Antonin Tron's First Balmain Menswear Lands Wednesday, Built on Surfers, Rock Singers and Leather

Antonin Tron has made his first menswear for Balmain. The house put the collection, Men's Pre-Spring 2027, on Instagram on Tuesday, calling it Tron's first menswear collection for the Maison and the start of "a new era for Balmain." WWD, which had the first look, reports that it reaches stores on Wednesday, November 11, and that it's going into 18 of Balmain's 44 boutiques, the larger shops. Wholesale buyers include Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Net-a-Porter and Mytheresa, according to the house's chief executive, Matteo Sgarbossa.

Balmain's own description is short. The collection is "inspired by surf legends, rock gods and Hollywood icons whose masculinity has never played by the rules", and their laid-back style "informs an undone West Coast grunge aesthetic, balanced by a sense of rugged masculinity." The campaign was shot by the photographer Matthias Vriens, with art direction and styling by Éric Diulein and Sacha Quintin. Balmain's post shows a model in a black leather biker jacket and leather trousers, lying in dry grass.

Balmain

Tron gave WWD and Vogue the same cast of men to work from: the surfer David Nuuhiwa, whom Vogue calls the most important reference; Lou Reed; Andrew Eldritch, the Sisters of Mercy singer, whose band Vogue says Tron has seen 25 times; and Brad Pitt in the '90s, with Matthew McConaughey added in WWD's version. Vogue picks out the double-breasted suiting, built on a block Tron cut because suits he tried were too narrow or too big, plus workwear canvas trousers and jackets, denim and leopard silks. WWD lists business suits, velvet dinner jackets and leopard-print shirts. Pierre Balmain made the house's first men's collection for spring 1967, WWD notes, but Tron told it he didn't use the archive.

The men's and women's lines share a lot. Tron told both outlets he sees them as one vision; jacquard, fil coupé and denim turn up in both, and WWD says he counts embroidered leather jackets, lace-up trousers, gilded blazers and jeans as close to unisex. On Monday, Balmain posted the leather pieces from Tron's women's Spring-Summer 2027, inspired, it said, by "the leather-clad Jim Morrison."

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This is a business move as much as a design one. WWD reports that menswear is about 20 percent of Balmain's sales and that Sgarbossa wants it at 30 to 35 percent, after a stretch in which Balmain men's leaned on sneakers, logos and T-shirts. Tron's answer leans the other way, on tailoring, leather and evening wear, the clothes that hold their price, placed in the boutiques big enough to show them plus a short list of department stores and sites. He's also doing it at the quieter end of the calendar. Pre-collections usually stay on the shop floor longer than runway lines, and launching menswear there, a year after he was named, part of the same wave of new designers as Gucci's and Fendi's, lets the clothes sell before anyone reviews a men's show. Prices weren't announced.