Shortly after 3pm on September 29, 31-year-old Olivier Rousteing strode through the shimmering, fleshy backstage area at Balmain's Spring 2017 Paris Fashion Week show. Along the marble hallway of a hôtel particulier in the 8th arrondissement, long-limbed clusters of supermodels were gamely tolerating final applications of leg-moisturiser, make-up touch-ups and minutely precise hair interventions from squads of specialists as fast and accurate as any Formula 1 pit-stop team. The crowd parted as Rousteing swept through.

Wearing a belted, black silk tuxedo and a focused expression that accentuated his razor-sharp cheekbones, Rousteing resembled a sensuous hit man. Target identified, he led us to the board upon which photographs of every outfit were tacked.

We asked him to tell us about the collection (for that's what fashion editors always ask). "There is no theme," said Rou­steing in his fast, French-accented lilt. "No inspiration from travel or time. The inspiration is what I feel, and what I feel now is peace, light and serenity. I feel like in my six years here before this, I have tried to fight so many battles. Because there is no point anymore in fighting about boundaries and limits in fashion. Balmain has its place in fashion."

And the clothes? "There is a lot of fluidity. A lot of knitwear, lightness, ponchos. No body-con dresses. But whatever I do, even if I cover up my girls, it is like people can say I am ******. So this is what it is. I think there is nothing ******. I think it is really chic. I think it is really French. It is how I see Paris. And I have had too many haters during the last three years to defend myself again. So, this is Balmain." And then the show began.

Star endorsements

Under Rousteing, Balmain has become the most controversial fashion house in Paris. Rousteing has attracted (but not bought, as other, far bigger houses do) patronage from contemporary culture's most significant influencers. Rihanna, all the Kardashians, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Justin Bieber – a royal flush of modern celebrity aristocracy – all champion him.

Immediately after this show, in that backstage hubbub, Kim Kardashian told me: "I thought it was very powerful…I loved the sequins, and I loved all the big chain mail belts – that was probably my favourite."

Yet for every famous fan there is a member of the fashion establishment who will sniff over coffee in Le Castiglione that Rousteing's crowd is declassé and his aesthetic best described by that V-word. The New York Times' fashion critic Vanessa Friedman reckoned this collection appropriate for "dressing for the captain's dinners on a cruise ship to Fantasy Island". At least she did not use the V-word. When I once deployed it – as a compliment – in a 2015 Vogue menswear review that declared "Rousteing is confidently negotiating a fine line between extravagance and vulgarity", I was told that Rous­teing was aggrieved.

The fashion world's ambivalence towards Rousteing is a measure of its conflicted feelings towards much in contemporary culture. Last year Robin Givhan of the Washington Post wrote of Balmain: "The French fashion house is always ostentatious and sometimes ******. It feeds a voracious appetite for attention. It is anti-intellectual. Antagonistic. Emotional. It is shocking. It is perfect for this era of social media, which means it is powerfully, undeniably relevant."

Since joining Instagram four years ago Rousteing has posted 4000 images and won 4 million followers. The combined reach of his audience members and models at this Balmain show was greater than the population of Britain and France combined. Balmain was the first French fashion house to gain more than 1 million followers, and currently has 5.5 million of them.

Loving his haters

As digital technology disrupts fashion, Balmain's seemingly effortless mastery of the medium galls some. Last year, the designer posted an image of a comment from a ****** follower to his feed. It read: "Olivier Rousteing spends more times taking selfies for Instagram than designing clothes for Balmain." Underneath, in block capitals, he commented "i love my haters".

Rousteing can be funny and flip – doing a video interview after the show, I opened by asking, tritely, how he felt. He replied: "Now I feel like some Chicken McNuggets with barbecue sauce, and then some M&M;'s ice cream."

When at work, however, that flipness flips to entirely unflip. The previous evening, at a final fitting for the collection, Rousteing had paced his studio, his face a scowl of concentration, applying final edits to the outfits to be worn by models Doutzen Kroes and Alessandra Ambrosio. The 30-strong team of couturiers working in the adjoining atelier delivered a steady stream of altered dresses.

"We are ready," he said from behind a glass desk in a rare moment of downtime. "This a big show – 80 looks – and I want a collection that is full of both the commercial and couture. But it's smooth too. All of the girls are excited about the after-party and interested in the music. And eating pizza." In the corridor outside Gigi Hadid – this season's apex supermodel – was indeed eating pizza, with gusto.

The fitting went on until far beyond midnight; Rousteing, fiercely focused, demonstrated the work ethic for which he is famous. When he was studio manager for Christophe Decarnin, his predecessor at Balmain, the young then-unknown was always the first in and last out of the studio. Emmanuel Diemoz, who joined Balmain as finance controller in 2001 and became chief executive in 2011, says that his hard graft was one of the reasons he was chosen to succeed Decarnin.

"For sure it was quite a gamble," says Diemoz. "But we could see the talent of Olivier. Plus he understood the work of Christophe – who had helped the brand recover – so he represented continuity. He was a hard worker, clearly a leader, with a lot of creativity. Plus the size of the turnover at that time was not so huge. So we were able to take the risk."

Clear leader

Which is why, aged 24, Rousteing became the creative director of one of Paris's best known – but indubitably faded – fashion houses. In 2004 it had been close to bankruptcy. In 2012, Rousteing's first full year in charge, Balmain's sales were €30.4 million and its profit €3.1 million. In 2015, sales were €121.5 million and its profit €33 million. Vulgarity is subjective; numbers are not.

Rousteing, who is of mixed race, was adopted at five months by white parents and enjoyed an affluent and loving upbringing in Bordeaux. "My mum is an optician and my dad was running the port. They are both really scientific – not artistic. So I had that kind of life. Bordeaux is really bourgeois and really conservative, I have to say."

After an ill-starred three-month stint at law school – "I was doing international law. And I was like, 'oh my God, that is so boring'" – he did a fashion course that he managed to tolerate for five months.

"I found that really boring as well. I just don't like actually people who are trying to **** your dream. And I felt that is what my teachers were trying to do."

Obsessed with Gucci

Following a three-month internship in Rome – "also boring" – Rousteing became fascinated with Tom Ford's work at Gucci. "I was obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. Sometimes the press did not get it but I thought 'this is like genius, the new **** chic'. Obsessed, full stop."

He wanted to work there – "that was my dream" – but applied to every fashion house he could, and found an opportunity to intern at Roberto Cavalli. "They took me in from the beginning. I met Peter Dundas [then womenswear designer at the brand] and he said you are going to be my right hand – and start in four days."

Rousteing counts his five years in Italy as formative both creatively and commercially, but when the opportunity came to return to France in 2009 he leapt at it. "Christophe said he liked my work and that he needed someone to manage the studio. So two weeks later I was here. I loved Balmain at the time, when Christophe was in charge. It was all about rock 'n' roll chic, ****, Parisian. And he was appealing to a younger generation. You can see when brands become old but Balmain was touching this new audience. I always say Christophe's Balmain was Kate Moss but mine is Rihanna."

When Decarnin left and Rousteing replaced him, the response was a resounding "who?". His youth prompted some to anticipate failure.

"It was not easy at all. Every season I had the same questions." Furthermore, Rousteing (who has said he thinks of himself as neither black nor white) was the only non-white chief designer at a Parisian couture house. In a nation in which very few people of colour hold senior positions, his race may have contributed both to the establishment's suspicion of him and to his powerful sense of being an outsider.

'Beautiful spirit'

As he began to build a personal vernacular of close-fitted, heavily jewelled, gleefully grandiose menswear – fantastical uniform for a Rousteing-imagined gilded age – for both women and men, that V-word loomed.

"They asked, 'But is it luxury? Is it chic? Is it modern?' All those kinds of words. But you know there is no one definition [of fashion] even if people in Paris think there is. And, I'm sorry, but I think the crowd in fashion are those who understand the least what is avant-garde today."

In 2013 Rihanna visited the studio, met Rousteing, and reported all with multiple Instagram posts. "You are the most beautiful spirit, so down to earth and kind! @olivier_rousteing I think I'm in love!!! #Balmain." :')"

Rousteing met Kim Kardashian at a party in New York – they were drawn together, he recalls, because they were both shy – and was promptly invited to lunch with her family in Los Angeles.

An outsider in the firmament of old-guard Paris fashion, Rousteing was earning insider status within a new, and much more influential, supranational elite. He points out that Valentino, Saint Laurent and Pierre Balmain himself "were close to the jet set of their time. What I have on my front row is the people who inspire my generation".

From them, he learned a new way of doing business. "I think it was Rihanna and the music industry that first understood how Instagram can be part of the business world as well as the personal. But in fashion? When we started it was 'why do you post selfies? Why do we need to know your life, see you waking up, see you working? Why don't you keep it private'. And I was like 'you will see'."

Rousteing cheerfully declares his love for Facetune – "I don't have Botox but I do have digital Botox!" – an app that helps him airbrush his selfies and tweak those ski-***** cheekbones.

Reaching new population

From his office around the corner from Rousteing's, Diemoz adds: "When Olivier first proposed Balmain use social media, our investment in traditional media was costing a lot. Here was an alternative costing less but bringing huge visibility. It has been successful, quite rapidly…we decided to be less Parisian in a way but to speak to a new population. A brand has to be built around its heritage but we are proposing a new form of communication dedicated to a wider group of customers."

The impact of that strategy became apparent in 2015, when Rousteing and Balmain were invited to design a collection for the Swedish fast-fashion retailer H&M.; Within minutes of going on sale – and this is not hyperbole – the collection, available at vastly cheaper prices than Balmain-proper, had completely sold out. In London, customers fought on the pavement outside H&M;'s Regent Street branch. "Balmainia!" blared the headlines.

You have to move fast to get backstage after a Balmain show. I was out of my seat and trotting with purpose even before the string-heavy orchestra at the end of the catwalk had quite stopped playing Adele.

Rousteing had taken his bow merely seconds before. Still, too slow: I ended up in a clot of Rousteing well-wishers stuck in a corridor blocked by security guards. A Middle Eastern woman against whom I was indelicately jammed looked at me, laughed, shook her head, then said: "We pay millions for a fashion house – and then this happens!"

In June, Balmain was bought for a reported €485 million by Mayhoola, a Qatar-based wealth fund said to be controlled by the nation's ruling family. As so often with Rousteing-related revelations, some declared themselves nonplussed. "Why Would Mayhoola Pay Such a High Price for Balmain?", one headline asked. Yet Mayhoola, which acquired Valentino four years previously for $US858 million, might have scored a bargain.

Clothes key to revenue

Despite its huge, Instagram-enhanc­ed footprint, Balmain is a small, lean and relatively undeveloped business. Most luxury fashion houses today – Chanel, Burberry, Dior, et al – will emphasise their catwalk collections for marketing purposes but make most of their money from the sale of accessories, fragrances and small leather goods like handbags and shoes. One of the big fashion companies makes a mere 5 per cent from its catwalk clothes.

At Balmain, by contrast, clothes bring in almost all the revenues. If Balmain had the same clothes-to-accessories ratio as its competitors, its overall annual income could be more than €1 billion ($1.4 billion).

The company is moving in that direction. New accessory lines are in the pipeline. "Now we have to transform that desire into business activity," said Diemoz. "Sunglasses, belts, fragrances, the kind of products that can be more affordable."

The first bags should be available in January, as will a wider range of shoes, and then more, more, more.

Six days after his show, on the last day of Paris Fashion Week, I returned to the Balmain atelier. Apart from two assistants, Rousteing was the only person there – everybody else had gone on holiday to recover from the frenzy of preparing the show, or was busy selling the collection at the showroom around the corner.

Rousteing sat behind his desk in the empty room, wearing slingback leopard-print slippers, sweatpants and shades. "I am not even tired! I am excited. Because there are so many things happening – and I can't wait."Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses | http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-adelaide

first,
you will try to recollect the way i smile
the lines that my eyes make and the light that shines through them
the way i squint when i try to read letters that are far too small
the different wavelengths of laughter
the sneaky one when the politician i voted for won against yours
the sarcastic one when i insult your favorite football team

then you will try to remember the way i ate
the mess i made when i tried to gather rice in my hands
the smile when all of you were not too happy about the mess

then you will remember when i stopped using my walking stick
and when it hurt to walk

then you will realize you can't remember if my favorite sarong is checkered or plain
if it was indigo or brown
was it silk, was it cotton?

then you will realize that the newspaper company you still subscribe to, in memory of me - has shut down
then you will realize my favorite tv show has aired its season finale, and they're not available online
then you will realize my optician no longer makes lenses to the glasses i used to wear
then you will realize the wooden chair i used to live in
has shattered


that is when,
you will take a step back


and i will be

nothing
but
a
faded
*memory

For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a ***.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms


is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.


Marge Piercy

There was almost a fight once.
I say almost, because it was.
I saw it with my own eyes,
in the bus station
that isn’t there anymore
because they blew it up
and everyone cheered.
I don’t remember it much
because this is years ago
and I hadn’t finished university yet
but I was standing in line, as you do,
avoiding eye contact,
like the cucumber
sandwiched between a grey old lady
and a pregnant ******* her phone,
waiting for the X4
or whatever it was called.
I was eating something
and then the black man stood up,
not too far away,
went up to the elderly man,
told him to move, got in his face
like an optician inspecting your eyes
except with more venom.
You could see it in the way he moved.
I don’t know what words were spilt.
I didn’t hear. I said I only saw it.
Then he, the black man that is,
kicked the other man in the shin
with the tip of his boot.
I just stood and watched
like everybody else
because it’s an unexpected moment
in an unexceptional place
as a brief scuffle began,
a thrashing of arms, a spell of aggression.
It ended.
The old man sat down again,
rubbing his leg as strangers spoke.
The black man looked riled.
Cops came out of nowhere
as if they magically transported
to a bus depot by mistake.
I don’t know what happened next
because I got my ride home
and got on with my life,
but I like to think they nicked him
for causing a minor ruckus.
But they probably didn’t.
The buses don’t go there anymore
because they exploded the station.
I might’ve said that earlier.

It is a workaday task
Performed in the service of equally workaday people:
A bland smile, a benign greeting,
The quick review of hastily taken skeletal notes,
The fixing of the apparatus, an approximation of eyewear
Fit for some black-and-white-serial robot,
Upon sundry bridges of sundry noses,
And thence the reading of letters,
Done with an easy sure-footedness at first,
Then imperceptibly yet inexorably more hesitant
Until such time they are no long able
To decipher what is before them,
The shapes devoid of meaning,
Hopelessly beyond their ken,
And at such a time he begins to finagle lenses and settings,
Until such a time where the occupant of his chair
Regains equilibrium and pronounces his sight
Sufficient to the task at hand,
But there was one occasion when, inexplicably,
The patient stiffened in abject terror,
Relating in clipped, anguished words
That all he saw was light, nothing but light
Subsuming everything in its presence.
He was able to restore the lenses to such a fashion
Where the figures before him were reasonably familiar,
But as he excused the patient from the chair,
He found himself wishing ruefully
That he knew some grinder, some technician
Who could have fashioned eyewear
To the specifications which had elicited such a reaction.

We’ve heard them all in years gone by,
But yet we still think our parents wise,
Of all the comments I heard while still a youth,
My parents wise?  I need more proof!

The words to follow may not rhyme,
But sentences familiar to all through time,
If said by kids, we’d be classed as dumb,
But gems of wisdom when said by mum.

“Never takes sweets from strangers!”
But the man in the shop, I don’t know him,
Is he a safe stranger, or trust him not,
If I ask his name, can I take them then?

“Always hold the door open”
Who for, and how many?
If I leave the door open you always moan,
And you know “I wasn’t born in a barn”, you were there remember.

How many times did I hear “I want doesn’t get!”
Yes it does, I always got a clout,
But then you tell me “If you don’t ask you don’t get”
Jeez mum, make your ****** mind up.

“Watching too much telly will give you square eyes”
No it doesn’t, I asked the optician,
And as for never go to bed on an argument,
You’d shout at us for arguing, then send us to bed, *** and kettle I think there!

“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”
What a real gem this is, you only ever told us after the event, great strategy,
And that saving money for a rainy day crap,
We never went out when it rained, sound fiscal policy that one.

Of course we all got told about running to mum with broken legs,
Should we fall out of that tree we were climbing,
Or to never leave the house with wet hair,
But we couldn’t keep her waiting when coming out of the pool, so confusing!

“Men are very different creatures to women” I very often heard,
This is true; men wouldn’t be so daft,
But with a mum we’ve all been blessed,
Cos don’t forget “that mums know best!!!”

© Cinco Espiritus Creation

"reality": as a "confusion"
   regarding overlapping freedoms -

well, there's no better way to
put it...
      not to me minding it otherwise...

marina o'loughlin's
   article in the sunday times'

july 1 2018 print
           almost, but not necessarily
bemused me...

something similar happened to "me":
i.e. my fwend...

       in an obscure part of the world
known as: the extended aspect
of London...
                  namely Ilford, Essex...

a car drove up to us,
   a: non-identity-politics-descriptive
jumped out and
laboured with: my fwends hands
for a (given today's statard)
   pretty much a mobility
telecommunications: brick...

maybe because it didn't happen
to me, but given i was
so close to the action
     i managed to
                 remember the numberplate
of the car, as it sped away...

and then the oddity
of having to engage in an impetus!
make someone write down
the numberplate,
             walk them to the police
station: and then report it...

the whole affair went to court...
   i sat in a police station looking
at mug shots...
    spotted the ******...
   (although, m'ah fwend couldn't,
which is why the case was
   won by the culprit) -

  funny to think of humanity
a noble idea
   of legal justice,
    like the divine causality of
holding an apple, releasing it,
and it falling to the ground...

the defendant's lawyer presented
me with a mug shoot mimic
exercise...
        apparently my eyes lied to me...
i was not supposed to filter
through the list of mug shots of
other criminals...

       back when you had hardware
representations akin
to polaroid photos...
   so he shows me this photo,
     i can look at the ****-stirrer
sitting in the courtroom...
      but then: i notice that there's
a date on the photograph...

and it's circa 2 years in the least
in reverse...

  so i ask the lawyer a simple
question:
          can you imagine a beard on
me in two years time?

oh i did spot the right ******
from the mugshot reel of examples...
human justice and: cheating...
   in court i had the ******
in my sight, but the defence was:
show the witness, of the ******,
taken 2 years prior...

i should be wearing glasses at this
point, or be propped up
by a walking stick,
   or a blind man's third "limb"...

you get the picture?
      justice, from a mouth of a human
being:
               noble idea...
      but not a exact representation of
a plateau...
              ****! if all is to be brought
before the meta-phren...
                    everything is "nuance"...

so... an ode to marina o'loughlin:
i was there,
          at the expense of an english
court...
            with three judges,
  a lawyer and a defendant...
              and i was the prosecutor with
but one question to mistake a defence...

     and i was overwhelmed with
   "being" wrong, on a subjective whim -
rather than an objective verdict!

     perhaps that's why i believe in a god
and can't, even for a remote second
believe there's a justice invoked by man...

oh **** me... early disney?
    boris brejcha:
                     art of minimal techno tripping -
the mad doctor...

          sober, high, or drunk -
   you can't even imagine the transcendent
value of early disney cartoons...

             unless coupled like that...

and no: i don't see god as a personal favour...
come to think of it -
  i believe in a scattering wind,
    over time - things... just don't account
to being personal...

             impersonality of a deity
is not even a monotheistic approach,
  matched to megalomania...

              to make summit (summary):
i too have seen theft...
             sat in a police station,
            identified the culprit...
   then stood in court...
                     and was denied "justice"
being passed...
on the argument that:
      a photograph, with a date,
        of a past,
                was not adequate
representation of the current visage
of the culprit...

   ergo? i probably need to see an optician,
or i need a prodding stick of a blind man...
of that man, serving "justice":
   is also, the man behind roulette
wheel in las vegas...

         justice isn't blind...
            it's just a subtle variant of gambling.

.  In the year 20/20 he

    got his frost pair of

  oculars, lazy eye the

   optician diagnosed.


Misted vision added to

  tinnitus in both ears

left him with only one

communicating option.


  One day Boy Vocal

  raised his empathy

   glasses and said,

    “ Behold Gaza "

an optician runs a light over

a butterfly, enmeshed with

mulch.

a shaft of light emitted from

forest ground, that the sun

knows nothing of.

no more prescient.

than a birdcage flung unto

a wire over an intersection.

its dome rushing its base, its base

rushing its dome.

a lattice of bars that are struck as

they strike.

hung against the contrastive

sky of Giorgione's: The Tempest.

In the year 20/20 he

      got his frost pair of

   glasses, lazy eyes the

      optician diagnosed.


  Diffused vision, tinnitus,

  with speech impairment

    left him with only one

   communicating option.


  One day Boy Focal met

    Anthony Blinken and

  Morse'd with his eyelids

     “ Gaza Sera Libre "