Christophe Decarnin for Balmain

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The_Ida said:
Versace/Cavalli = boobs, a$$, fake hair, fake lashes, push up bras, orange tan, harsh colours, silk chiffon all over the place, shiny fabrics...ough.
Balmain under Decarnin = boobs and a$$ not all over the place, no push up bras, no fake tan, hair or lashes, no harsh colours. It's not in your face even if it's printed, because the colours aren't all over the place.
Also, Balmain is cool which is the last thing that Cavalli and Versace ever will be.
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^^ Clearly you are speaking solely based on personal opinion, which is ok, but if you look at the recent collections from both houses, those things are either completely gone or are barely there. Yes, his style of sexiness is less brash and in your face, but it is all comparable. I like his work a lot and agree that it is sexy and chic without being trashy. It doesn't really come across as being over-the-top IMO.
 
^^ i can only find one reason to wish this never happens: my budget!

what do we know about christophe? has he worked for other houses? his own line? where is he from? where did he study? interviews?
i've been more and more interested in his collections as they came out! his is the GREAT start of every fashion week now! i just wanna know more and more about the person behind the designer!
 
wwd.com Friday, May 16, 2008


BALMAIN'S MAIN MAN: Could Christophe Decarnin, the designer who is heating up Balmain with his short and sexy frocks, be extending his creative duties to men's wear? Word has it Decarnin has been working on a new men's collection for the French house and could unveil his first designs as soon as Men's Fashion Week in Paris next month.





After Givenchy, can't wait to see!!!!!!!
 
^i don't get it... one month after may 16, 2008 was june 16th (which randomly happens to be my bday...:blush: but that's not important here...)
the thing is it was just rumours then, no?
i really wish this happened... we totally need a new hedi, but as he doesnt seem to be working on anything to do with a menswear line, Decarnin (balmain) could be our new guy!
 
borjacapella said:
^i don't get it... one month after may 16, 2008 was june 16th (which randomly happens to be my bday...:blush: but that's not important here...)
the thing is it was just rumours then, no?
i really wish this happened... we totally need a new hedi, but as he doesnt seem to be working on anything to do with a menswear line, Decarnin (balmain) could be our new guy!
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Im anxiously awaiting his menswear debut. He dresses soo chic i can't imagine what he will bring to menswear! TOTALLY the next Hedi!
 
I love him, I love his designs. His designs are bold without being bright and tacky. I also like the fact that he's got a certain "theme" he sticks to without sticking completely to it whereas his designs look the same, I don't like how nearly all designers tend to be random season after season though its necessary sometimes I guess.
 
well, as it should come as no surprise, Balmain is being carried in Miami Beach at the Webster Hotel :heart:

I must go this weekend and check it all out.
 
style_expert said:
^ I agree with you on that point..also from a retail point of view. Balmain is distributed through the 'hottest' stores in Europe now...but has received no recognition from any large US store (like N-M or Saks) so far...I think it might be too niche for them, considering the line is rather expensive.
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definitely. balmain is the highest priced rtw line on the market right now.

it is being carried at several stores in the us now though.... ikram in chicago has some pieces and offers others on a "to order" basis, as well as jeffrey in nyc, gregorys in dallas, intermix, and the webster in miami. i hope the major dept stores never get a hold of it, that'll mean it's all over.
 
Alejandro said:
definitely. balmain is the highest priced rtw line on the market right now.

it is being carried at several stores in the us now though.... ikram in chicago has some pieces and offers others on a "to order" basis, as well as jeffrey in nyc, gregorys in dallas, intermix, and the webster in miami. i hope the major dept stores never get a hold of it, that'll mean it's all over.
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it can't be more expensive than balenciaga!:shock::shock:
... whatever it is, it shouldnt be so surprising. after all, daywear is very ofter cheaper than nightwear... and they almost do nothing but the latter.
 
great thread. There is a photo (very vague and not worth [posting here) of Emanuele Alt wearing the zebra pants to match the jacket. Quite fabulous, and sooo something I couldn't pull off... lol
 
interesting article...i never realise he is so highly regarded as a fashion designer until now.
 
Where can I find Christophe Decarnin for Balmain Homme frist collection?

Does anyone can provide photos?

Thanks!!!
 
pretty interesting article from Cathy Horyn for NY Times..

Couture Dude
ELEGANT TRASH IS THE SPECIALTY DU JOUR AT BALMAIN, WHERE CHRISTOPHE DECARNIN HAS BECOME THE ‘IT’ DESIGNER FOR PRETTY YOUNG THINGS. BY CATHY HORYN

I first noticed Christophe Decarnin in the mid-1990s when he was at Paco Rabanne — or, more accurately, I noticed his clothes. You wouldn’t have noticed Decarnin in those days; he was a colorless and shy boy. Besides, the ego of Rabanne tended to outmaneuver everyone, like forcing you to take the last available chair in a crowded room. The ‘‘metalworker,’’ as Coco Chanel snippily called Rabanne, was enjoying a revival of his ’60s futurism, and journalists had the bonus of hearing his views on reincarnation. It’s not at all amazing that we gave air to such nonsense or played along with the ruse that he had something to do with the hip clothes on his runway. It’s not amazing because that’s just how the ’90s were.
Now Decarnin is at Balmain. He is still colorless and shy. He will never be in danger of overexposure or being misunderstood by editors for the simple reason that he hardly says anything. Most designers bring a backhoe and a thesaurus to the effort of describing themselves. Not Decarnin. He sits there in a kind of French permagloom, his pale arms crossed over his white T-shirt, his black hair in greasy strands, his whole body slumping a little, and he gives you these short, pathetic answers that never in a million years — forget it — would you try to explain as existential or something. But he isn’t stupid, either. Three years ago, after a lot of agonizing, he took the job at Balmain, the old-line couture house. Balmain was not happening, ever since the fiasco of its last designer, Laurent Mercier, who liked to dress up as Jayne Mansfield and have people call him Lola. Unfortunately, it affected his designs. At the time, Decarnin was working for a French company that owned Apostrophe, the trendy clothing chain. He was 42. So, after thinking things over, he gets himself up to 44, rue François Premier — chez Balmain, right in the heart of the haut monde and the rich kids with their long hair and white Louboutin shoes — and what does he do? He designs these dresses that are almost too short to be called dresses. They’re like tops. By the next show he’s added louche Ali Baba pants and ripped T-shirts splattered with gold. It’s like there’s nothing to them.
Of course, the French and the English girls immediately get it. Sex! Heaven! It will take the Americans longer to grasp what’s happened. And it’s so simple. …
Balmain has become the label of the supercool girls. Eight years ago it was Balenciaga — remember when all those girls like Chloë Sevigny and Charlotte Gainsbourg were marching around in the bat-wing tops and skinny, hipless trousers of Nicolas Ghesquière, the Balenciaga designer? Then everyone wanted Lanvin dresses and ballerina flats, especially after Sofia Coppola and Kate Moss turned up in them. Then one day, after killing themselves to get Lanvin, everyone decided to wear Saint Laurent. By ‘‘everyone,’’ one means the girls in London and Paris who work as assistants at fashion magazines, design studios and P.R. firms, or who have some terrific family-tree connections they swing from. They’re 21 or 22 years old. Anyway, they’re crazy about clothes. Julia Restoin Roitfeld, whose mother is Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, wears Balmain. So does Eugenia Niarchos, Olympia Scarry, Gaia Repossi, Dasha Zhukova and Charlotte Casiraghi, a daughter of Princess Caroline.
French Vogue has had a lot to do with Decarnin’s success. He says so. Balmain clothes appeared in spreads throughout the August and September issues, for instance. Roitfeld and her daughter wore Balmain to the Cannes Film Festival last May. To someone outside the magazine world, it’s as though the editors — Roitfeld and her lieutenants Emmanuelle Alt and Marie-Amélie Sauvé — have taken this relatively isolated man and molded him in the image of French Vogue. After all, Vogue has achieved an aesthetic that doesn’t avoid the trashy. On the contrary. It delights in it as an essential element of French style and adds it to the mix of fantasy and cool tomboyish sexiness. ‘‘French girls can go out in a crazy evening dress with a pair of boots — we still have the Jane Birkin culture,’’ Alt says. ‘‘You can go just like that, without makeup, without managing your hair.’’
Though editors are constantly taking up designers and spoiling them to the jealousy of others — that’s nothing new — Decarnin’s success with Balmain actually represents several phenomena. The most relevant is the absolute defeat of the old-school method of reviving a fashion house. This is where you respectfully take elements of the house’s legacy and weave them into a new, more contemporary look that doesn’t scare off the existing clientele. Oscar de la Renta did something like this when he designed Balmain’s haute couture collections in the ’90s; he left in 2002. But the recent struggles of Ungaro, Vionnet and Ferre just serve to prove how little tradition now means to people. They don’t keep those kinds of distinctions in their heads. Almost overnight they’ve become amnesiacs.
Also, as everybody knows, we’ve evolved this culture of celebrities, of devouring red-carpet and party pictures. It has produced a demand for fashion with an immediate impact. Yet many designers, to judge from the complexity of their clothes and obscure references, don’t sufficiently appreciate this. Indeed, more and more, it seems, they design clothes that require a special knowledge. But Decarnin makes fashion that anyone can understand — and, strange as it might sound, that’s rare today.
Balmain also reverses another pattern. I remember seeing a collection that Decarnin based on Hollywood westerns, with tight leather pants and war-painted poncho dresses, and writing — or, at least, thinking — that they would look great in a St.-Tropez clip joint. That’s because Decarnin’s clothes are unabashedly French. If I see young Bardots and Birkins bobbing around St.-Tropez half naked, I’ve seen precisely what he wants me to see. In their cut and fit, in their energy and implacably dirty sex appeal, these clothes could not have come from anywhere else but France — and not even France but Paris. That’s an interesting distinction at a time when branding for a global marketplace has necessarily led to a streamlining of technical and creative processes, with a result that you don’t really see a French look or an Italian look. Even Roberto Cavalli, despite its name, isn’t uniquely Italian. But a Balmain dress, from its proper fit and boned underpinnings to its pleasure-seeking surface, is uniquely French.

The entrance to 44, rue François Premier lies just up the hill from Dior and the intersection of Avenue Montaigne, where the restaurant L’Avenue presides like a local busybody with a front-porch view. It’s fun to imagine the figures who have come winding through this corner of Paris, the models and starlets, the aristocrats and Broadway stars. Was it raining or sunny that day in October 1945 when Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, arriving with their poodle, Basket, came to see Balmain’s first collection?
I went upstairs to the salon. When de la Renta was making his seasonal trips to Balmain to work on the couture, the place was bustling. Not like Dior or Chanel, which are much larger and crawling with assistants and white-coated seamstresses. But the place felt vigilantly secure. Now, as I waited for Decarnin in the white salon, it felt sparsely occupied. Like many couture houses following the death of their founder — Balmain died in 1982, succeeded by his assistant, Erik Mortensen — the house became a kind of battleground. Alain Chevalier, a former chairman of LVMH, bought the company but then filed for bankruptcy protection. Since 1995, Balmain has been run by Alain Hivelin, who three years ago became the majority owner. It’s obvious from the lack of staff and the condition of the boutique, which doesn’t appear to have changed since de la Renta’s clothes hung there, that the company was unprepared for Decarnin’s success. Hivelin said in an e-mail message that sales have doubled nearly every season since Decarnin’s first collection, and that he expected total sales in 2009 to be around $28 million. He also said he is adding staff, as well as a shoe line with Giuseppe Zanotti.
When Decarnin entered the salon, he had on jeans and a white T-shirt. I knew beforehand that he wasn’t much of a talker — he’s polite and sweet, but his idea of communication is almost Japanese. At one point I asked Decarnin, the only child of civil servants, who was raised in a small resort town in northern France, what it was like for him when he first came to Paris to study fashion. He lived by himself in an apartment near Les Halles.
‘‘Did you meet people?’’ I said.
‘‘Yes, some people,’’ he answered.
‘‘Kids from school?’’
‘‘Yes, mainly.’’
What his refusal to elaborate tells me is that Decarnin is not so much a simple guy as he is direct. For instance, he told me that when he was at Paco Rabanne he felt frustrated, though not because he was in the background. In fact, he actually seems to prefer the background. He said, ‘‘I wanted to prove that my ideas could be commercial in a way that you could sell a lot. It was not happening at Paco Rabanne. I wanted to show that you could make a dress and, even if it’s very fashionable, you could sell more than 10 pieces.’’
His rise at Balmain seems improbable for another reason. I asked Alt, who has known him for 15 years, why she thought it had taken Decarnin so long — he is now 45 — to get noticed. ‘‘I think success in life is half your personality and half your talent,’’ she said. ‘‘He has the talent, but the personality. . . .’’ She smiled. ‘‘You know, if you always stay in the shadows and don’t have the connections, it’s more difficult. Some people have a lot less talent, but they push themselves and go out and meet people.’’ Decarnin said he never goes to clubs. He once went to St.-Tropez but it was years ago, he said.
As uncomplicated as a one-shoulder mini or a zebra-print jacket with crystal lapels may be, his clothes are not for everyone. He looked startled when I said that Gwyneth Paltrow, in spite of her long legs, was maybe too old for the black lace mini and satin jacket she wore to the London ‘‘Iron Man’’ premiere this past spring. ‘‘Really?’’ Decarnin said, surprised. Maybe he should get out more.
‘‘It’s completely for clubbing, those clothes,’’ Alt said, adding with a laugh, ‘‘from a guy who doesn’t go to clubs.’’
The clothes are also staggeringly expensive, which would make American retailers cautious. (Balmain is sold at Jeffrey and at Maxfield in Los Angeles, among a few other stores.) A pair of jeans costs about $1,400, while a beaded jacket can cost $15,000. In the Balmain boutique in Paris, I admired a gorgeous black leather motorcycle jacket, free of studs and other embellishment. I blinked at the price: $7,000. At some level these kinds of prices are offensive. Decarnin said the prices reflect the quality of workmanship and fabrics, as well as the company’s limited structure.
But just as hip-hop sounds triumphant about money and superstar privilege, maybe those high prices are part of the message: My stuff costs a lot. Decarnin thinks that there is nothing sexier on a woman than a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He may be right, but apparently it doesn’t hurt to make them superexpensive, too.
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iht.com
 
^great article, thanks for posting. and now we now why these clothes are so expensive.
 
i knew all of this already...balmain is a small operation and everything is made in paris directly above the boutique. but still, sheesh!
 
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