Balmain’s Beauty Pageant of All Ages

It’s not exactly a state secret that many fashion brands are powered by their beauty business. That the clothes and the “image,” financially out of reach for the majority of fans except as social-media-proffered fantasy, help sell the fragrances and lipsticks, which are (relatively) accessible by a much larger group. A hit perfume can be a company cornerstone for decades; see Chanel No. 5. And yet beauty is often treated as the sort of frivolous stepsibling of fashion. The thing to, you know, be kept backstage.

Or it was, until Wednesday night when Olivier Rousteing of Balmain put it front and center, essentially turning his entire collection into one enormous beauty ad. The day before the brand (and its partner, Estée Lauder) opened its first beauty boutique, showcasing a new cosmetics line as well as a new line of scents at the Paris store. This was simply one way to make it go viral.

Obvious? No question. Campy? Sure. Rarely has so much unabashed commercialism been seen on a runway. But rarely has it been done with so much tongue-in-cheek glee.

At a time when many brands seem to be retreating to the haven of predictability, showing only the tamest, most familiar collections, Mr. Rousteing went to the opposite extreme. The result may not have offered a big new fashion direction, but it did give the idea of a beauty pageant a whole new meaning.

There were dresses that looked like Guy Bourdin close-ups of crimson nails and glistening red mouths, only they weren’t printed; they were recreated through the embroidery of hundreds of thousands of beads — more than 500,000 on one gown, Mr. Rousteing said backstage.