Beyoncé teams up with Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing for Renaissance Couture

Fresh off her reported departure from Adidas, Beyoncé‘s announced a new couture collection with Olivier Rousteing.

Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, was supposed to be finalizing the fashion house’s spring 2023 collection last July when he was inspired by Bey’s Renaissance album.

“I was sketching and sketching as I listened, and sometimes you can’t control the emotion of your sketch,” he told Vogue France. “And I started to imagine the sketches inside her album, how they would relate to the songs and the lyrics — it wasn’t something I was supposed to be doing but I was just inspired by the music to do it. And that’s how this started.”

Rousteing contacted Bey’s stylist, Marni Senofonte, and pitched a couture collection he’d co-design with Bey. The singer agreed, and they embarked on a five-month collaboration, during which Bey, Senofonte and Rousteing chose 17 of the 50 looks the designer created. 

“The result is a suite of A-side looks that honor both the history of the house and the musical heritage of the performer,” the magazine said of the line, now called Renaissance Couture.

“I can’t help but be thrilled by the history-making aspects of this collaboration,” Rousteing said, noting it’s the first time a Black woman and Black man have overseen a couture offering from a historic Parisian house. He thanked Bey for creating Renaissance and ensuring he designed “a collection that perfectly reflected the power of those compositions.”

“Thank you @olivier_rousteing and @balmain for bringing RENAISSANCE to life in couture,” Bey added. “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.” She also thanked Vogue France for “trusting in our vision and sharing it with the world.”