Watch Balmain Spring Summer 2016 Fashion Show

WATCH BALMAIN SPRING SUMMER 2016 FASHION SHOW:

Bridget Foley, WWD.com: Would fashion be all agog over highly decorated, nerdy girls in glasses if they were all over the place? Yin-yang, masculine-feminine, hard-soft, sexy-nerdy, the list of fashion’s historically juxtaposed delights goes on and on. Fashion needs creative counterpoint.

Fashion also needs sexy – certainly from a commercial perspective. Those two realities play to the strength of Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing. He holds high the flag of the fearless glamazon, she whose bloodlines trace back to the late Eighties/early Nineties power woman, all strong shoulder, stronger attitude and brazen sexuality. He’s developed the aesthetic with passion since taking over the creative helm of the house four years ago. Recently, Rousteing reviewed his still-young archive in preparation for his upcoming H&M foray and became ever surer of his direction, finding there “a unique Balmain DNA,” he wrote in his program notes. That DNA has made Rousteing a social media star (his own DNA, carrying the dreamboat handsome gene, doesn’t hurt, either), and should help to make his mass-market debut a blockbuster.