Last season’s podcast focused on some of the legendary moments, designs, images and personalities associated with Pierre Balmain and his legendary “New French Style”— highlighting how Monsieur Balmain’s unique and fresh designs helped to usher in the postwar era’s golden age of Paris couture.

With this first episode of season two of the podcast, we begin an in-depth, four-part exploration of today’s Balmain, as Olivier Rousteing, the house’s creative director, continues to build upon the rich heritage of the house, while always adding his own modern, inclusive and distinctive outlook—overseeing the “Renewed French Style” that sets apart 21st-Century Balmain.

In this and each of the upcoming episodes, Rousteing discusses key Balmain moments from the past ten years, explaining the inspirations behind his favorite house collections, campaigns and special events—as well as the challenges that he faced in making each of them happen.

This episode begins with a special tenth-anniversary message for Rousteing from Beyoncé. It was delivered during the latest Balmain Festival, which took place inside an ephemeral festival village, set on an island in the middle of Paris’ Seine River. The celebration combined two days of concerts, a runway presentation of the house’s latest designs and a special retrospective, where some of the most famous models of the past 25 years wore beautiful re-editions of key Olivier Rousteing creations from the past decade. Rousteing talks to us about Beyonce’s emotional message, the festival, the show, the retrospective and the influences behind the Balmain Spring 2022 collection that was premiered on the runway.

We invite you to click to the episode’s webpage, in order to see videos and images of the designs and presentations that Rousteing will be discussing during this episode.

CREDITS L’ATELIER BALMAIN EPISODE 2.1

THE ROUSTEING ERA: “HELLO OLIVIER, IT’S BEYONCE”

Special Guest Audio: Beyoncé

Balmain Creative Director: Olivier Rousteing

Episode Direction and Production: Seb Lascoux

Balmain Historian: Julia Guillon

Episode Coordination: Jeremy Mace

Episode researched, written and presented by John Gilligan

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