Beyoncé and Balmain have unveiled their new joint Renaissance Couture Collection, announcing the venture via a new cover story for Vogue.
Bey’s new clothing collection was crafted alongside famed designer Olivier Rousteing, who told Vogue that the idea for the joint line came to him after he had Renaissance on repeat while designing Balmain’s spring 2023 collection.
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“I was sketching and sketching as I listened, and sometimes you can’t control the emotion of your sketch. And I started to imagine the sketches inside her album, how they would relate to the songs and the lyrics,” he said. “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.”
He continued: “I contacted Marni [Senofonte, Beyoncé’s stylist] and B. And I said, ‘Honestly, I want to create a couture collection with you.’ And they were like, ‘Wow, that’s a big surprise.'”
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The collection was designed over the last five months and is comprised of 16 looks inspired by stand-out lyrics from all 16 tracks of Beyoncé’s Grammy-award-winning project. The resulting looks were made to honor both the historic legacy of Balmain as well as the creative heritage of Bey herself.
“I can’t help but be thrilled by the history-making aspects of this collaboration,” Rousteing told the outlet. “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.”
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He added: “Let’s hope those two firsts help inspire plenty of others … Thank you, Beyoncé for creating the infectious, joyous music that launched this journey — and for partnering with me to ensure that we designed the collection that perfectly reflected the power of those compositions.”
Beyoncé previewed a few of the aforementioned looks on her Instagram, and wrote: “Thank you @olivier_rousteing and @balmain for bringing RENAISSANCE to life in couture. 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. To the @voguefrance team, thank you for trusting in our vision and sharing it with the world.”
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The Balmain collab comes shortly after Beyoncé and adidas announced that they would be ending their collaborative partnership in relation to the singer’s Ivy Park activewear line.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a source close to the situation confirmed that Bey and the clothing brand had “major creative differences” that ultimately forced them to go their separate ways.
Beyoncé unveiled Ivy Park in 2016 as a joint venture with Topshop. As a result of their deal ending in 2018, she gained full ownership of the brand.
The new collection also comes after Beyoncé extended her upcoming Renaissance World Tour due to massive demand for tickets. In February, Ticketmaster announced that seven new dates had been added to the North American leg of Bey’s upcoming tour, but clarified that “demand is still expected to drastically exceed supply” by more than 800 percent.
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Beyoncé announced her Renaissance World Tour on February 1 to coincide with the start of Black History Month. The 40-city arena tour will kick off in Sweden on May 10, followed by European stops in the UK, France, Spain, Netherlands, Poland and Germany.
Bey will then travel back to North America in July for shows in Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and her hometown of Houston, among other cities.
