“For me, the men’s and the women’s, they are kind of like one entity. I really want the men and women to be able to talk to each other.” Antonin Tron was riffing as we riffled the rails of his first pre-spring collections for Balmain, including this first-ever menswear collection for the house. “I don’t necessarily think of them as a couple,” he qualified: “but I think at Balmain the women are quite sexy and out there. And if I was to do something very different for men, it would be weird.”
Looking at his rails simultaneously, that relationship was manifest in substance as well as spirit: “We have a lot of overcrossing material,” Tron confirmed. Yet there was one fundamental difference in his approach to the two wardrobes: while his Balmain woman is an imagined character, his man is more internalized. “I’m also making things that I can’t find myself,” he said. The tailoring block, for instance, arose from his frustration with suits that were either too narrow or too oversized. Here the shoulders were strong, the waist defined and the fit flattering without constriction: very much surfer’s suiting. “Clothes have to help you, no?”
This approach was also apparent in a bodacious pair of heavy cotton canvas trousers,
