Balmain men's fall 2019

Let me preface this by reiterating that I have always said that Olivier Rousteing has great talent. My issue is always who is whispering in his ear  and someone needs to tell him  that if he wants to make a political statement then he needs to run for office and sayings on t-shirts are not high fashion as it were! Somewhere I read this week that Rousteing wants to “democratize” his collection but what I truly believe that what he wants is the collection to be androgynous and he certainly made that point!

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Let me also repeat I hate this load in your pants droopy crotched bottoms that he seems so attracted to almost as much as I dislike Jeggings and second skin pants. It’s very difficult and I believe beyond his skillset to present a 100 piece monochromatic collection and not make it look repetitive or forced which this did.

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click image to enlarge

The conundrum is that I believe Rousteing is capable of an extremely chic original collection under the Balmain name but he really must decide who his client base is; as it stands this entire collection is made in the shade for the H&M and Zara clientele if you do not condsider the price. That’s not to say that it is cheap looking or commercial but it is skewed to anyone under 30 and anyone over 30 runs the risk of looking like a jack ass in most of these clothes.

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click image to enlarge

I somehow got the feeling that if Karl was 50 years younger he might have designed this and I’m not so sure that’s a good thing or a bad thing but it was my immediate reaction. Again, I had to come back to revisit this and digest what I was seeing.

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As I whole, I neither hate it nor love it. Apparently he has now decided to run his mouth to explain the collection and this is where he will run the risk of the words not matching the reality. Hopefully someone can harness his talent and set him in a direction that suits his talents.