HOW YA GOING TO KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM AFTER THEY'VE SEEN PAREE ?

Maurice Balmain, born in 1884, was from a well-off family in Saint Jean de Maurienne. He and his Pierre’s mother, Françoise, loved theatre and they often acted in plays with local troupes. It was their chests of costumes that Pierre Balmain relied upon when he would pull together other young friends and students into his many plays. Maurice Balmain died young, leaving behind many debts—something that forced his widow, Françoise, to join her two sisters at work in the local dress shop, Les Galeries Parisiennes. Paris and fashion seem destined to play a big part in Pierre Balmain’s life, from a very early age.

Pierre Balmain’s hometown of Saint Jean de Maurienne is a small village, perched high amid the mountains of Savoy. Savoy is the remote and beautiful Alpine region of France, set on the border of Switzerland and Italy. Pierre Balmain’s family name, as he liked to point out, underlined his family’s deep connection to the area in a very unique way. A local legend has it that centuries ago, villagers rescued a young boy, found unconscious high in the neighboring mountains. After they brought him back to St Jean and revived him, he couldn’t manage to remember either his name or from where he came. So, since they had found him on the nearby Mount Balm, the villagers decided to name him Balmain, after the mountain.

Olivier Rousteing remembers well the exact moment when he promised himself that he was going to move to Paris and create beautiful things. It happened when he was just ten years old and he was visiting the French capital for the first time, as part of a family vacation. On that trip’s last night, he and his parents had tickets for the Paris Opera. As he walked into Garnier’s masterpiece, Rousteing, like so many others before him, was awed by the incredible beauty of the building’s interior. When Olivier Rousteing decided to show his Spring 2018 collection in the Paris Opera, he sent a message back in time, writing a very personal letter addressed to the 10-year-old Olivier Rousteing—that young boy from Bordeaux who was visiting Paris for the first time, more than two decades earlier. In his note to his younger self, Rousteing recalled how he had been so blown away by Garnier’s dazzling interior—and how that overwhelming beauty had pushed him to begin dreaming of moving to the French capital and working there as a designer. And, as this video of Balmain’s Spring 2018 collection shows, it’s clear that Garnier’s gilded touch can definitely still impress.

Olivier Rousteing’s love of the beauty of Garnier’s Opera building only grew as he worked closely with the team at the Ballet de l’Opera de Paris to design the costumes for Sébastien Bertaud’s Renaissance. Bertaud’s piece pays tribute to the elegance, sophistication and opulence of the legendary Ecole de Danse Française—making it a natural fit for Balmain’s singular legacy of luxurious craftsmanship. Olivier Rousteing’s ballet designs, now part of the Opera’s collections, highlight both the acclaimed savoir-faire of the Balmain atelier and the recognizable modern style of the designer, with impressive golden and silver embellishments covering flesh-colored performance pieces and rhinestones and pearls embroidered directly onto bodysuits, tights and draped tees.

A new spirit of post-liberation optimism seems to have pushed Pierre Balmain to finally leave Lucien Lelong and establish his own fashion house. While helping a friend look for an apartment, he saw an aristocratic townhouse on the rue François 1er that had previously been requisitioned for Nazi soldiers. When he heard that the owners were planning to convert the spaces into commercial leases, Pierre Balmain made a life-changing decision right then and there: that space on 44 François Premier was destined to become the new atelier and showroom for his new fashion house— the house of Balmain. And that address was destined to continue as the location of Balmain’s iconic Parisian flagship throughout the house’s 75-year history.

World War I had just ended—and the costs of that war had been incredible. After all that pain and all that sacrifice, American popular culture seemed eager to turn the page, to quickly switch the focus to lighter and more carefree subjects. For example, instead of focusing on the soldiers’ suffering, this song focused on what the young men had seen over there—sights that many of them could never have imagined earlier. Paris, for example. The city was a complete contrast to what many of those young boys were used to. It was open. Exhilarating. Filled with beauty, inspiration and creativity. Seriously—how could anyone expect those young soldiers to be satisfied with returning to their past lives in small towns and isolated farms after having had an injection of the beauty, elegance and excitement of The City of Lights?

And all of us—immediately—we get it. The song title says it all. Really… How the hell do you think you’re going to keep them down on the farm after Paris? It’s an age-old, often-repeated question. And it’s definitely not only the Americans who have been asking it. Anybody who has ever visited the city can easily understand. Paris, with its famous avenues, impressive architecture and beautiful elegance, has held an almost magnetic attraction for centuries. And, perhaps most notably, it has always been a favorite destination of artists and other creative talents—those who often find it very tough to leave, once they realize just how inspiring the surroundings can be.