Leather Jackets by Balmain
Boots by Chrissie Morris

Clockwise from top left (click photo above to purchase):

Chrissie Morris Dakota Bootie, $496

Belle Noel by Kim Kardashian Textured Slice Bangle Set, $64

Oscar de la Renta 24-karat Gold-Plated Geometric Link Clip Earrings, $185

Incase Chrome Slider iPhone 4S Case, $34.99

3.1 Phillip Lim Metallic Woven Trousers, $665

Balenciaga Montre Acier Silver Watch, $1,795

Pierre Balmain Metallic Leather Baseball Jacket, $1,335

Christian Dior — alongside Pierre Balmain — worked for Parisian couturier Lucien Lelong during World War II and ensured that Nazi wives were the chicest anti-Semites of the Third Reich. Unlike Boss, who was an early co-signer to the Nazi party — Dior’s involvement was a move to preserve the tradition of Haute Couture, with Lelong being quoted as saying ”You can impose anything upon by force, but Paris couture cannot be uprooted, neither as a whole or in any part. Either it stays in Paris or it does not exist.”

Meanwhile, Dior’s sister, Catherine was a member of the French Resistance and was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, the memory of which was invoked at the fall 2011 Dior show by CEO Sidney Toledano as he addressed the audience following Galliano’s dismissal. Catherine was released in May of 1945 and two years later, Dior revolutionized womenswear with his acclaimed “New Look,” liberating women by giving them back their “sparkle and joyfulness,” to paraphrase Toledano.

One woman who was perhaps a little too liberated was Francoise Dior, Dior’s whackadoo neo-Nazi niece who openly professed her love for all things Kampf in a 1963 video that went viral during Gallianogate. In said video, Franny extolled the virtues of “defending the race” and keeping the bloodline “pure’; words she would put into action by attacking British synagogues and sticker-bombing Swastikas at the British Embassy in France.

Pierre Balmain once said “dressmaking is the architecture of movement,” and Christophe Decarnin managed to make a sexy and sophisticated collection with movement using mainly animal skins and metallics. A Joan of Arc inspired collection, critics claimed his designs were “a returning heroine moment of great zest and epic edgy beauty, saying Decarnin knows “how to rock–and how to sell.”

Via NY Mag

View the entire collection here.

The  Balmain collection has gone from luxury growns for the starlets of the 1950′s to Rock-n-Roll Glam.

Find more photos like this on CULT

Courtesy of Style

I’ve been feeling really nostalgic for days when the runway was filled with men who looked like real men and not skinny little boys (Hey men also have pressures from the runway to look pencil thin and 16).

Here’s some looks from the possibly defunk menswear designer, Pierre Balmain, who’s house was once run by Oscar de la Renta and now only caters to women.