Creative Director | Boloria
Speaker
Olivier Theyskens
Boloria
Belgium
Olivier Theyskens is a Belgian designer whose work emerged in the late 1990s. After establishing his own label in 1997, he began presenting his collections in Paris, where they quickly drew international attention — Vogue Runway described his early work as “strong, dark collections that electrified fashion in the late nineties.” In 2002, Theyskens was appointed Artistic Director of Rochas, for which he was awarded the Fashion Group International Star Award (2005) and the CFDA Award for Best International Designer (2006). He went on to serve as Artistic Director of Nina Ricci from 2006 to 2009, bringing a renewed sense of fluidity and elegance to the house, before moving to New York to lead Theory as Artistic Director from 2010 to 2014. In 2016, he returned to Paris to re-establish his eponymous label, reaffirming a commitment to precise construction and savoir-faire. His work has been the subject of institutional recognition, including a retrospective at the MoMu Fashion Museum in Antwerp (2017), accompanied by the monograph She Walks in Beauty (Rizzoli), and the exhibition “In Praesentia” at the Cité de la Dentelle et de la Mode in Calais (2019). In 2025, Theyskens was appointed Creative Director of Boloria, a new Antwerp-based fashion house in collaboration with the Belgian group WEAREONE.world. Theyskens continues to create simultaneously for his eponymous label, maintaining a practice defined by refined craftsmanship.
