When I met Antonin Tron in his new Balmain office in late January amidst the hubbub of the haute couture shows, he’d just moved in—the entire company relocated from the 8th to the 9th arrondissement at the beginning of the year—and the large room’s only decor was a little black dress tucked into a corner on a dress form. Its draped velvet and jersey shape looked not unlike pieces from Tron’s own label Atlein, so I mistook it for a piece from the fall Balmain collection he’ll present tomorrow. In fact, it was an archive dress by Pierre Balmain dating all the way back to 1946. Only off by 80 years! Clearly, there are aspects of this Paris house’s past that are still little known, despite Olivier Rousteing’s Balmain army and Christophe Decarnin’s raging aughts success. (Going further back, Oscar de la Renta designed Balmain from 1993 to 2002.) Tron has decided to make it his job to educate us.
“I’ve been really digging into Balmain’s past,” Tron said. “He launched in 1945, right after the war when everything was destroyed, with this urgency to create a couture house. His mother sold her wedding ring to help him. His story hasn’t been told so much.”
Balmain represents a big opportunity for Tron. Forty-one and actor-handsome with a surfer’s physique, he’s been running his independent label for the last 10 years. Its slinky fits—“Madame Grès but make it a T-shirt,” is how he sums up his aesthetic—have provided a sexy counterpoint to the quiet luxury that’s dominated recent trend cycles, but it’s not easy competing against the Paris giants. Tron has experience at those kinds of label too. Before Atlein, he worked behind the scenes at Balenciaga, where his tenure spanned Nicolas Ghesquière, Alexander Wang, and Demna, back when he still used his last name. More recently, he was on Anthony Vacarrello’s women’s team at Saint Laurent, a side gig that helped him keep the engines running at Atlein.
Tron’s Balmain research began with a close reading of the late couturier’s autobiography, My Years and Seasons. In it, Balmain recounts the friendship he built with Christian Dior when they were both young apprentices at Lucien Lelong. The plan, for a time, was that they’d set up in business together—imagine how different 20th and 21st century fashion might be, if they had—but it never came to pass. Balmain beat Dior to launch, but unlike Dior and his iconic “New Look,” which were the subject of an AppleTV series in 2024, Balmain’s codes are less well-defined.
The original impulse behind the house, Tron believes, was glamour. “The Balmain woman, she’s very unapologetic and very non-bourgeois, she’s quite badass,” he says. You can chalk that up, as he sees it, to Hollywood connections. Brigitte Bardot’s steamy semi-sheer dresses in And God Created Woman? Those were Balmain’s. He also costumed Sophia Loren in The Millionairess. Off the lot he dressed the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, and Josephine Baker. Back home on the continent, the first woman pilot for Air France was another client—now that’s badass—and Tron will nod to her with his show’s first look, a glossy black leather jacket with 1940s shoulders and a well-defined waist above a peplum hem, which he’s pairing with tapered trousers, point d’esprit stockings and heels. “I want everything to feel quite racy,” he says, “moving quite fast.”
For the show set, which he describes as “very immersive, almost but not quite like an abandoned house,” Tron worked with his friend, the architect Andrea Faraguna, who won the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale last year. “You get to a house that is 80 years old and there are a lot of ghosts. Everybody has an opinion about what Balmain should be; you have to deal with the ghosts and not push them away,” he says. Of course, his own hand will be apparent, too. “At Atlein I always felt like I was this movie director that only had an iPhone to make a movie, and suddenly, well, it’s not Ridley Scott, but I can do embroideries, I can do tailoring.” Where Rousteing specialized in exuberance, Tron thinks of what he does as “minimal opulence.” He’s got the Balmain signature animalier motifs, for example, but his embroidered leopard spot jacket is a zip-up.
Accessories are more or less new territory for Tron and he sees them as a growth area for Balmain, too, which has led with its ready-to-wear in the 21st century, not its leather goods. “I feel that with accessories things are very cold, very hard—everywhere,” he says. “I want something very sensual, Balmain like it should be: very sexy; very luxurious, but with a real sensuality.” He pointed to a soft leather clutch modeled on his surf bag; the Balmain version isn’t waterproof, but with sides that roll down, it’s built like the dry bags used in water sports.
After his Balmain debut, as has become his custom following his March Atlein shows, Tron will head to Sri Lanka for a surfing trip. “A big group of us meet there every year. It’s very chill, very mellow.” Then it’s right back into the driver’s seat.
