Showing his first collection as creative director at Balmain, Antonin Tron proposed what the house calls “a more pragmatic and everyday vision of glamour.”
His is a more approachable Balmain, with low-key fashion fierceness, and a much darker palette and spirit in line with his “film noir” theme. File it under the crowd-pleaser category of designer debuts, touching on house codes like gold, military and dense embellishment in measured dollops, while also adding his expertise with sensual draping.
The clothes were polished and assured, toggling between tough chic and softer, cocktail and evening dresses with an ’80s vibe.
During his excavation of the archive of Pierre Balmain and his many successors, Tron fixated on the early years, zeroing in on his spring 1946 collection and its severity and simmering eroticism.
“I was really shocked by how restrained and sensual all of these pieces were,” he marveled during a preview on Tuesday. “It was important for me to find the emotional connection with the house.
“I was thrown back to 1945, the birth year of Balmain, the end of the [Second World War] in Paris, when this man felt this urgency to create haute couture glamour.”
Tron embraced the founder’s penchant for animal prints, rendering them via dense and intricate embroideries, and fil coupé and cloqué jacquards suggesting leopard spots and tiger straps. “A very controlled, minimal opulence” is how he summed it up.
The designer’s mood board was peppered with scenes from dark-hearted movies: Tony Scott’s “The Hunger” and David Lynch’s 2001 thriller “Mulholland Drive,” while a bit of “Blade Runner” could be felt in the show set: Shutters flickered open behind the gauzy white curtains draped throughout the vast concrete space.
Tron also referenced the spring 1953 Balmain collection, reprising the pilot jacket in glossy leather with Joan Crawford shoulders as an emblem for his streamlined collection, indulging his fascination with glamour and empowering designs.
“I also wanted things to feel quite racy — a sense of movement and speed,” he said. Wraparound sunglasses, leather pants with knee padding and waist-cinched bomber jackets withe peplums accentuated that feeling.
Tron is a seasoned French designer, emerging on the international radar in 2016 when he founded his Atlein brand. He started out designing menswear at Louis Vuitton, followed by womenswear at Givenchy and Balenciaga. He has also worked with the design teams at Saint Laurent.
Tron put his Atlein brand on hold to dedicate himself fully to Balmain, which made quantum leaps under its previous creative director Olivier Rousteing, but then lost momentum as it tried to adapt to the quiet-luxury juggernaut.
Will this debut collection, with its restrained palette and reasonable amounts of embellishment, be loud enough?
