It’s a fusion of fashion and beauty, with makeup-inspired designs, bold silhouettes, and accessories paying homage to the brand’s new fragrance line.
Balmain’s spring-summer 2025 collection blends fashion with beauty in a bold and artistic showcase. With a make-up-inspired color palette, the show wasn’t just about garments but a statement of the brand’s expanding empire. Olivier Rousteing, Balmain’s creative director, made sure that this new era, marked by the recent partnership with Estée Lauder, was front and center, with both beauty and fashion seamlessly intertwined on the runway.
The collection introduced “power face” dresses, which featured makeup-inspired designs, with beaded embellishments and fabrics reflecting the rich tones of rouges and blushes. Accessories played off Balmain’s newly launched fragrance line, Les Éternels de Balmain. Glossy, ridged textures from the perfume bottles appeared in hardware and footwear, while models carried chic fragrance bottles down the runway, turning these everyday items into high-fashion statements.
Balmain’s signature strong-shoulder silhouette remained a focal point, but this season, it was updated with bold, sculptural details. Faces, lips, and hands were embroidered onto dresses and jackets, creating a striking visual impact. Rounded head motifs—reminiscent of beauty sculptures—added to the artistic flair, further blurring the lines between fashion and beauty.
Rousteing stayed true to his signature strong-shouldered designs, which have defined his 13-year reign at Balmain, but this season, those architectural silhouettes were adorned with realistic faces, lips, and nails, embroidered with painstaking precision. These intricate details transformed the models into walking works of art. Some dresses even featured rounded heads, reminiscent of the sculptural look Rousteing wore to this year’s Met Gala. Throughout the collection, there were clear nods to Balmain’s history, particularly Pierre Balmain’s “New French Style” and his iconic “Jolie Madame” silhouette.
The collection also featured a strong narrative about inclusivity and diversity, something Rousteing has always championed. The show ended with models walking in simple silk sheaths in neutral tones, a stark contrast to the ornate looks that dominated the runway earlier. Rousteing called these closing pieces his favorite—a tribute to the diversity of beauty within the Balmain Army, a celebration of all types of women.
Watch Balmain S/S25 show below:
