Antonin Tron Drops His First Campaign for Balmain

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It’s been four months since designer Antonin Tron showed his debut collection for the house of Balmain. Before Tron, Balmain was lead by designer Olivier Rousteing (now rumored to be leading Rabanne) for 14 years, during which time the brand became known for it’s embellished party dresses and extravagantly shoulder-padded blazers. Tron’s first collection for the brand, however, felt more subdued than the Balmain that had come before. Many of the same elements were there, but the volume was turned down — the almost costume-like bravado of Rousteing’s Balmain replaced with something more grounded, more wearable.

It’s still sexy, though, as evidenced by Tron’s first campaign for the brand, which just dropped today.

Photographed by Suffo Moncloa — a Spanish artist renowned for his elegantly off-kilter, individualistic portraiture — the campaign displays the collection within a cinematic landscape set in a John Lautner mid-century sculptural home, which echoes Pierre Balmain’s own modern, architectonic approach to design, something Tron explored in his own way with Fall-Winter 2026.

The collection and campaign were also meant to reference Balmain’s trailblazing valorisation of the women of Hollywood’s golden era. Thus, it is presented as a series of film stills, akin to those from some of cinema’s greatest American and European auteurs; momentary pauses in a narrative which is shadowy, alluring, and charged with eroticism.

Yet for all of their cinematic allure, these images are really about Tron’s desire to reimagine the house of Balmain as a brand with a reinvigorated sense of femininity, denuded of flashiness and excess.

It’s a bold redirection for the brand and it will be fascinating to see how their customer responds when it hits stores in the coming weeks.

Check out the rest of the campaign below.