PARIS — Balmain’s new era began with a black leather jacket: a cross-over aviator style with collar snaps and a cinched waist. Styled with big sunglasses, the message was one of armoured, self-possessed glamour. Which new designer Antonin Tron elaborated on with gowns that balanced plunging necklines with long sleeves and sharp, accentuated — but no longer exaggerated — shoulders.
For Tron, that tension between exposure and structure is the essence of the house. “From the very beginning in 1945, 1946 Pierre Balmain came with something very sexy, very glamorous, but still restrained,” he said.
Since joining Balmain just three months ago, one 1946 design has particularly captivated Tron: a strictly tailored black gown with a pink bustier bursting out of its daring cut-out neckline. “Already the Balmain woman was erotic, sensual, unapologetic,” he said.
In his debut show Wednesday, that inspiration translated in cut-out jersey tops, and lacy bras poking out from open-chested gowns.
Tron marvelled at the fact that early Balmain couture collections included pants, and that the designer had designed looks for a famous female aviator, Jacqueline Auriol. Thus all the pilots in the show, wearing shearling aviators, green bombers, officers jackets and sporty racer zip-ups. Cinched waists and little peplums tempered those usually-utilitarian references with touches of signature Balmain glamour. In other cases it was more than a touch: Jackets were embroidered with tiger stripes or embossed to look like crocodile skin.
“Since the beginning you can always find a whiff of scandal at Balmain,” Tron said. “I wanted to keep that, whether it’s these aviator looks or something more Hollywood, more Joan Crawford.”
While Tron has sought to reconnect with the brand’s founding impulse, he didn’t indulge in wiping the slate clean for a back-to-basics message. Even if momentum had slowed for predecessor Olivier Rousteing’s high texture contemporary glam-rock aesthetic, that vision fuelled the Mayhoola-owned brand’s decade-long rise from €30 million to nearly €300 in estimated annual sales by 2023. Since then the luxury sector has slowed significantly, and Balmain with it. But the brand still “has a client, one who loves fashion and is unapologetic. The idea is to accompany her in the transition,” Tron said.
Nods to mid-century couture and old Hollywood glamour were mixed with more recent references. Tron looked to 1980s cinema, honing a vision of “discomforting, even predatory glamour” informed by the heroines of David Lynch or Brian De Palma, or Catherine Deneuve in Tony Scott’s “The Hunger.”
This felt like fertile territory, but not exactly ownable. YSL — where Tron worked behind-the-scenes under Anthony Vaccarello as a side job while running his brand Atlein — has delivered a similar vein of tense, voyeuristic fashion cinema for years. Not to mention showing aviator jackets, plunging long-sleeve gowns and big sunglasses just last season.
Tron insists the new Balmain woman is sufficiently differentiated. “She’s more sensual, more sporty, she has more shape. And she’s more unapologetic. And there’s a very different approach to embellishment.”
It’s also a bit closer to earth, with a reinforced sense of wardrobe running through the collection. “I didn’t want something hybrid, where you can’t tell what it is. If it’s a bomber, it’s a bomber, even if there’s a basque. If it’s a sexy embroidered dress, it’s a sexy embroidered dress,” Tron said.
Simple cropped jackets and surchemises were transformed by all-over embroidery, harkening back to an Yves Saint Laurent couture show in 1987, where rich embellishment transformed simple t-shirt shapes. A marriage of opulence and minimalism, as Tron sees it — and perhaps a way to thread the needle between the maximalist vision the brand’s current clients have accustomed to and a more pared-back new chapter.
