Beyoncé and Olivier Rousteing are coming together again for another Balmain collaboration — this time, inspired by her latest album, “Renaissance,” and taking it up a few notches, all the way up to haute couture.
As Fashionista reports, on the cover for the April 2023 issue of Vogue France, Beyoncé models what’s touted as a “wearable album,” titled “Renaissance Couture”: a black body-con gown studded throughout with rhinestones.
“Thank you @olivier_rousteing and @balmain for bringing Renaissance to life in couture. Designing alongside you was freeing — thank you for allowing me to celebrate the human form, to take artistic risks, to push boundaries and to freely express myself” she wrote in an Instagram caption.
Beyoncé and Rousteing previously worked together on her wardrobe to headline performance at Coachella in 2018, as well as a subsequent capsule collection. According to a press release from Balmain, this project unfolded a little differently: Rousteing sketched a series of looks inspired by the album, which was released last year, with no real expectation, and only sent them to Beyoncé and her team after the fact — and with a slightly different pitch.
“This time, I wasn’t asking her to simply be my muse,” Rousteing said, in a statement. “Instead, I was very much hoping that she might be up for something completely new: an actual, true collaboration between two creators who are both obsessed with pushing their art to the next level. I wanted us to be co-designers.”
There are 16 looks, one for each of the 16 tracks on the album. It took five months to narrow down sketches, create the samples and then transport them to Los Angeles, where Beyoncé and stylist Marni Senofonte finalized them, alongside Rousteing and a makeshift Balmain West Coast atelier.
“From the beginning, we knew that this collaboration was going to be unlike any of the others that either of us had worked on before,” Rousteing said. “We jumped in, headfirst, with no commercial game plan — for this is a collection that is based completely on our shared passion for melding together music and fashion. The lack of budgeting, roll-out and marketing plans eliminated the typical boundaries and constraints, creating a dream environment that allowed us to simply experiment, dream and push each other to the max. And that’s exactly what we did.”
If some of these ensembles look familiar, it’s because Beyoncé has worn them to recent events, such as the BRITs and the Grammys. She’s about to embark on the “Renaissance” word tour this spring — first stop is Stockholm on May 10 — so it will be exciting to see if she wears them on stage!
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