Pierre Balmain

Pierre Balmain was a French fashion designer. He first studied architecture before he 1934 ended up in the fashion house Piguet as a modeler. He was then assistant at Molyneux 1934-38 and Lelong 1939-45. Balmain opened his own fashion house in 1945 and became famous for its typical Parisian, chic style, with extremely well-tailored clothes which were always in step with the times but rarely to trendy. The golden age was 1953-60, when the now best-selling perfume "Jolie Madame" was launched in cooperation with Revlon. A former student of Balmain is Karl Lagerfeld. the fashion house continued even after Pierre Balmains death and between 1993-2002 Oscar de la Renta was the chief designer succeeded by Christophe Decarnin between 2006-2011. Current chief designer is Olivier Rousteing.