Balmain Pre-Fall 2024 Menswear and Womenswear Collection

Balmain Pre-Fall 2024 Menswear and Womenswear Collection. For Balmain Pre-Fall 2024, my team and I continue our exploration and celebration of this house’s incredible heritage, riffing on iconic designs that we pulled directly from our extensive archives. Some of those vintage references date from Balmain’s earliest years, while several other runway inspirations were first shown just a decade ago.

Miami

“La Floride est un pays absolument merveilleux, on a l’impression d’être aux tropiques.” (Pierre Balmain French radio interview, 1950)

Monsieur Balmain and I share a special love for Miami’s unique vibe. Our house founder visited that incredible city many times, and each time he returned to Paris with a multitude of new visions and fresh ideas. In fact, this collection’s many allusions to South-Beach pastels and distinctive Caribbean iconography—including multiple takes on flamingos and palm trees—channel the Miami-inspired embellishments that Pierre Balmain first introduced during mid-century couture presentations at 44 Rue François Premier.

And those who know me are already well aware of my passion for Miami. I love visiting that wonderful spot and it has served as the starting point for several runways and collaborations over the past decade. And, yes, I am expecting to hear more than a few comments about Miami being a surprising inspiration for a Pre-Fall collection. But, knowing that these designs will begin arriving in boutiques in May, while our summer weather is now extending well into fall… well, I’d argue that Miami’s laid-back, sensual style might perhaps be the perfect reference point for this evolving season.

Graphic Stripes, Eye-Catching Patterns and Powerful Contrasts

Some of my favorite designs from Pierre Balmain are those that integrate maximum-graphic stripes, clever plays on op-art illusions and/or exuberant harlequin patterns. So, as the perfect complement to Miami’s art-deco pastels and florals, we’ve channeled many of our founder’s most joyously inventive geometric experiments into this Balmain Pre-Fall 2024 / PF24 collection, mixing them with new takes on my own history of runway riffs on attention-grabbing black-and-white juxtapositions (in particular, my 2013 Balmain Resort Collection). We also threw in a series of strong contrasts that help to further an endless-summer spirit, including those that incorporate one-of-a-kind, surprising spins on swimsuit silhouettes.

The Balmain Atelier’s Craftsmanship

Once again, the mix of precision tailoring, perfect embellishment and skilled draping make very clear the extraordinary skills of our Balmain Atelier. Most notably, those exceptional artisans helped us continue paying homage to Pierre Balmain’s singular, architecturally influenced sculptural genius, as we pair those graphic plays, tropical ornamentation and fresh Floridian florals with the unmistakable lines of Balmain’s legendary New French Style and Jolie Madame tailoring.

A Joy-Filled, Extended Vacation

In addition to the uninterrupted focus on the incredible legacy that Monsieur Balmain left behind for us, our Pre-Fall designs continue one other important element of our most recent runway collection:

the spotlight continues to shine on joy. Bold, unabashed joy. After all, what could be more joyful than a vacation that extends into fall? I think it’s clear that I aimed to bring some of the freedom and happiness that both Monsieur Balmain and I experienced during our visits to the beaches and sunny streets of exciting, multi-cultural and sensual Miami into these offerings. And, as I pointed out when I presented my spring collection: we definitely could all use a little more joy in our lives.

Olivier Rousteing, Paris 4 December 2023