Dreams, as we all know, are difficult to define. How often have you ever found yourself on the border of a latest world, slipping into the edge of something uncharted, only to have yourself snatched from the promise of sleep? Before a scene can crystallize, before any wisdom will be extracted, you’ve been blunted by a neighbor’s pounding feet or blasting music, distressed by the pings of an irritating iPhone. Disturbed and disrupted, you understand as I do know, that after the senses are startled, the peace required for dreams evades.

In our waking world, a world polluted by the monistic psychologies of an invading culture, dreaming is commonly considered frivolous. We’re expected and encouraged to give attention to reality, by which reality is defined by external, social, material, and political conventions. Beshat brains remain enthralled by images of the day world only, remaining blind to intra-psychic possibilities and the disciplines required to create them. But every dreamer knows ancient secrets: that (a) dreams are never any greater than the dreamer and (b) dreaming is serious business.

“True luxury,” Olivier Rousteing tells me, “is when you’ve access to your dream.” Curled against a cushioned leather chair, smoking a skinny cigarette with utmost grace, Rousteing is a portrait of Moorish elegance. Potted plants surround him and a wall of gold-plated mirrors enhances the Parisian sunlight which streams from every angle. His rose-gold skin gleams. His black hair is perfectly coiffed. He wears a white and black striped fisherman’s sweater that adheres to his body like a fawning lover. Legs crossed, leather pants on, the fantastic thing about Rousteing is his simmering heat. Even through Zoom, his effect is dizzying; he’s impossibly alive, stuffed with an embodied electric resonance that beams. Inhaling his cigarette slowly, he leans forward and completes his thought.

“The issue with the old regime, the old fashion system, was that it was built on the premise that only a select few could access luxury. They were controlling the dreams of the people, manipulating their beliefs and what this does on a subconscious level is let you know that you’ve no right to assume, it tells you that you just should not even allowed to dream,” he said.

For greater than a decade Rousteing has designed with the intention to defy fascist fantasies. In 2011, on the age of 25, he was appointed creative director of Balmain. The youngest creative executive of a luxury brand since Yves Saint Laurent, the pushback from the parochial and provincial Parisian elite was immediate. Questions which are too ignorant to repeat circulated inside the industry questioning his youth, his hue, and his skills. Though he studied briefly at the celebrated Ecole Supérieure des Arts et Techniques de la Mode in Paris, he dropped out after six months and moved to Italy. There he worked at Roberto Cavalli, starting as an assistant for creative director Peter Dundas, eventually moving on to design menswear and womenswear collections. In 2009, he moved back to Paris after being offered a job at Balmain. Working anonymously as a studio designer with Christophe Decarnin, in lower than eighteen months Rousteing was at Balmain’s helm.

“Here in France, there may be an allegiance to the past. We now have an amazing history, rooted in tradition, which is an exquisite thing but tradition, in case you should not careful, can turn into a weakness. And once I first began only a few people understood me. I cried lots those days and there have been many who tried to silence me, who kept demanding that I behave and never fight for what had not been done before me.”

His debut collection, Spring 2012 ready-to-wear revived old engines of decadence. With a visionary materialism that might’ve made the Ancient Egyptians proud, he deployed gilded mini dresses, ecclesiastical embroideries, and bejeweled blazers. Rousteing’s aesthetic was fuck-you-glamour, hieratic, and haughty, calling to mind the very best order of fashion: the long-forgotten griffe. More object d’art than mere outfit, each look was materialized perfection. Ungoverned by humility, unperturbed by sumptuary laws, long gone were the times of tattered jeans and shredded t-shirts. Inside his first 12 months, sales rose by 25%, reifying the home’s relevance in a latest era.

With the intention to fully understand Rousteing’s aesthetic and the contention they caused one has to have an awareness of the European system of fashion. Nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Simmel suggests that “Fashion is a product of sophistication distinction.” In his seminal text, “The Philosophy of Fashion,” Simmel argues that to ensure that fashion to exist society should be split between those perceived as inferior and people deemed superior. It’s the “inferior one,”  Simmel states, that “imitates their direct superior.” What this implies regarding a rustic that has made illicit fortunes from a people’s enslavement is telling. Above all fashion is narrative, offering at best latest networks of meaning and conversions of realities. Just like the psyche within the dream state, with responsible hands, fashion as a system, as a network is able to elevating consciousness, yielding latest ideologies, and mobilizing futures. In destructive hands, fashion is despotic, historically and scientifically inaccurate, manufacturing massive uniformity and immuring imaginations.

Rousteing’s refusal to adapt to such a system is rare. “Democratization has never meant you lose the dream,” he says, with disdain, eyes narrowing. “It means you could welcome more people into your world, you could share liberté and enhance your individual understanding. I don’t care when it was, it’s never been right to alienate people because they don’t correspond to whatever stereotype the industry is willing to advertise.”

It’s this allegiance to conscious craftsmanship that has kept Balmain light years ahead of the industry. Through Rousteing’s vision, each season has produced today’s trends. 2012’s Spring/Summer show skipped past sterile modes of power dressing and re-mounted classic, broad-shouldered silhouettes with dazzling diamonds. 2014’s Spring/Summer presentation rinsed off diseased nostalgia, restraining the excesses of ‘80s fashion. Quite than prop up some antiquated notion of aristocracy, Rousteing tapped Rihanna to guide the brand’s global campaigns. Before disingenuous displays of diversity became the fashion, Rousteing was reproducing all of the implacable shadings of each day life. His Balmain army, a forged of luminous Amazonian women, sent shockwaves down the runway. Not for the reason that Battle of Versailles had such a showcase of multiculturalism made its mark. In 2015, diffusing styles across class lines, Balmain released a partnership with H&M which swiftly sold out. Two years later, before nearly every luxury house developed a beauty line, the brand released a cosmetics capsule with L’Oréal. The subsequent 12 months, before the NFT bust, Balmain launched a pre-fall campaign starring virtual models. Then in 2019, Rousteing introduced The Balmain Festival, an annual runway-concert celebration merging live music and film.

A self-defined “witness” of his time, Rousteing has little interest in resurrecting ghosts. Like probably the most forward-thinking scientist, his laboratory goals to encourage our collective evolution. A real Virgo, Rousteing refuses to depend on enormous reserves of talent or inspiration alone. Behind his surface glamour creeps an industrious rationality and methodical devotion. To remain ahead, Rousteing divides all of his collections into three corresponding units: aspirational couture, luxury price, and entry price. Each, he says adamantly, must flow.

“Balmain has an incredible history of craft. In today’s world, we’d like craft greater than ever. But product is equally vital. You need to mix the 2 with a view to sell. I actually have to translate all the brand’s DNA into easier, cheaper, flamboyant offerings. You would like the dream, however it should be concrete. If I didn’t have an inexpensive or entry price, I wouldn’t have the means to make my wild, unique pieces.” 

In March, Rousteing offered perhaps probably the most timely expression of unrestricted craft. Co-creating with Beyoncé, the 2 designed a 16-piece couture series titled “Renaissance Couture.” Modeled from songs from the album, the not-for-sale-collection flaunted past two-dimensional stylings and signaled to the upper cultures of Kemet, China, and Homeric Greece. For the ultimate stop of her European tour, Beyoncé wore a custom metallic gown with a sequined sea-shell bodice and a dramatic slit; in Amsterdam, she wore a bee-inspired bodysuit that received its own standing ovation. Rousteing refers to Beyoncé as a “huge fighter of repressive systems,” an artist who signals that “freedom is the longer term.” Though he speaks highly of all his collaborators, one gets the sense that these should not cash-grab impulses but personal, thoughtful relationships. Shiona Turini, Julia Sarr-Jamois, KJ Moody and Karen Langley contributed as stylists for the improbable and expansive Renaissance World Tour. 

“What’s incredible to me is that I’ve been surrounded by incredible individuals who also need to shift the notion of what’s luxury, what’s aristocracy, what’s fashion,” he says. “I’ve never believed in aristocracy, I think in meritocracy. Your circumstances should never define you, good or bad, it’s vital to interrupt the codes of fashion.”

And yet breaking the codes could also be synonymous with breaking the bank. Amidst a line of hair care products, a sustainable jewelry collection, and a proper beauty line launching early next 12 months, Balmain continues to disrupt the cabals of beauty and fashion. Despite record growth and expansion, Rousteing’s measure of success has little to do with this material world.

“I’ve all the time worked for my generation and the subsequent generation, so that they don’t undergo what I’ve passed through. I can’t measure success in dollars since it doesn’t match the aim of life,” Rousteing adds. “It’s nice to have great critiques from the press or a sold-out collection, but there’s nothing more emotional for me than seeing the world expand, to open up perceptions, and bringing my community together. That is what makes me the proudest, this has all the time been my dream.”