EXCLUSIVE: Les Éternels de Balmain Launches the Fashion House Back Into Fragrance

PARIS — Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing has wanted to develop perfume for the house forever. And now, the dream has become reality with Les Éternels de Balmain, a collection of eight fragrances. Four eaux de parfum in the line, including Bronze and Rouge, are completely new creations, while the remainder are historical concepts, like the reimagined Ivoire and Ébène scents. This collection, which is being produced under license by the Estée Lauder Cos., launches Tuesday on balmainbeauty.com and balmainbeauty.eu, as well as in select Balmain boutiques. Each scent is priced at $300. Rousteing’s love of perfume harks back to his beginnings. “It’s like la madeleine de Proust,” said the designer, whose mother sported Guerlain’s Shalimar. His grandmother wore Chanel No.5. “A funny story is that when I got appointed at Balmain in 2011, my grandma told me: ‘You remember, I was wearing Ivoire?’” That was a Balmain scent from 1979. As a teenager, Rousteing was obsessed with fragrances, starting with Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier. Rousteing also adored the smell of the skin creams his grandmother used. “It felt like fragrance to me,” he said. Another reason Rousteing wanted to work on beauty was that Pierre Balmain’s story has always been intermingled with it.  The fashion house began in 1945,

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