, the first Black person to head a historic French fashion house — by opening it with Beyoncé’s narration and closing it with a capsule of his favorite archival looks from across the decade, worn by the likes of Naomi Campbell and Natalia Vodianova and Carla Bruni. The new stuff is… well, he’s doing a lot of stuff with polka dots and stripes, at least? But also navels and nipples. Still, holy cats, that he has produced ANYTHING since October 2020 is a miracle in and of itself.
It’s a BIG show, and there ARE a couple interesting things amid the nonsense. If you want to skip to the archival stuff, it starts with Naomi on slide 99 (!!).
