Balmain's new menswear is damn sexy Antonin Tron finally ditches sportswear for good

A large part of how Balmain's menswear is perceived stems from its logo-heavy merch. T-shirts, sweatshirts and sneakers with distressing, lamé or gold details and a prominent logo on top, worn mostly by people who could easily appear on reality shows like Temptation Island; or by assorted malcontents, petty criminals and neighbourhood "freshmen" whose side-part fade haircuts are a sorry sight in many European cities. Not that Olivier Rousteing designed it that way (the merchandisers are more to blame), but by dint of selling to a far-from-exclusive clientele, Balmain's menswear became, in everyone's eyes, exactly that. Now, however, there is a new creative director, Antonin Tron, and therefore a new menswear that debuted today and, to put it plainly, is damn sexy.

From reality show contestant to seducer

Balmain's new menswear collection did not show on a runway and forms part of the brand's broader Resort 2027 lookbook. Admittedly, now in his second season at the helm of the house and with only two shows under his belt, Tron is still finding his footing within a brand that, while it existed, did so increasingly on the margins of a fashion world in which performativity and a superficial sense of glamour had less and less place. And the direction has shifted considerably: the models now roll around mischievously, with smouldering eyes, amid a bed of grain; or pose, half-naked and offered up to the gaze, against an optical-white background.

The clothes are still showy (silk shirts, metallic details with a sadomasochistic-yet-bourgeois tone, python and leopard-print fabrics), but all the reality-show pretensions are gone, along with all the artificiality of the past. Outerwear and tailoring have certainly become more desirable: the tailoring retains a certain swagger but manages, at last, to break free from the back-and-forth between overly skinny and oversized suits, with generous proportions — one might even say more virile — yet whose shaped waist preserves a certain sharp-edged quality. The standout piece, worth the entire collection on its own, is a double-breasted pony-hair coat that makes your mouth water.

Beyond that, we find denim, leather jackets and seams accentuated by gold rivets that seek to echo the famous studs of the Rousteing era but with a different sense of substance and less ostentation. The trousers with raised damask print and side lacing are certainly eye-catching, as are the piles of heavy silks. But there is nonetheless a more restrained eye at work. It is not so much the spirit that has changed — it remains sexy and brazen, deeply hedonistic — but the execution: more straightforward, less in pursuit of easy effect, focused on a sense of showiness that is more structural than immediately decorative. In short, it has set aside that glamour devoid of ambiguity, nuance and irony.

Surfers, musicians, hedonists

And if we are now beginning to picture his new vision for the brand, as is often the case with male designers, his menswear proves far more direct, defined and "focused" than a womenswear that, technically speaking, promises considerably more. It is no coincidence that the designer told Vogue that the collection includes pieces he essentially designed for himself, identifying gaps in the market left by other brands. The aforementioned tailoring is one example, as are the canvas trousers with a workwear feel.

Among the declared inspirations, there is as much of the rock-and-aggressive style of Andrew Eldritch as there is of the over-the-top colours and structural rigour of 1970s Hawaiian surfer David Nuuhiwa. There is also something of Jim Morrison and the entire cowboy school of the Los Angeles of a bygone era. What is notable is that these inspirations are not rendered literally, nor do they appear to be a copy of the surf-rock world Hedi Slimane played with at Saint Laurent. Compared to that nocturnal universe, Tron's Balmain is far more muscular, carefree and suffused with a certain abandon.

A vision that speaks to the womenswear portion of the collection, which revisits the same prints in draped and knotted garments, where the tension and release of the fabric adorns elongated silhouettes that strike a good balance between the showiness typical of the house and a need for less stiffness and theatricality. It is, then, a first, valid step in a new direction. Going forward, however, Tron would do well to build upon the foundations laid today a look that is more distinctly his own, less reliant on conventions that Tom Ford, Dolce&Gabbana and Roberto Cavalli explored exhaustively for years and that Rhuigi Villaseñor unsuccessfully attempted to bring to Bally some time ago. For now, though, the first step works. It will be the ones that follow, however, that define the journey.