Date: born 1977

Biography: Olivier Theyskens has been heralded as one of fashion's most exciting young talents. Sally Singer once wrote that Theyskens’ designs “wander the edges of beauty and refinement.” They have a dreamlike quality that the fashion press has often described as “ethereal.” Because his clothes are sometimes darkly romantic, Theyskens has been called a “Goth designer,” but this refers only to one aspect of his work, which is often joyfully feminine. Theyskens studied fashion at La Cambre, in Brussels. Abandoning school in his final year, at age nineteen, he submitted pieces from his degree collection, “Gloomy Trips,” to a Belgian group show. Photographs from this collection were shown to stylist Arianne Phillips, who subsequently dressed Madonna in one of Theyskens’ black satin coatdresses for the 1998 Oscars, bringing the designer into the international spotlight. Theyskens presented his first full collection in Paris in 1998. A deconstruction of eighteenth-century style, the collection reworked traditional French fabrics into “romantic fin-de-siècle silhouettes.” In 2002, when Theyskens became artistic director of the French house Rochas, he closed his own line in order to fully focus on reinvigorating the company. For the next five years, his exquisitely eerie collections brought new elegance to Rochas. However, Rochas closed in 2007, and Theyskens joined Nina Ricci. He began designing a capsule collection for Theory in 201 and served as artistic director for the company from 2011 to 2014. Despite these professional upheavals, Theyskens’ artistic vision has remained intact. It embraces technique, attention to detail, and a romantic passion that seems to conflict with today’s profit-driven fashion world. It has been said that “[Theyskens] wants to create a certain kind of world with his clothes, and it’s possible that world no longer exists.”