How did he manage to make such an impression and create a brand that delighted women of the new-look era? Let's go back to the very beginning - Pierre Balmain's childhood.

Biography

Balmain was born on May 18, 1914, in Saint-Jean de Marienne, France. His mother worked in a boutique called Galeries Parisiennes, run by two of his aunts and owned by the man who would soon become Pierre's father, Maurice Balmain.

As a child, Pierre spent a lot of time in the store, subconsciously absorbing fashion trends by making and dressing paper mannequins. His life seemed perfect at the time, but when his father died suddenly, Pierre (then aged seven) and his mother were left on the brink of poverty. Even before his death, the business was not doing well, but the family was only able to find out about it after the death of the head of the family. This event had an invaluable impact on the young boy's perception of life - fashion no longer seemed to him just a busy, creative process, but much more a business that should bring profit.

1952

In 1925, at the age of 11, Pierre Balmain won a scholarship to a boarding school in Chambery, where he practiced dancing, horseback riding, and fencing. At the end of his education, despite his young age, he was already a pro-lifer. Balmain knew he wanted to work in fashion but decided to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris to please his mother. As he suspected, studying architecture was not for him, and soon the young man wrote to several designers asking for part-time work. Thus, he met the couturiers Lucien Lelong, Lanvin, and the Englishman Edward Molineux. The latter provided him with a place to work.

Balmain worked for Molineux until 1936 when he was mobilized. It was from Molineux that Pierre in the future transferred the elegance of the English style to his collections.

Lucien Lelong

The next step in Balmain's career was working at the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he gained his first practical design experience. At Lelong's, he met Christian Dior. These two designers quickly found a common language and became not only comrades in the shop but also friends in real life. Soon Pierre offered Dior to cooperate, but the latter after a while after agreeing refused, and the designer duo broke up. They parted as enemies with a sense of betrayal. According to rumors, outside of business, Dior and Balmain also did not communicate. After that, Pierre went free swimming and opened his own brand.

At this point, we go back to the first show and the official date of birth of Pierre Balmain's eponymous brand, October 12, 1945; post-war time, economic collapse, and declining morale, and here a certain French designer presents feminine outfits with a pronounced waistline for festive parties. Doesn't it remind you of Dior? Some fashion critics compare Balmain's work with Christian's and attribute it to the creation of the new-look, but look closely at Balmain's outfits, and you will see that the couturier used these techniques even before Dior.

Despite the decadent mood of the line with the predominance of gloomy shades, the images made a sensation with the ravenous public. Photographer, style icon, and costume designer Cecil Beaton, as well as the artist, illustrator, and designer Christian Berard and two of the top gossip columnists of the period, spread the rumor of a "new creature in town." And so Balmain's star was lit. As the designer wrote in "My Years & Seasons," published in 1953, "It is difficult for a couture fashion house to break out of its original category." But to one and all, Balmain was able to make a name for himself as a game-changing designer.

However, he lacked the finances to develop the brand. At the time of 1945, he had one million francs on hand but had to borrow another 200,000 from his mother and sell a third of his business to two friends for a similar amount.

Luck was not on Balmain's side, and the manager at Barclay's Bank in Paris, to which Pierre applied, turned out to be a friend of Molineux, his previous employer and mentor. The bank hardships lasted six years until the designer was able to take full ownership of his brand. During that period, the fashion house's popularity skyrocketed. Balmain's client base included British women, American women, as well as a large number of South American women.

The truism is that in the fashion industry, every couturier needs a famous muse who will make him known in wide circles, as Audrey Hepburn once did with Hubert de Givenchy. And if the designer had problems with money, the muse Balmain was lucky.

Once, on his return from a business trip to Bangkok, the fashion designer was contacted by the Thai embassy with a request to discuss the closet of Queen Sirikit. After working with a member of the royal family, the couturier's client list was enriched with a number of nobles and diplomats.

Queen Sirikit in Balmain

However, Balmain's goal was not fame, but money. Unlike other designers, Pierre was the best at finding clients and attracting the most famous and influential people in the world. He dressed Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, and others.

Already in 1949, the brand opened a boutique in New York, and two years later, in 1951, it established itself in the city to produce ready-to-wear collections. As a result, despite its triumphs - its 1949 Jolie Madame and 1966 Miss Balmain fragrances, as well as its merits in the fashion industry - were hardly mentioned in the history of the twentieth century on the same level as Chanel, Dior, or Balenciaga.

The fashion house was rarely mentioned despite the fact that after its sale to knitwear manufacturer Erich Freyer in 1970, the brand has employed designers such as Eric Mortensen (Balmain's lover), Alistair Blair, and Oscar de la Renta. As part of the Wool Secretary award, even Karl Lagerfeld worked at Balmain for a while. In the 60s, after minimalism and futurism came into fashion, Balmain's luxurious outfits seemed intrusive and inappropriate for the era of revolutions and upheavals. In the 70s the designer tried to remedy the situation by applying hand embroidery, despite the fact that it required a huge financial outlay. In the same decade, the brand started to produce luxury goods - accessories and watches. In 1982, shortly before his death, Balmain signed an agreement to launch a ready-to-wear line, the first collection of which was released in 1983.

The designer died at the age of 68 from liver cancer at the American Hospital in Paris. At this time, the brand's division had 130 manufacturers worldwide, producing more than 60 products.

What happened next

In the same year, the reins were handed over to Eric Mortensen, of whom Balmain said, "You are more Balmain than even me!". His words are not unfounded, as Mortensen has worked at the fashion house since 1951. The new creative director makes only a few minor innovations, which did not help the brand to succeed. In the mid-80s, the company is bought out by Alan Chevalier, who got rich selling cosmetics. Chevalier repels potential and hardened customers by selling licenses, and by the early 90s they have already produced about 220 products: from gloves to hairpieces.

Already in 1987, the Swiss company Swatch Group acquired exclusive rights for the production and distribution of watches under the Pierre Balmain brand, and in 1995 bought all the rights to the trade name.

Since the 2000s, the brand has been actively producing watches and in 2001 introduced the world's first cat-eye model. It was the Swatch Group who simplified the name to the laconic Balmain. During the same period (from 1993 to 2001), the creative director was Oscar de la Renta, who failed to fully understand the style of Balmain, so his mark in the brand remained without much attention. His collections were so unimpressed with the clients of the fashion house that they refused to buy anything and went to their competitors.

Next was the former head designer of Paco Rabanne, Christophe Decarnin, who revived the former glory of the brand: a distinct handwriting, the basis of which was femininity and creative elegance. He was able to look at tradition from a different angle, introducing 80s-style jackets, "boiled" dresses, and disco-style outfits with rivets and rhinestones. At his suggestion, the brand started to produce a men's line.

But the real sensation was made by the current creative director, Olivier Rousteing, who until 2009 headed the women's direction of the brand. Before that, he also worked for Italian designer Roberto Cavalli.

"The brand will remain chic and glamorous. It will be an evolution," Olivier Rousteing once said.

The young talent kept his word, and the debut collection of 2012 amazed the fashion world. The starting point of his images to this day has been luxury, glamor, and sexuality. It is no secret that to get into the "Balmain army," the creation of which is also the work of Olivier's hands, is the desire of every model who wants to become popular. Among Rusten's "associates" today: the Kardashian family, Alessandra Ambrosio, Natasha Poly, Milla Jovovich, Jordan Dunn, Cindy Crawford, Bella and Gigi Hadid, and others. Today the designer is actively positioning himself as a "designer of the future," involving virtual 3D models in advertising and creating augmented reality functions in stores.

Balmain under the direction of Olivier Rousteing

"The secret of elegance is to wear a mink coat as a simple coat and a simple coat as a mink coat," Pierre Balmain once said.

We cannot but agree with him and believe that genius is not only in simplicity but also in its elegant display.