Antonin Tron has been appointed Balmain’s new captain; he has been at the house a mere three months. Tron immediately set the house on a fresh course while also reassuring his passengers of his expertise and control. His opening look was a flight jacket luxurified in rich matte lambskin. It nodded to Air France’s first female pilot, Danielle Décuré, a trailblazer who overcame two crashes and generational misogyny to follow her dream and, in 1975, took flight in a uniform designed for her by Pierre Balmain. “I love that,” Tron said. “The Balmain woman is unapologetic.”
The Décuré reference pointed to late-stage Pierre Balmain, but the collection itself was rooted earlier, in the house founder’s emergence as a couturier in the 1940s. Two vintage dresses cut by Balmain had inspired Tron to explore the elegance of that decade and trace a line from it to the “minimal opulence” he hopes to express today. The siren style of film noir heroines—“restrained and sensual, controlled and sexy”—played a central role. The rounded, structured shoulders, gathered waistlines, pencil skirts and fitted sleeves of the prototypical Bacall or Hayworth gown appeared in several dresses and became anchoring motifs across the collection. Elsewhere there were other nods to the period, including a Bogart-worthy trench.
There was a nocturnal subtlety to many of the finishes achieved with the atelier. Animalier pieces referenced another original Balmain signature, here realized in caviar beads. The black coat in look 31 was shrouded in hand-cut leather feathers. A croc-effect coat, skirt, shirt and boots were created by applying mosaics of leather panels that were then edged with further caviar beading. Twists-of-smoke cloqué jacquards and silk jacquards were developed from the archives.
At times the collection’s refinement was too subtle to communicate the depth of craft and intention behind it, particularly within the shadowy noir staging of the runway. Some of the suedes and velvets appeared black in the gloom but were in fact oxblood, green or midnight blue. Details such as the tortoiseshell resin quarters of many shoes were easy to miss. For those relying only on runway imagery or video, the picture could not be fully illuminated. This show needed more light.
The audience was filled with Balmain women, clients who first came to the house during the long tenure of Tron’s predecessor, Olivier Rousteing. It was fascinating to watch them, all dressed in Balmain from that era, acclimatize themselves to Tron’s new flightpath. Backstage he said: “In my new vision for Balmain I think about the existing clients a lot. Balmain is actually a house that sells ready-to-wear, a lot, and this is rare. You have to respect that, and I do, and it’s also a great opportunity for me. Because they wear luxury and they wear fashion, so you have to take care of them. I feel super privileged for that.”
Pierre Balmain himself was an inherently conservative designer, while Tron arrives tasked with setting a new direction after a decade of exuberance. Now that he is in the air, Balmain’s new pilot can read the atmosphere, and open up the throttle towards wherever he wishes to go.
