After more than a decade at the creative helm, Olivier Rousteing departs Balmain - the house (pun intended) he rebuilt into a global emblem of modern glamour.
After more than a decade at the creative helm, Olivier Rousteing departs Balmain - the house (pun intended) he rebuilt into a global emblem of modern glamour.
November 6, 2025
After more than a decade at the creative helm, Olivier Rousteing departs Balmain - the house (pun intended) he rebuilt into a global emblem of modern glamour.
Olivier Rousteing’s exit from Balmain marks the close of one of the most magnetic chapters in contemporary fashion. Appointed in 2011 at just 25, he became both the youngest designer since Yves Saint Laurent to lead a Parisian maison and the first Black creative director of a French couture house - a daring bet by the late owner Alain Hivelin that paid off spectacularly.
Rousteing rekindled Balmain’s dormant grandeur, blending hip-hop pulse with couture discipline and digital poise to craft a new language of modern luxury. From this emerged the “Balmain Army” - a collective bound by beauty, visibility, and self-assurance, personified by muses like Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and the Hadids. When the 2015 Balmain x H&M collaboration dropped, queues formed overnight and the term #Balmainia was born, proof that Rousteing had turned a once-exclusive Paris house into a phenomenon of the global age.
During his tenure, Balmain’s revenues soared from €30 million to nearly €300 million. Rousteing reintroduced couture in 2019, launched Balmain Beauty with Estée Lauder in 2023, and blurred the line between fashion and festival with open-air, music-filled runway events that drew thousands. He made high fashion feel accessible, even without sacrificing its allure.
But Rousteing’s story is also one of grit and grace. Adopted and raised in Bordeaux, he chronicled his search for identity in Netflix’s Wonder Boy (2019), then survived a devastating fire in 2020 - experiences that lent raw vulnerability to his later work.
As Balmain’s leadership evolved under Matteo Sgarbossa and Mayhoola chairman Rachid Mohamed Rachid, the maison began charting a new creative course. Both praised Rousteing’s “bold creativity” and “unwavering authenticity,” acknowledging his indelible imprint on fashion history.
His final show, in October 2025, fittingly returned to the Paris ballroom where his journey began. He said:
“I was so scared and shy back then, but I believed in building new beginnings by staying true to yourself.”
Now, at 40, the industry’s once Balmain Baby leaves not as its prodigy, but as one of fashion’s defining visionaries - ready to script his next chapter in style.
