Pattern and Fantasy at Balmain

Whenever I walk up the long stone staircase of the Théâtre de Chaillot after a show, I invariably think of Helmut Lang. How odd: He has been out of fashion for 20 years, and yet in that monumental space, built in 1937, my mind always skips back to a day around 1990, when I stood near one of the pillars — I often got “standing” then — and watched these strange new clothes come down the runway. I always looked out for the somber model Cordula Reyer, one of Lang’s regulars.

“We all used to have our own way of walking,” Paulina Porizkova, a star model of the 1980s and ’90s and a face of Estée Lauder, said last night at the theater as she waited backstage for the Balmain show to begin. Born in the former Czechoslovakia in 1965, Porizkova recalled that models used to smile and look left and right, even making eye contact with people. “Now they just walk straight,” she said. She let out a light laugh. Porizkova, wearing a pink-beige silk gown and white stiletto sandals for her special finale appearance, hoped she wouldn’t smile or laugh too much. She guessed she hadn’t been on a runway since the late ’80s.

Balmain
Photo: Courtesy of Balmain

Today, much of fashion is about what surrounds it. The marketing, the celebrities, and the hordes of fans crammed outside the shows behind police barricades. Cardi B made an entrance at Balmain, and clients were decked out in the designer Oliver Rousteing’s ultrafitted, embellished clothes. Rousteing held two shows on Wednesday, one for more than 300 eager clients, and the company put up a giant screen in the Trocadéro for the public to watch the girls loop around his runway, eyes aimed forward like darts. Everything is business today and thus a little predictable.

Balmain
Photo: Courtesy of Balmain

“I agree — fashion is flat. Fashion doesn’t take risks,” Rousteing said, adding, “There’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning and saying, ‘Maybe I tried to please people rather than myself.’” Rousteing, who has been Balmain’s creative chief since 2011 — now one of the longest tenures in the profession — said, “I think the recipe of fashion is not to be trendy. The recipe of fashion is to be you.”

That isn’t just rhetoric. Rousteing started wearing a personal uniform of a black tailored jacket with extremely peaked shoulders, a T-shirt, and black leather pants, and he found that customers, of any gender, wanted the same look. That’s largely what he offered in this concise show: those superhero shoulders, a clean neckline, taut hips, and long insect legs, sometimes with an extra miniskirted layer in black leather.

Balmain
Photo: Courtesy of Balmain

Although the collection was not as dynamic and joyous as many of Rousteing’s previous ones, it still looked undeniably Balmain when he plunged into pattern and fantasy. Blown-up, painterly images of a woman’s face, hands, and red-lacquered nails detailed some dresses and skirts, a vaguely Pop Art–meets–Renaissance technique he also used in his fall 2024 men’s collection. And other molded creations evoked the contours of a female face or body and even a perfume bottle. The reference was partly to Pierre Balmain’s 1946 scent Vent Vert, and Rousteing made other connections to fragrance and beauty — the house recently launched a beauty line — with box-style purses, cosmetic hues, and high heels shaped like perfume bottles.

Courrèges
Photo: Courtesy of Courreges

For the past two or three seasons, including his impressive collection for Gaultier Couture this past June, Nicolas Di Felice has been sharpening his design for Courrèges. Di Felice offers further proof, as if proof is needed, that it takes a while for a designer working for a legendary brand to find its contemporary motor. He quickly gave Courrèges a cool, sexy club look that clicked with young women, but it was hard to see a design that truly leaped forward, that addressed the body in a striking way.

Di Felice has done that now with his last two collections. In a way, the two collections — fall 2024 and spring 2025, both predominantly in black and white, both directly minimalist — talk to each other. Where fall was more covered and tersely structured, spring is a sensual peel-off, starting with a black hooded cocoon of a coat (one editor referred to the sleek, featureless garment as a condom) and then one or two more tailored looks that gradually broke down in form, revealing the body.

Courrèges
Photo: Courtesy of Courreges

As the centerpiece of the show, a round pool of water with a scum of silvery beads, churned and churned, Di Felice kept reducing the clothes to elemental lines and blocks — that is, bandeau tops that were basically censor bars over the breasts, thanks to flesh-tone straps in the back, and sleek pants or leather puttees. The legs of some trousers were connected in the back with a wide band in the same fabric, a look that made me think of Vivienne Westwood’s original punk S&M trousers, yet Di Felice made the look his; and the band could be unsnapped and left to hang. I also loved the simple ingenuity of tight black trousers with a pleated section of sheer black fabric stitched between the legs for a modern dress-up look. The section was ample enough for easy movement and coolly minimal enough to deflate the usual red-carpet opulence. Brilliant gesture, brilliant collection.

Dries Van Noten
Photo: Courtesy of Dries Van Noten

If the Dries Van Noten show left me with any thought, it was that brands, however established, need strong creative leadership. Van Noten decided to retire earlier this year, and, for now, the collections are being designed by the studio team. While there were some decent elements in the show on Wednesday, like lingerie-inspired separates and dresses and lots of spring coats, I could really sense the absence of a guiding hand, a person with taste. Far too many pink-peach tones looked mother-of-the-bride, and a few fabrics looked cheap. Van Noten himself had taste but also a feeling for the particular, the obscure and sophisticated, and this felt like generic Dries.

Dries Van Noten
Photo: Courtesy of Dries Van Noten

Dries Van Noten
Photo: Courtesy of Dries Van Noten