“The strength of fashion is to be the witness of your time.” This quote from Olivier Rousteing during a 2024 SXSW interview titled ‘Melding Heritage and Innovation’ sat with me as I boarded my flight to JFK in May of this year. I was on my way to New York City for the launch of Couture Expressions, a collection of four limited-edition blends created by Johnnie Walker’s master blender Dr Emma Walker alongside Rousteing, based on the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
I’d spent the week or so before my trip mining social media, magazine articles, and YouTube videos about the eminent creative director of the luxury French fashion house, Balmain (the youngest person to hold such a title since Yves Saint Laurent, when he took on the role aged 25). Among an enviable house tour with Vogue, a podcast episode with Dua Lipa, and a scroll through the SS16 campaign that reunited Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Cindy Crawford, that one succinct line in the context of these two historic brands
really stuck.
When a young John Walker opened his grocery shop in Kilmarnock in the southwest of Scotland in 1820, he approached whisky from a bold new angle. While most other grocers were selling single malts, Walker had become dissatisfied with their lack of consistency. So, he decided to blend them for his customers and, unwittingly, set in motion the beginning of one of the world’s most celebrated whisky brands. After his death in 1857, his son Alexander took over the fruitful business and with the arrival of the railway, sent his whiskies around the world.
Nearly a century later and in 1945, in a post-WWII France, access to the materials needed to build a fashion house were not easy to come by. Much like the Walkers’ grasp of the need for reinvigoration, a resilient Frenchman by the name of Pierre Balmain began to build his own house. He revolutionised how women dressed in post-war Paris and created what was called the ‘New French Style’. Fluent in English, he approached his business with the modern understanding that to be successful he had to take his designs international.
And now, in 2025, those brands have come together with the collaboration of their two custodians, Dr Walker and Rousteing, both of whom have become woven into the stories and identity of Johnnie Walker and Balmain respectively. It’s quite the coup. Two of their industries’ most accomplished, revered, and future-thinking talents working together on a product that melds the arts of couture and blending — and puts luxury whisky under the microscope.
“It’s like being in a candy store,” says Rousteing of having the collection in its final form when I meet him the day before its big reveal at a dinner where the likes of Stormzy, Priyanka Chopra, Lupita Nyong’o, Hunter Schafer, and Nicky Rothschild were in attendance. “It’s been a long journey but an incredible one. The craft, the expertise, the precision of everything came through, so I’m super excited.”
The designer is a generational talent in his industry. Known for his focus on structure, edge, but with textural softness (and a fondness for black and gold), Rousteing approaches his designs through a proud Parisian lens, drawing from the brand’s heritage while always being contemporary.
It’s the first collaboration with the recently launched Johnnie Walker Vault, a new platform which sees a selection of 500 curated and rotated whiskies from 10 million rare, aged, and ghost casks at Dr Walker’s disposal, filed in her mind — quite incredibly — like a Rolodex of flavour, texture, and character.
The launch of Couture Expressions follows that of a bespoke private blend experience that sees customers (for a cool £50,000 or more) have their own personal whisky made for them by Dr Walker based on cues such as their favourite foods, places to travel, pieces of music, and time of year. This personal process has in part been extended to the creation of these four new collaboration whiskies, with Rousteing’s personal interpretations and experiences of the seasons playing into the final liquids and their beautiful Baccarat decanters.
“When we first connected to discuss what the Johnnie Walker Vault opportunity could become, he immediately lit up with a wealth of ideas,” says Julie Bramham, managing director of Diageo Luxury Group, of Rousteing. “He loved the brand story of progress and how this ethos connected with him, and what the Vault platform was set up to do — and we loved his passion, energy, and how invested he wanted to be in the partnership. This project is all about personal storytelling, so it had to be authentic, and I think that has really shone through in the collaboration and the collection.”
“The Vault is all about asking, how do we weave people’s stories using our whiskies?” explains Dr Walker of this particular approach to whiskymaking. “Olivier brought so much raw openness and honesty, and him being so open about what he’s been through was transformative. You feel so honoured to be involved in it. To take what he told us and make whiskies to tell his story was an honour.”
And what a story it is to tell. Rousteing’s life has been a colourful one. Born in Bordeaux and adopted as a baby, he spent most of his adult life wondering what his biological roots were. His succession into the world of Parisian fashion was an unlikely one — being the first Black creative director of a French fashion house, he had to forge his own path in a resistant industry. Now, he can count the Kardashians and Beyoncé as his loyal muses. In 2019, he made the biographical film Wonder Boy, a glimpse into the life of Rousteing and his quest to find out who his birth parents were, resulting in the revelation of his Somali and Ethiopian heritage. In 2020, he had a horrifying accident which left him with severe burns. His strength, resilience, heritage, and identity have all played their part in the Couture Expression blends.
The duo spent 12 months bringing the blends to life between Paris and Edinburgh. Watching Rousteing walk around the Vault, which sits ethereally under the prodigious Johnnie Walker Princes Street, he looks remarkably at home. Back in New York and the calm, poised, and thoughtful Rousteing clearly resonated with the Scotch giant’s ethos. “Every collaboration is really special when you push boundaries. What I loved about this collaboration with Johnnie Walker is that the brand is really anchored in the past, but always looks to the future.”
And so, to the whiskies. Originally meant to be one blend, early meetings with Dr Walker and Rousteing quickly saw it multiply to four in total, with the seasons acting as a clever and fitting medium with which to play around with style in terms of liquid and decanters. Only 25 have been made of each batch, coming in at £16,000 a piece.
“I’m picking out the highest pinnacles,” says Dr Walker of the rare and experimental 500 whiskies she has at her fingertips. Old, young, ghost: the selection also includes whiskies made by her predecessor Jim Beveridge OBE which have been re-casked and evolved into something different. “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to blending artistry and how that has developed over the generations,” she says reflectively.
Rousteing has created a decanter that has the distinct edge he is known for alongside some signature softness, added texture and different metals to bring each season to life: rose gold for spring, silver for summer, gold for fall, and metallic black for winter. The glass decanter itself has been crafted using Baccarat glass and Rousteing has used the couture technique of drapé to wrap each blend’s metallic casing around it like armour.
Having a rich heritage to draw from guided Rousteing in some of his design decisions. “The most beautiful part of creating is having a heritage. I got the chance to go through the archives at Johnnie Walker, so I wanted to bring some of those historical elements into the design,” he explains. The cube shape of the glass bottle, for example, mirrors the cube bottles John Walker’s original blends were housed in. The stopper, a striking winged shape (which matches the winged shoulders on Rousteing’s jacket), gives Johnnie Walker’s signature strapline a skyward-looking extension — “keep walking, until we can fly”.
Each blend starts with the same heart of rare whiskies from Brora, Port Ellen, and Port Dundas, before the process of building each season begins. Dr Walker’s use of the other supporting whiskies is as much about adding their character to the blend as it is about using them to round out or amplify characteristics in others.
Spring kicks off the collection: new beginnings. “When we’re looking at spring, we’re thinking of reinvention, so I’m thinking about that freshness, petrichor, sunshine after the rain — my mind goes straight to Port Ellen,” explains Dr Walker. The blend includes 1978 Port Ellen, the fruitier and sweeter impact of 1985 Cragganmore, and some grain influence from a 1977 Caledonian. There’s apple blossom, creamy vanilla pods, cut grass, and citrus.
“Summer is about energy,” says Rousteing. “I was sensing a pineapple cocktail on the beach… imagine this incredible sun and a beautiful warm beach.” Tropical fruit is the star of the show here with notes of soft mineral sand, pineapple, juicy mango, and citrus coming from some of the blending world’s favourite distilleries: the likes of an experimental Cardhu Wine Cask Finish, a 1990 Clynelish (whose maritime character works wonders here), and a rich 1988 Benrinnes.
Fall blends an experimental Teaninich malt and 1978 Port Ellen and is the most unusual of the quartet with notes of cherries, tonka beans, chilli flakes, dark chocolate, roasted coffee, demerara sugar, and ginger. “There’s a sense of introspection about it,” says Rousteing, and thinking about heritage and origins. “Autumn is really exciting and I think Olivier’s favourite,” says Dr Walker. It was also the first blend they made together. “We were talking about where he’s from and he was really passionate about spice and heat, and with that I immediately wondered what makes a spicy whisky: chocolate malt.”
Winter, swathed in its black casing and suitably smoky, is a gutsy finale. “I said to Emma that it needs to feel strong, bold,” says Rousteing of his vision for it. It’s also warm and has a sense of coming home about it, making memories with family. The Islay malts from Port Ellen and Brora are matched with the jamminess of 1988 Benrinnes. “For me it was all about Christmas,” explains Dr Walker and, indeed, this is packed with nutmeg, coal fire, oranges, and a touch of chocolate.
Presenting each of these whiskies to a room full of Hollywood actors and global musicians requires a certain level of spectacle. Sat around the parameters of a raised platform in near darkness, each seasonal blend appears in looming hologram form, spinning, and draped in its metallic finery to music and imagery that matches its energy: spring in an ethereal cloud to Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, summer on rippling water under an orange sun to Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids in America’, fall surrounded by kaleidoscope beams to Rick Springfield’s ‘Jessie’s Girl’, and winter crowned with feathers and nestled in twine to MC Hammer’s ‘Can’t Touch This’.
But behind all the drama, Rousteing and Dr Walker’s chemistry is tangible in these four magnificent blends. It’s not easy to deliver a fingerprint, a human touch, even a heart when it comes to this calibre. Yet, speaking to Dr Walker and Rousteing about their experiences of working together, it is startlingly clear that this union has been a meeting of minds — and resulted in a collection that feels simultaneously universal, yet deeply personal.
It’s a softer luxury: a focus on stories, memories, feelings and the people at the centre of them. “Age statements used to be the shorthand for luxury whiskies,” says Bramham, “and whilst we recognise the value of rare, old whiskies, today luxury relates to so much more. It’s about creating a connection through bringing the consumer into the world you are building.”
Getting to this point has not been a quick or linear process. It’s far from Dr Walker’s first collaboration, but it is likely the most high profile. “People talk about going back to their 20-year-old self: if I told them what I was doing I’d get a slap,” she laughs. “We’re working on this super luxurious whisky, I got to go to Paris to work with this icon of haute couture, and now I’m here before the Met Gala. It’s brilliant and terrifying in equal measure.”
It wasn’t just Dr Walker who was feeling the pressure. “I felt really small when I started working with Dr Emma Walker,” admits Rousteing. “I didn’t feel like I’d been a creative director for the last 15 years. When you’re really established it is hard to feel small so it felt like a new beginning. I was shy, I was scared I wouldn’t be good enough, you’re not in your comfort zone: but I love that feeling, it makes me feel alive.”
What was Rousteing most surprised about when it came to the whisky creation process? “The mathematics,” he answers immediately. “I was sketching and Emma was sketching a circle where she is creating lines about balance, and I was just like, this is mathematics. This was when the process became more complex.”
And Dr Walker of the mechanics of couture design? “There is so much under the surface that we don’t see that gives [the pieces] structure, like seams and the support they give as well as an overall balance. What I loved was how these two creative processes are so closely linked but happening side by side. I loved working with him, being taken on that journey of how we create that together, seeing how he started thinking about the bottle, these big, bold, simple strokes and creating something magnificent.”
“I love Emma, she is incredible,” smiles Rousteing. “Professionally she taught me so much but personally too… I think we both realised that we needed to speak the same language to create these four blends. We had to play the same symphony but with different instruments.”
It’s a big and bold move for Johnnie Walker, the brand, as it enters new spaces and reaches new audiences. “Working with Olivier allowed us to show up authentically in new arenas for Johnnie Walker,” says Bramham of this new era. “Activating around the Met Gala, the biggest fashion event of the year, was an incredible moment for us.”
Dr Walker sees this evolution, much like Rousteing’s view on fashion, as whisky’s way of keeping up with the times. “You go back to the beginning of the company and this is, in essence, what they were doing. Whisky relies on its past but it has to look to its future. So we’re just asking how we make sure people are still interested in whisky.”
For Rousteing, the fact that these blends — his memories, stories, and designs — are part of the Vault is something truly special: “What I love the most is creating something timeless.” The seasons may change, but Couture Expressions will be part of the Johnnie Walker story forever. Who knows what it might inspire in the future.
