What Balmain
Who Christope Decarnin is the creative director
When Since Fall-Winter 2006 Decarnin has been at the helm
Why The House of Balmain, established in 1945, has been reinvented and its fortunes dramatically reversed. 2009 was the undeniably the year of Balmain
www.balmain.com
Balmain’s latest investors certainly don’t shy away from head-on confrontations with heritage. By appointing Christophe Decarnin as the head of the sixty-something-year-old house, the Balmain label found a designer with enough rock-and-rock irreverence and mature talent to stand on the shoulders of giants and lead the way forward into future.
The Balmain label was born in 1945 and quickly became a staple in the closets of such high-profile tastemakers as Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, and Sophia Loren. Couturier Pierre Balmain's reputation was on a par with Christian Dior, and Cristobal Balenciaga; indeed fashion historians assert that he was responsible for the classic feminine hourglass silhouette later dubbed ‘Dior's New Look’. Oscar de la Renta took over the house 11 years after Balmain's death in 1982, and designed lovely lady-like evening dresses with forgiving drapery and pleats that were perfect for grande dames familiar with the house’s glory days. But de la Renta left in 2002 and the advancing age of Balmain's steady clientele created concern. Laurent Mercier took over in 2003 but the house soon fell into financial hard times and was forced to file for bankruptcy.
Investors revived the brand in 2005 and hired the then forty-year-old Decarnin, fresh from a decade's work at Paco Rabanne. Within two seasons he flipped the label's associations from charity balls to disco balls. The striking venue for Balmain's Spring/ Summer 09 collection was the drained swimming pool of the Paris Ritz Carlton, the same opulent yet irreverent setting where Gianni Versace used to erect his catwalks. In the words of Sarah Mower's report on Style.com, the show "certainly proved he's the leader of the disco fever he has single-handedly triggered this season."
His micro-dresses decorated with chainmail, sequins and Swarovski crystal are celebrity favourites, recalling original fans of the label. To further confirm the force of his arrival, Decarnin has created a signature garment whose refreshing and culturally relevant silhouette made it last season's "New Look." For Fall/ Winter 2009, Decarnin pioneered an exaggeratedly peak-shouldered jacket that was elegant and empowering – and which offered the sense of wrapping oneself in armour during the frightening and unstable start of the recession. Yet in spite of leading the pack with symbolically resonant recession-era ware, Balmain made also headlines when its ripped jeans, priced at over 4,000 USD, sold out across Europe.
