Pierre Balmain born 18 May 1914 (d. 1982)Pierre Alexandre Claudius Balmain was a French fashion designer. Known for sophistication and elegance, he said that 'dressmaking is the architecture of movement'.
Balmain's father, who died when the future designer was 7 years old, was the owner of a wholesale drapery business. His mother and her sisters operated a fashion boutique. After first studying architecture, he went to work for the fashion designer Edward Molyneux, for whom he worked from 1934 until 1939. He joined Lucien Lelong after World War II and opened his own fashion house in 1945. He collaborated closely with Christian Dior while working for Lelong.
He was a leading practitioner of the 'New French Style' (or 'New Look') of Paris couture following World War II and the 'Jolie Madame' style of the mid-1950s, but was not hemmed into the heavily draped and embroidered styles of his early designs, as he changed to structural, uncluttered designs in the 1960s. Balmain claimed that he, not Dior, deserved credit for the small-waisted, bell-shaped skirts that were a key component of the 'New Look'.
Balmain also created perfumes, including Vent Vert (1947), his first successful scent and one of the best-selling perfumes of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Jolie Madame (1953), Ivoire (1979), and Eau d'Amazonie (2006). His first perfume bore his company's address, Elysées 64-83.
Balmain was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Costume Design and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design for Happy New Year (1980). Additional Broadway theatre credits include costumes for Katharine Hepburn in The Millionairess (1952) and Josephine Baker for her eponymous 1964 revue. He also was a costume designer for 16 films, including the Brigitte Bardot vehicle And God Created Woman, and designed on-screen wardrobes for the actresses Vivien Leigh and Mae West.
Balmain's 1964 autobiography was titled My Years and Seasons.
His companion was the Danish designer Erik Mortenson, who worked as a designer at Balmain from 1948 until 1991.
The house of Pierre Balmain has continued, first under the leadership of Erik Mortensen (of whom Pierre Balmain said 'He is more Balmain than me') and then to Herve Pierre, Oscar de la Renta, Laurent Mercier, and now Christopher Decarnin.