During Olivier Rousteing’s ten years at the house, he and his team have seamlessly woven music and fashion together, season after season. The second Balmain Festival built upon that distinctive house DNA, with some of Rousteing’s favorite performers joining the house models on a special concert-meets-runway stage.

The house’s first festival, two years earlier, helped bring Balmain’s dedication to music, fashion and the fight against AIDS to a whole new level. Rousteing and his team were incredibly disappointed when pandemic realities forced a cancellation of 2020’s festival—which explains the high-level of excitement for 2021’s event, which promised the return of the singular mix of the beauty of friendship, the power of music and the excitement of Paris fashion week.

Balmain and Rousteing took full advantage of that excitement to continue helping the house’s long-time partner (RED) raise needed funds for the Global Fund to fight against two pandemics: AIDS and COVID.

Doja Cat opened the festivities, wearing vintage Balmain by Olivier Rousteing

Jesse Jo Stark made it clear to everyone why Olivier Rousteing had insisted that she play the lead singing role in Balmain’s episodic series, Fracture. As Rousteing told the press: “her beautiful music has been stuck on a non-stop loop inside my head for months.”