On Saturday, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing took to Instagram to report a fashion crime: 50 of the house’s creations for their upcoming Paris Fashion Week show had been stolen. According to Rousteing’s post, he awoke at 9am on September 16 to begin work on the collection, but was soon informed that a truck carrying the clothing was “hijacked by a group of people” and the thieves took off with the whole lot.

“So many people worked so hard to make this collection happen,” he went on, ensuring his followers that “we are redoing everything, but this is so, so disrespectful.” It’ll be a huge task for Rousteing and the Balmain team to recreate the entire show before the originally scheduled date of September 27, but the creative director insists that they will work “days and nights” to make sure the collection is turned in on time.

Thankfully no one was hurt during the robbery, with Rousteing confirming “thank God the driver is safe”. Since the news dropped there’s been plenty of online speculation of who could be responsible for the crime, but nothing has been officially confirmed by authorities. You can’t help but wonder about the motives behind such a specific crime – the stolen pieces will no doubt be instantly recognisable as Balmain creations, so attempting to sell them off will prove extremely difficult for the criminals.

Big names from the world of fashion were keen to show their support for Rousteing in the replies to his post. “Sending you all my love”, wrote Donatella Versace, adding “I know that you and your creativity will be able to overcome this!” Linda Evangelista and a number of others from the fashion and entertainment industry also offered Rousteing their condolences.

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