Balmain launches L’Atelier podcast, focusing on house's DNA

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Mar 31, 2021

Balmain is the latest fashion house to launch its own podcast. Named L’Atelier Balmain, the house’s podcast debuts a 10-part series concentrating on key aspects of Balmain’s unique history, celebrated signatures and singular DNA.

 
L’Atelier Balmain includes excursions to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, (the small Alpine village where Pierre Balmain was born just before the beginning of the First World War), and 44 Rue François Premier, the smart Parisian address where the designer’s eponymous couture house was born just as WWII ended.
 
The season opener of L’Atelier Balmain recounts the province-to-Paris pathways of the house’s first and most recent creative director, Olivier Rousteing, who hails from Bordeaux. Two ambitious and hard-working Frenchmen who realized their dreams.

This week, Versace also launched a podcast series, Medusa Power Talks, dedicated to women with positions of great influence.
 
In L’Atelier Balmain Rousteing will also meet leading writers and historians of fashion - investigating and discussing the key themes, personalities and design moments of he 75-year-old house.
 
Episode two investigates the heritage of Balmain, a Parisian brand controlled by the Qatari royal family. In Rousteing’s view, “one cannot separate the house’s distinctive codes and easily recognized silhouette from its unique history of optimism and audacious daring,” the house said in a release.
 
L’Atelier Balmain’s third episode concentrates on Pierre Balmain’s very first collection for his newly established house. A fashion moment that opened the door to a new, golden age of post-war Parisian couture, when the great writer Alice B Toklas wrote of Balmain's distinct New French Style.
 
Future episodes will shine a light on the muses, monarchs and models associated with the house, as well as the inner workings of both Pierre Balmain’s and Olivier Rousteing’s Balmain. 
 
The L’Atelier Balmain podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts, YouTube and at balmain.com.