ATLEIN - ANTONIN TRON

Interview and Photography by Filep Motwary

Antonin Tron grew up in Paris, where fashion was as much a part of his daily life as the most natural thing. His aesthetic journey began early, shaped by his mother’s profession as a conservator of church frescoes. This intimate connection with the spiritual and artistic history of his homeland provided him with a sort of cultural education, almost existential in nature. “I suspect that my love for draping and the color palette I prefer has its roots in the iconography I saw as a child,” he reflects. “Fashion didn’t interest me much at first. I studied literature before turning to fine arts. I began teaching myself how to draw and preparing for the entrance exams at the School of Fine Arts. However, a series of unfortunate events—or perhaps something deeper, a Freudian mistake—led me to not participate. We’ll never know why!” It was then that he visited his best friend, a student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. “When I entered the school, something shifted inside me. The atmosphere, the boldness, the energy… It was something entirely new to me and yet felt completely natural. It was there that my interest in fashion was ignited.” From that point on, everything fell into place. He started to immerse himself in the Belgian school of designers—Margiela, Raf Simons, Demeulemeester—creators who defied norms and crafted their own worlds. Armed with the portfolio he had prepared for Fine Arts, he decided to sit the entrance exams at the Academy of Antwerp. And they accepted him.

After completing his studies, he was honored with the Adam Prize in 2016, and two years later, he was among the finalists for the prestigious LVMH Prize. “I didn’t win,” he corrects me politely, smiling. “I was a finalist, without the monetary reward. But you become part of a larger narrative, you enter a great creative community. And that’s of immense value,” he believes. Shortly after, he began his professional career alongside leading figures in fashion: Raf Simons, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Givenchy. “I was very lucky,” he says with sincerity. “I started working in menswear, which interested me a great deal at the time. But soon I realized it didn’t express me. It lacked what always moved me: the architecture of the garment, its inner structure.”

Today, the transition between menswear and womenswear collections is commonplace. Back then, such a shift was rare and almost risky. His meeting with Riccardo Tisci proved to be pivotal. “He gave me the opportunity to join the studio for the womenswear line at Givenchy and opened up an entirely new world before me.” It was then that he began discovering the work of designers such as Azzedine Alaïa and Madame Grès, creators who viewed clothing as sculpture on the body, with absolute devotion to structure and form.

He recalls with tenderness an important figure from his early years in Antwerp: his pattern-making teacher, who recognized his passion and mentored him. “She took me under her wing. In the afternoons, I would go to her house, and she taught me what the school didn’t: how to work with the grain of the fabric, with bias lines, how it naturally ‘falls’ on the body. She saw that I was truly interested, and that flame has never died.” His emotion is palpable when he talks about his experience at Balenciaga: “I worked with a woman who started her career beside Cristóbal Balenciaga when she was just 16. She had also worked with Madame Grès. She became my teacher. Can you imagine?” he asks me, awe in his eyes. We talk about his age, as he has now reached 40. “I feel like my journey is just beginning,” he confesses. “Many of the people I admire, like Christian Dior, began working in earnest at this age. I believe that when you’re dealing with line, cut, and construction of a garment, it’s necessary to have reached a level of maturity. You need inner peace to create with depth. I now feel calm both in my work and in my life.”

Today, fashion is defined by people who neither love it nor understand it. It is no longer an industry fueled by artistic passion or a deep connection to its history. Brands are no longer creative workshops but financial institutions engaged in an endless pursuit of optimization within a vicious cycle of continuous reinvention. The revolving door of creative directors turns as frequently as the seasons change, with entrepreneurs focusing on short-term gains rather than building a long-lasting legacy. Each dismissal is not merely the erasure of a name but a violent severance from the very identity of the brand. Each sudden change leaves behind a void, a husk, a label that loses its essence with each new strategy. I particularly admire creators like Antonin Tron, who remain true to their values, those who belong nowhere and insist on the most romantic version of this industry.

The summer collection from Atlein draws inspiration from the radical lesbian movements of the 1980s and 1990s in London, with a special nod to the 2021 documentary Rebel Dykes by Siân A. Williams and Harri Shanahan. The film captures the creativity, political stance, and sexuality of punk lesbians during the Thatcher era, documenting the essence of these movements. Equally influential was Love Bites, the groundbreaking photographic project by Del LaGrace Volcano for the lesbian community, known for its bold and candid depiction of self-affirmation, self-determination, and queer aesthetics. The atmosphere I experienced backstage on that rainy afternoon of the show in the underground hall of Palais de Tokyo was filled with intensity, as the space was flooded with sensual silhouettes exuding pure femininity. “There’s a sense of freedom in these dresses, the same freedom I feel when I surf. They also have a modern dimension, I’d like to believe. Because, at the end of the day, it’s a product for women who can buy it. I kept almost all the elements of haute couture, transforming them into something as easy as a T-shirt in a way. That’s the secret!” explains the designer.