Fashion

Olivier Rousteing has stepped down as creative director of Balmain after 14 years, the house announced today. The news closes one of the longest, most disruptive and most publicly visible designer tenures in 21st-century fashion.

“I am deeply proud of all that I’ve accomplished, and profoundly grateful to my exceptional team at Balmain, my chosen family, in a place that has been my home for the past 14 years. My thanks go to Mr. Rachid Mohamed Rachid and Matteo Sgarbossa for their unwavering belief in me and for entrusting me with this extraordinary opportunity. As I look ahead to the future and the next chapter of my creative journey, I will always hold this treasured time close to my heart,” said Rousteing in a statement.

“I would like to express my deep gratitude to Olivier for writing such an important chapter in the history of Balmain House. Olivier’s contribution and passion over the past years will leave an indelible mark on the history of fashion,” added Balmain CEO Matteo Sgarbossa.

When Rousteing was handed the Balmain job in April 2011, aged 25, he became the youngest non-founding designer to lead a major Paris house since Yves Saint Laurent was appointed at Dior. He was also the first Black person ever appointed creative leader of a heritage French house across all its design categories. During 2012, his first full year in charge, Balmain recorded revenues of €30.4 million and profit of €3.1 million: last year its revenues were estimated at €300 million.

Despite that tenfold fiscal uptick over his tenure, Balmain’s recently appointed leadership is committed to imposing different creative directions in order to drive future growth. The question is whether it will choose to appoint an established designer lead in Rousteing’s stead, or alternatively opt for the high-risk but also high-reward strategy of giving the Balmain platform to a creative as untested as Rousteing was when his story at the house began.

Then unknown outside the industry — and largely unknown within it — he had been working in the Balmain studio under his predecessor Christophe Decarnin since 2009. His appointment was backed by Balmain’s then-owner Alain Hivelin, who had rescued the house from near-bankruptcy: when Decarnin unexpectedly left, Hivelin took a gamble. “I will be forever grateful to Alain Hivelin for his vision, his support and friendship,” Rousteing said after Hivelin’s death in 2014.

Despite being “terrified” at his Spring/Summer 2012 debut, Rousteing steadily built in confidence. From his earliest seasons, Rousteing characterized himself as both custodian to Pierre Balmain’s heritage and disruptor to fashion’s wider conservatism. Alongside high-impact, heavily embellished and, often, critically divisive collections, he developed what he termed the Balmain Army: a collective social-media driven community built around diversity, visibility and direct connection with the public. “When I started to have a lot of diversity in the casting, and when I started to play hip-hop music, some people started to question what I was doing,” he later recalled. “And then Rihanna came backstage and said, ‘You’re changing the rules of this fashion world.’”