Kori Barnes 
Beyoncé has been the topic of conversation this past year with her long awaited album release Renaissance that gave fans retro dancing music and her surprise drop tour dates for this upcoming summer. Now, she’s making headlines again for something fans, or anyone for that matter, did not see coming.
Since her clothing line release of “Ivy Park” in 2016 with Adidas as a collaboration, fans were ecstatic that they would be able to buy and wear clothes that the Queen herself has endorsed. However, it was recently announced that Beyoncé and Adidas have mutually agreed to part ways following a 50 percent decrease in sales. According to tmz.com., “The Wall Street Journal reports Beyoncé’s custom clothing line Ivy Park fell WAY below its 2022 sales projections of $250 mil … only bringing in roughly $40 mil to close out the year. Those numbers were also considerably lower than 2021’s tally of $93 million … and fresh marketing campaigns with celebs such as Irina Shayk, Yara Shahidi, Megan Thee Stallion and current hip hop it-girl Ice Spice weren’t able to rouse the public’s interest at the cash register.”
Although the news of “Ivy Park” coming to an end may be a shock, fans and critics weren’t ready for the new collaboration announcement that Beyoncé had up her sleeve. One of the most notorious and luxurious fashion houses in history, Balmain, has been exclusively collaborating with Beyoncé and inspired by her newest album Renaissance.
According to vogue.com., “Olivier Rousteing should have been doing one of two things late last July; either finalizing Balmain’s spring 2023 collection, or heading off on vacation. Instead he found himself listening to Beyoncé’s freshly-released Renaissance on rotation. As he tells it down a call from Paris: “I was sketching and sketching as I listened, and sometimes you can’t control the emotion of your sketch. And I started to imagine the sketches inside her album, how they would relate to the songs and the lyrics—it wasn’t something I was supposed to be doing, but I was just inspired by the music to do it. And that’s how this started.” Once he did get to that vacation, Rousteing kept sketching his Renaissance-rabbit hole pieces, refining and shaping. Then when he returned to Paris at the end of August he made a decision. “I contacted Marni [Senofonte, Beyoncé’s stylist ] and B. and I said, ‘Honestly, I want to create a couture collection with you.’ And they were like: ‘Wow, that’s a big surprise.”’
This new couture partnership, Balmain x Beyoncé , has officially been listed on the official Balmain website.
By Kori Barnes, University of Southern California
Insta: @korixnicole
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