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.
