Welcome to the underworld of Olivier Theyskens - a deep, romantic cave of wonders filled with fragile beauty and precious objects, existing in a land where time stood still.

A dark horse in the recent history of European fashion, Olivier has carved and polished his own niche of modern couture. Born in Brussels, Belgium in 1977, he began his fashion studies at the La Cambre school, but left to pursue his own creations and to design costumes for the Theatre de la Monnaie. Theyskens’ first appointment in Paris was at the house of Rochas in 2002, where he employed his demicouture techniques to their ready-to-wear line for revolutionary results. In 2006 he began directing the house of Nina Ricci, again to much acclaim – leaving after a show-stopping Fall Winter 2009 show that left many in raptures over some of his boldest, most sculptural designs to date.

Upon his appointment to Rochas, Olivier Theyskens was invited to create NºD, succeeding Hussein Chalayan in the first lettered series of A Magazine, that went NºA, NºB, NºC etc. Nearly a decade on we approached Olivier to comment on the issue, and in the past months we have spent time with him to re-order the pages, creating the magazine he originally envisaged, yet that became somewhat mismatched in its final rushed edit. He even included a new image in the online issue, which we will present here later in the month.

NºD is an ode to Olivier Theyskens’ obsessions, romance and appreciation of femininity, filled with vibrant imagery celebrating both the twisted and classical European ideals of beauty. The pages are unified with an animated story that unfolds in the corner, a ‘flipbook’ romance by animator Nicolas Dufranne. Olivier takes us into the forest, the theatre, through his encyclopedias and the salons of Parisian fashion from another era. Photographs of forests and flowers mirror the painstaking artisanal work of 1950s couture dresses and contemporary creations from the house of Dior, in this issue that holds a balance of light and dark, history and modernity, captivity and freedom, and the organic and the manufactured.

Also featuring Lewis Carroll, Karl Lagerfeld, Tilda Swinton, the Larousse Encyclopédie, and Jenny Holzer.

To view Olivier’s magazine online – click here.

NºD will be followed by:

NºE featuring Viktor & Rolf – September 2010

and the announcement of A#10, released in November 2010.

Welcome to NºD featuring Olivier Theyskens – the fourth installment of the original A story.