Pierre Balmain

Balmain was born in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, an alpine community in southwest France. He was the only child of Maurice-Eugène, who owned a drapery business, and Françoise-Pierrette who, with her sisters, ran a fashion boutique called Galeries Parisiennes. His father died when he was seven and, at eleven, he won a scholarship to attend a boarding school at nearby Chambéry. On week-ends, an uncle would take him to Aix-les-Bains, a spa town half an hour away which, at the time, was the playground of the rich and famous. It was the Roaring Twenties, and members of high society from Europe, Britain and North America flocked to the town to enjoy the Grand Cercle Casino, the Aix-Les-Bains International tennis tournament, thermal spas and luxury hotels. Here, Balmain met many society women and was exposed to the dramatically changing fashions of the time. His inspirations were Madame Premet, Paul Poiret, Jean Patou, Coco Chanel and, especially, Jacques Doucet.

In 1933, at 19, he moved to Paris to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. He met the designer Robert Piguet, who had just opened his atelier; Balmain sold him three fashion sketches. Realizing that he wanted a career in fashion, he left school and, in 1934, took a job with Edward Molyneux. In 1936, he was called for his mandatory military service, assigned first to the Air Force, then the Pioneers of the Foreign Legion and, at the outset of World War II, the Alpine defense force, Chasseurs Alpins with which he was mobilized in the Maurienne region. When France fell in 1940, he was demobilized and returned to Aix-les-Bains, where his mother now owned a boutique. There, he met Lucien Lelong, who offered him a job. Balmain returned to Paris.

Edward Molyneux taught Balmain a crucial lesson of fashion design: "to strip away anything non-essential...any ornamental detail is valid only if it makes a constructive contribution to the dress." Lelong taught him the business of fashion. Balmain had retail and sales experience from working at his mother's boutiques but Lelong was the master. At the time, Lelong was president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, having developed his parents' small dressmaking business into one of the most successful fashion houses of its time. In the 1920s, he had pioneered the practice of offering discounts to society ladies who would wear his clothes, and agree to be photographed in them. In 1934, he had launched the first ready-to-wear line by a haute couture house, and he had an international perfume division. He managed design, production, quality control, personnel and marketing. Having worked in fashion through one war, he was expert at managing tight supply chains. And he was a diplomat; when the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, it was Lelong who convinced them to keep the fashion houses open. Lelong did not design clothes; he hired designers and jump-started the careers of Christian Dior and Hubert de Givenchy, among others. These are the people Balmain was designing with and they were all learning from Lelong. It's telling that Balmain's most successful design while at Lelong was a simple black dress called "Petit Profit" ("Small Profit"), and that he carefully recorded that it was ordered by 360 clients. At war's end, and as Lelong's retirement approached, Balmain was ready to go out on his own.

Balmain had three homes. In Paris, he lived in the Walter Buildings, at 6 Boulevard Suchet in the La Muette district. He also owned two country houses; a chateau in Croissy-sur-Seine and the modernist Villa Balmain in the village of Poggio on the Isle of Elba, which he designed in 1960 with architect Leonardo Ricci.

In 1947, Balmain hired an assistant, the young Danish designer Erik Mortensen (1926-1998). They became lovers and collaborators and would remain so for the rest of Balmain's life. Balmain died of liver cancer at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, age 68. His ashes were scattered by Mortensen, in the Maurienne valley, at the foot of the Saint-Sorlin-d'Arves glacier.