Balmain Chairman Alain Hivelin Has Died at Age 71

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Balmain's chairman and majority owner Alain Hivelin died last week in Paris at the age of 71, the New York Times reports. Hivelin took the couture house from near-bankruptcy to "hard-edged, stud-speckled, ripped-jean hipness." He was responsible for shrewd hires, like former creative director Christophe Decarnin and the house's current creative director Olivier Rousteing. With his passing, the future of Balmain and the ownership of the brand is a bit of a question mark, although Hivelin named his closest collaborators Jean-François Deheq as chairman and Emmanuel Diemoz as chief executive.
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