For the Balmain Spring 2025 RTW collection, precision cuts, bold shoulders, and sculpted silhouettes—Olivier Rousteing’s grand signatures— took center stage, weaving Pierre Balmain’s archives into the present.

The prolific designer’s Balmain became a canvas for grand expression: realistic faces, nails and lips took over the label’s architectural silhouettes via intricate embroidery, while rounded heads.

“We’ve kept this collection extremely focused, with the goal of ensuring that every design is immediately recognizable as containing key strands of the DNA of today’s modern Balmain,” Rousteing wrote in his collection notes.

Rousteing’s picturesque portrait pieces required hundreds of thousands of beads, which were embroidered onto his structured silhouettes over the course of several weeks. The results echoed Pierre Balmain’s ornamentalism from the 1940s and ‘50s, while much of the line’s styling was more akin to Rousteing’s everyday look.

Following the final carousel, Balmain’s show closed with a model brigade wearing simple silk sheats in a variety of neutral hues. Rousteing called those last looks his favorite interpretation of the label’s icon: “the inspiring diversity of beauty that is constantly celebrated inside our inclusive Balmain Army.”