BALMAIN SS2018 Women Collection

BALMAIN SS2018 Women Collection

A note to me, twenty-two years ago

This sense of awe that you’re feeling, as you walk into Garnier’s dazzling opera house, won’t be just a one-time thing. Of course, the intensity will diminish over the years, but I can tell you twenty-two years after this moment that this same émerveillement will hit you each and every time you return.

Yes, right now you might just be a ten-year-old kid from the provinces , wrapping up your first visit to the capital with a night at the Opera, but this is destined to become a guiding memory for you, crystalizing into another symbol of the future that you dream about just like those music posters plastered across your bedroom walls and all those fashion editorials that you keep tearing out of magazines.

 And, from where I am now, I know one thing: dreams like yours sometimes actually do come true. You are going to return to Paris to design for an historic house. You are going to work with those same supermodels that now blow you away.

You are going to meld your designs with the creations of musicians who inspire you. And, yes, you are going to return to this singular space several times, actually most notably in 2017, when your designs will be worn by les étoiles de l’Opéra during a May ballet premiere and then again, just a few months later, when you show your Spring 2018 collection here.

Half of me wishes that I could go back in time, to tell you all of that. But the other half knows that as tired as the old cliché might be life’s real richness actually does come from undertaking the journey.

Your return route to this opera house, some twenty-two years later, won’t always be easy. There will be stumbles, mistakes and regrets.

 You’ll need to make compromises that you don’t believe in, absorb criticisms that sting and keep moving forward, even when you feel exhausted, frustrated, hurt or angry or all four, at the same time! Ultimately, it is the strength and support of family, friends and colleagues that will make each step along the way possible.

And now, as we come full circle and I remember your wonderment and dreams of two decades past, it is my team and I that will continue that dreaming as we look forward to all the many efforts, challenges and changes that upcoming decades hold for us.

- Olivier Rousteing