Beyoncé’s Adidas era is over, and her Balmain partnership is just starting.
On Thursday, according to the Hollywood Reporter, the “Cuff It” singer and Adidas ended their five-year-long partnership. In 2018, Beyoncé brought her Ivy Park clothing line to Adidas and developed new footwear and apparel collections for the brand. THR reported that Ivy Park and Adidas experienced creative differences and that Beyoncé planned to work independently.
Representatives for Beyoncé and Adidas did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News’ requests for comment.
Just a day later, Vogue France announced Beyoncé’s new collaboration with French fashion brand Balmain. The announcement came as part of the singer’s appearance on the magazine’s April 2023 cover. Vogue France's cover story included Beyoncé and models wearing pieces from the new collection that she codesigned with Balmain’s creative director, Olivier Rousteing. The “Renaissance Couture” collection was inspired by her latest album, Renaissance.
“Thank you @olivier_rousteing and @balmain for bringing RENAISSANCE to life in couture,” Beyoncé wrote in an Instagram post. “Designing alongside you was freeing—thank you for allowing me to celebrate the human form, to take artistic risks, to push boundaries and to freely express myself.”
According to W magazine, the collection is a one-off collaboration and the pieces won’t be for sale.
Amid the singer’s new partnership with Balmain, Ivy Park’s future remains unclear. According to a Wall Street Journal report published in February, Ivy Park profits fell over 50% of Adidas’s projected sales of $250 million in 2022, leaving the company’s annual projections with a $200 million hole. The clothing line closed out the year with roughly $40 million in sales.
Beyoncé first debuted the Ivy Park brand in 2016 as part of a joint venture with Topshop. The musician gained full ownership when the deal ended in 2018 before moving the brand over to Adidas. Beyoncé called it the “partnership of a lifetime,” according to the Journal.
Her last Adidas collaboration debuted in January, when she previewed the Park Trail brand in Dubai ahead of a large-scale private concert in the city, which marked her first live show in over four years.
Beyoncé isn’t the only major artist partnership Adidas has lost in the past year. The brand ended its business relationship with Kanye West in October following public pressure after the rapper made antisemitic comments online, among other offensive behavior. Specifically, Adidas stopped paying the rapper and his companies and ended the production of his Yeezy-branded products.