Olivier Rousteing discusses his career and vision as the creative director of Balmain. He started working at Balmain at age 25 and has built it into one of the most desired fashion brands. Rousteing emphasizes expressing his vision through the shows and embracing different styles. He also discusses the importance of social media and connecting directly with fans, saying he cares more about selling clothes and Instagram followers' comments than fashion critics' reviews.

1. ” S h e w a s r e a l ly c u t e . I w a s o n m y I n s ta g r a m a n d s h e
t e x t e d m e o n m y I n s ta g r a m s ay i n g ’ T h a n k yo u b a b y f o r
t h e p r e s e n t,’ b e c au s e I s e n t h e r a d r e s s . S o e v e ry b o dy
s ta rt e d t o r e t w e e t a n d s a i d ’ R i h a n na t h a n k s O l i v i e r o n
h i s i n s ta g r a m .” I r e p l i e d “ Yo u s h o u l d pa s s b y t h e s t u d i o ’
a n d s h e c a m e a n d s tay e d f o r f i v e h o u r s , w e j u s t h a d f u n ,
l i s t e n e d t o m u s i c r e a l ly l o u d, t r i e d o n s o m e c l o t h e s . I
w e n t t o h e r c o n c e rt, w e n t b a c k s ta g e a n d pa rt i e d w i t h
h e r . A n d f ro m t h at m o m e n t I j u s t l o v e d h e r .”
D u r i n g h i s f i v e years with Balmain,
Olivier Rousteing has built one of the world’s most
desired fashion brands today. Beyond his work as
Balmain’s designer, he questions the fashion indus-
try’s capacity to evolve in a fast paced constantly
changing world. We met him a few days before the
Balmain Spring/ Summer 2016 show in Paris to
talk about his work at Balmain and why he thinks
“likes” are more important than fashion critics.
Anne-Sophie Berbille: You were born in Bordeaux
29 years ago, what are you most proud of so far?
Olivier Rousteing: Balmain for me has been such a
beautiful experience. I got the job when I was 25
and I’ve faced so many things. What I am most
proud of is what I’ve built. When I started working
as a fashion designer, I was making fashion shows
and beautiful clothes. Now I think I do more than
that, I express a vision.
AB: What was your life like as a teenager? OR:
Bordeaux is a really conservative city, and I was a
lonely child, adopted. I was always trying to please
everybody. I was actually really scared of being sent
back to the orphanage, which is stupid. I was really
diligent in school and I was the perfect student. I
started to love fashion when I was seventeen. I re-
member wearing moon boots from Dior in winter,
and my parents were like, “What’s going on?”
AB: How did you realize that your adoptive par-
ents were not your biological parents? OR: I did
not understand I was adopted until I was elev-
en years old! When your parents teach you that
you are their son because they love you, there is
no matter of skin color, or background or where
you’re from. I think I grew up not seeing the color
of my parents, not seeing my own color. I think
it was the eyes of the world that showed me I was
adopted.
AB: What have you kept from the legacy of Pierre
Balmain, what is still relevant for Balmain today?
OR: I think I kept everything from Pierre Bal-
main. He dressed big stars like Grace Kelly. His
‘Jolie Madame’ style that is really famous, I think
he always treated the woman as a hero, the struc-
ture of the waist, the shoulders; he always kept the
woman really strong. At the same time he worked
a lot on the tailoring which I do too.
AB: Tell us how you approach a new season? OR:
It takes six months to prepare a show. To be honest
with you, my ideas can come from a lot of dif-
ferent places, like travels, I can fall in love with
a CD, a country, a piece of furniture, a video on
MTV or a song. The archives inspire me too. It is
really depending on my mood and my emotions.
Vegas inspired my first show, a place that I had
never seen. Last Spring/ Summer was inspired by
the censorship of Rihanna on Instagram and why
women aren’t allowed to show some parts of their
body in social media sites.
AB: What about next season’s inspiration? OR: For
H&M I am doing a big celebration of my 5 years at
Balmain. It helped me a lot to push myself in a new
direction, still keeping my DNA but I don’t want
to repeat myself. The H&M collaboration helped
T h e I nstagr a m v i rt uo so
p h o t o g r a p h y b y J o h n s c a r i s b r i c k S t y l i n g b y
Da r c y B a c k l a r i n t e rv i e w b y A n n e - S o p h i e B e r b i l l e

2. me a lot because doing #HMBalmanation after 9
seasons, you realize that your world is already out
there, and I am not even 30! It helped me to think
about what’s going to be the next step.
AB: Seasons are not what they used to be? OR: It is
the old system meeting the new generation. With
Instagram, everything goes very fast. The combi-
nation is interesting. There is a fashion show, it is
winter, there is a fashion show again, and it is sum-
mer. I think it’s cool I would not change that. The
question is how fashion is going to survive.
AB: How do you approach casting for your shows?
OR: When I choose girls I look for personalities,
my girls are really strong. There is no point just
showing clothes. Being a bombshell is about being
strong, it’s not about boobs and ass. It’s about be-
ing strong and having the guts to say, “fuck you”‘.
That is what I like about girls you know, they are
like super heroes.
AB:You’re trying to promote black culture: do you
feel people are less racist than before in the fashion
industry? OR: Sometimes people are just old-fash-
ioned. What is interesting about fashion for me is
showing the world as it is and how I would like it
to be. In my ideal world you would not even men-
tion it, and you would not even see that we cast
black, white and Asian girls. It is interesting that
people ask me this question today because I think
five years ago they would not have asked it. I hope
that in five years you will not ask this question be-
cause it will have become normal.
AB: In which way does Kim Kardashian inspire
you? OR: She has more than 44 million followers
on Instagram; she has a whole country following
her in a way. I think she is the kind of girl that
people want to know. She is strong because she is
herself. She is also my friend, I can call her when
I have problems, I can call her when I just want to
have fun. What is amazing with Kim is that she
does what she wants to do. She doesn’t care about
what people will think.
AB: You said earlier that ‘I am not only designing
clothes, I bring a new vision to fashion.’ What
about fashion upsets you, and what do you want
to bring? OR: What upsets me about fashion is
that sometimes people think something is really
avant-garde when I think it’s really old! When
they have one point of view; and don’t understand
that fashion week is about different styles. You
can’t expect that everybody will do a grey over-
sized coat, not everybody can be inspired by the
nineties minimalism and not everybody should
have the same casting.
Fashion marketing is wrong, it’s not because you
are big advertisers that you should get your cover
on the magazine! And when you do your own
publicity on Instagram, people don’t like it because
you have more followers than they sell magazines,
so many things should change…
At the same time what is amazing about fashion
is that it is a dream, a bubble. We should just keep
calm and remeber ‘I work in fashion, I’m not cur-
ing cancer’, just enjoy and don’t be bored. At the
front row of my show people sometimes look
bored. Like you’re not allowed to show your emo-
tions, but maybe it’s so terrible to see my clothes
and that’s why they are blasé, haha. Perhaps this
bothers me because I am young and I don’t want to
be bored. Maybe I will be bored when I’m 50 too.
Sometimes I just wish people would enjoy them-
selves more.
AB: With Decarnin’s departure we can see that
the pressure in the fashion industry is very high,
how do you deal with it? OR: I have fun, I enjoy
myself, my work and the people I have around
me. I feel blessed for everything I have; the posi-
tion I have today, that I can travel whenever I
want, my friends, I can party how much I want.
I’ve found my balance, my work is amazing and
my life is incredible. I said to H&M that ‘the day
I stop dreaming, I stop working in fashion.’ Of
course I feel the pressure but I think the challenge
makes me stronger.
AB: Do you care about selling clothes? OR: I think
selling clothes is more important than critics. The
press can love you, but if you don’t sell, you’re
fucked. Fashion is a business and you don’t just
do clothes for yourself. You do clothes for selling.
That’s the most important aspect for me.
AB: Is success something that’s hard to learn? OR:
It’s not easy; my life is different from before. Now,
I think it’s easier to do an interview with Anna
Wintour than going on a date, but if that’s the price
to pay, I would do it again, and again, and again.
AB: Dealing with social-media exposure, do you
ask yourself how much you should reveal? OR: I
never ask myself that, or at least I don’t ask myself
that enough, that is what my PR is going to say
(laughs). I reveal everything. Instagram is about
reality, about your own reality. I love Instagram;
it’s a way of connecting people. Instagram helps
me not to be depressed when I see the reviews in
some magazines. It’s so nice when you wake up in
the morning and some guys from whatever coun-
try tell you ‘You are such a big inspiration’. I mean
it is just so positive. I love revealing who I am; two
years ago a lot of people said ‘Oh my God, he is so
over the top’, and so on. But now, have a look at
the Instagram profiles of other designers; they all
take selfies too.
AB: Do you think that posing with celebrities and
taking selfies could affect your credibility in the
long run? OR: That’s an interesting question. I
take a selfie with my friends, that’s two minutes
of my life. I work from ten to one o’clock in the
morning at my office. You can still see comments
like ‘he’s becoming more a socialite than a design-
er’ but you know what; sales have increased 50%
these past five years because I work so much, my
business is on top. So I don’t worry about what
people are going to say about me.
AB: You said you are more concerned with your
instagram followers’ comments, than with the
fashion critics’: can you evolve that? OR: I saw this
Cathy Horyn thing, she said that people are look-
ing at ‘likes’ more than reviews. I think the fashion
critics today are so confused. If you are a big adver-
tiser you are not going to get a bad review, even if
your show is a mess, because journalists don’t want
to get fired. I think sometimes in fashion there is
no objectivity. On instagram, you “like” because
you like. You’re not paid to like, you’re not paid
to leave a comment or to dislike. I am not forc-
ing anybody to follow me or like my pictures. In
the end you realize that if you look at “likes” you
understand the market more than if you read the
reviews because sometimes a review can be really
good but you don’t sell at all.
AB: What about love? Are you dating? OR: I don’t
have time for dating. I am proud of my job but
when you have this kind of job your’re so exposed
and you need to find the right person, who can
handle that. I am turning 30 and I know I haven’t
really achieved a lot in that area. I still hope I am
going to find someone who will protect me from
this world sometimes.
AB: What do you like to do when you’re not work-
ing? OR:I love to watch cartoons and I love Simpsons.
I watch MTV, I listen to music, and I can dance in my
place on my own like crazy. I love running; I exercise
a lot and party with my friends when travelling. I love
to spend time on my own, trying to figure out who
I am and who I’m going to be because everything is
happening so fast. You know who Olivier Rouste-
ing for Balmain is, but you don’t know who Olivier
Rousteing is on his own.
AB: If you had Pierre Balmain in front of you now:
what would you ask him? OR: Are you proud of
what I do?

4. all fashion in this story, Balmain.
Makeup Adrien Pinault,
Management Artists. Hair
Tomohiro Ohashi, Management
Artists. Casting Elodie
Yelmani, Creartvt Paris.
Model Lina Hoss, PMA Hamburg.
Digital printing Daniel
Lindgren. Thanks to KCD Paris.
Shot at the Balmain, Paris,
headquarter September 2015.