Building upon a strong foundation
An Audacious, Architectural Silhouette
The house’s rich archives make clear that Pierre Balmain’s early training as an architect shaped his work—and that awe-inspiring collection of several decades’ worth of sketches, press clippings, videos and creations provides Olivier Rousteing with countless inspirations for Balmain’s 21st-century runways.
Among the fine arts, architecture has always been the central inspiration behind Monsieur Balmain’s designs, spanning nearly five decades. When he arrived in Paris in 1933 to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts, his passion for fashion was already so strong and sincere that he quickly secured an internship at the renowned couture house Molyneux. This formative experience allowed him to divide his time between architecture classes and couture training—a duality that would leave an indelible mark on his design process and creative philosophy.
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A few years after founding the House of Balmain in 1945, Pierre Balmain delivered a seminal lecture in Brussels in 1950 titled “On the Relationship between Architecture and Couture.” During this talk, he famously stated: «It is as an architect that I often react, and as an architect that I think» and “Dressmaking is the architecture of movement. There is no place for anything but life. The architect creates a static palace, sumptuous or functional, convenient or rich. The dressmaker must sew a tunic that is all of these things, and also in whatever position the wearer chooses» (“La Couture est l’architecture du mouvement”). In this lecture, Monsieur Balmain shared emotions and memories gathered from cities visited during his first world tour in 1947.
Since 1945, architecture has remained a guiding principle, infusing the construction, bold lines, intricate cuts, and ornamentation of Balmain garments. His design vocabulary also incorporates arches, pyramids, and the very essence of «geometric centers of the dresses». Elaborate architectural forms continue to inspire Balmain’s powerful silhouettes—echoed in jacket tailoring, padded shoulders, evening gown structures, intricate ornaments and exquisite openwork.
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BALMAIN ARCHITECTURE
“There is definitely a close relationship between the work of an architect and that of the couturier. The fact that one builds in stone and the other relies on muslin, that one aims to last for centuries and the other for only one season—those do not constitute essential differences.”
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A FASHION TURNING POINT
The audacity of Pierre Balmain’s first collection won the designer unanimous praise from the era’s leading fashion critics—but it was Balmain’s close friend, the American writer Alice B. Toklas, who most memorably summed up the moment. Toklas recognized the 1945 show for marking a turning point in fashion, and she proclaimed Balmain to be postwar Paris fashion’s trailblazer, responsible for introducing a startling, fresh and needed new vision that she entitled “A New French Style.”
THE BIRTH OF A NEW FRENCH STYLE
“Suddenly there was the awakening to a new understanding of what mode really was, the embellishment and the intensification of women's form and charm. A dress was no longer to serve as a more or less decorated usefulness but to once again become a thing of beauty, to express elegance grace and delicacy in silk and wool, in lace, feathers and flowers.”
Alice B Toklas - A New French Style - 1946
THE JOLIE MADAME SILHOUETTE
In 1949, Balmain created Jolie Madame, the house’s first perfume, which is described as capturing “the scent of adventure for evenings of passion and enchantment.” The new scent proved to be so popular that Pierre Balmain named his Fall 1952 collection “Jolie Madame” in its honor. That collection built directly upon Balmain’s fresh, bold and feminine New French Style and the name soon became a way to referring to the house’s precisely tailored, perfectly embellished and quintessentially Parisian style.
PHOTO CREDITS
PHOTO PIERRE BALMAIN AND HOUSE MODEL, 1953:
© BALMAIN PARIS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ALL BALMAIN 1950 COUTURE COLLECTIONS SKETCHES:
©BALMAIN PARIS, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED