Balmain's Olivier Rousteing Reveals His Inspiration for H&M Collaboration
The buzzed-about collaboration will be in stores and online on Nov. 5.
-- Ten years ago Olivier Rousteing was waiting in line to buy clothes from the latest H&M collaborations. Now, the 30-year-old designer is the creative force behind one of the clothing chain’s most buzzed-about collaborations.
Rousteing is the creative director for the luxury brand Balmain. Under his leadership, the brand’s intricately-crafted creations –- often beaded, bejeweled, embroidered and roped –- have become a red carpet staple.
“I think she's a warrior of the modern world,” Rousteing told ABC News’ Mara Schiavocampo of the woman he imagined while designing his H&M collection. “She's strong. She's powerful. She’s confident.”
One of Rousteing’s muses for his designs is his good friend, Kim Kardashian, a friend whom he says “pushed” him in his fashion.
“We had, like, this connection straight away,” he said of the fashionista and reality TV star. “So she pushed me a lot in my vision of fashion.”
Rousteing says his real beginning in fashion came when he was a kid and used clothes to create an identity. The designer was adopted from a French orphanage.
“It’s why I love fashion, because when you don’t know your parents and you don’t know where you come from, you need to identify yourself to something,” he said.
Rousteing’s collaboration with H&M, Balmain x H&M, will go on sale in stores and online Thursday, Nov. 5.
The designer says he sees the collection, one of the chain’s most-anticipated, as a way to reach a broader audience.
“It’s a piece of my dream,” he said. “At the end of the day I wanted to make sure that these people that always follow me and love me, but can’t afford this Balmain dream that I’m building, they can actually get a piece of this dream now.”