Paris - RTW SS13 - Balmain

City: Paris
Season: Ready-To-Wear, Spring/Summer 2013
Show: Balmain

SHOULDERS! Shoulders stretching all the way from the Pont d'Ièna to the Pont d'Austerlitz, from the 5ème to the 16ème! OK, so that’s probably an exaggeration of sorts, but then so were the shoulders at Balmain Spring/Summer 2013. As soon as Aymeline Valade (centre left) walked out with shoulders the width of a linebacker’s the show’s main reference point was clear: the late eighties-early nineties. Balmain design director Olivier Rousteing, himself a child of the eighties at just a paltry twenty-seven years old, was also inspired heavily by Cuban interior design, specifically the black-and-white tiled floors and homely wicker furniture. Beauty and accessories-wise there was a soupçon of Sade, though her influence was rather less obvious than it was at Jean Paul Gaultier, for example. I also detected a trace or two of Harley Quinn, a Batman villain from the early 1990s. Coincidence? Well, yes, probably. The exaggerated silhouette got a little scary at times, as did the gigantic hoop earrings, but overall Balmain Spring/Summer 2013 was another small triumph for the talented young Rousteing.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in October 2012.