On Thursday, it was announced that multi-hyphenated entertainer and astute businesswoman Beyoncé and global sportswear brand Adidas decided to part ways. The news came as a shock to many of her fans who have been anticipating the release of another Adidas x Ivy Park Collection ahead of her tour.
However, Queen Bey decided to put her creative energies into a new venture, a couture collaboration with Parisian fashion house, Balmain in partnership with their creative director, designer Olivier Rousteing.
In a @VogueFrance cover story, Rousteing described sketching as he listened to Bey’s critically acclaimed album ‘Renaissance’ and later presented her with the idea to co-create a couture collection with her. Bey and her stylist Marni Senofonte were pleasantly surprised by the offer and all three parties got to work on 50 or so ideas before narrowing the list down to 17 looks, all representative of one of the Renaissance album tracks.
Little did they realize, this collaboration would make history and break barriers in the fashion industry for both Beyoncé AND Rousteing.
“I can’t help but be thrilled by the history-making aspects of this collaboration,” Rousteing told Vogue France. “This appears to be the first time that a Black woman has overseen the couture offering from an historic Parisian house. And those designs were created in partnership with the first Black man to ever oversee all the collections at an historic Parisian house. Let’s hope those two firsts help inspire plenty of others.”
Beyoncé shared a Instagram post of herself and Olivier and thanked him as well as Balmain for “bringing Renaissance to life in couture.”
“Thank you @olivier_rousteing and @balmain for bringing RENAISSANCE to life in couture,” she wrote. “Designing alongside you was freeing—thank you for allowing me to celebrate the human form, to take artistic risks, to push boundaries and to freely express myself.”
Beyoncé continued, “To the @voguefrance team, thank you for trusting in our vision and sharing it with the world.”
Congratulations, Bey & Olivier! #BWLM💕
