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LE DESIGNER SUR L’HERBE
from left: Antonin Tron’s business and life partner,
Gabriele Forte (in blue); Tron’s brother, Virgile; actor and
activist Romain Brau; Tron’s mother, Françoise; designer
and activist Vanja Hedberg; designer and activist Kaisa
Kinnunen; model Chu Wong (in profile); Antonin Tron;
and model and actor Aymeline Valade. Hair, Mustafa
Yanaz; makeup, Khela. Fashion Editor: Alex Harrington.
Community Service
Behind four game-changing young brands—
Atlein, Wales Bonner, Kenneth Ize, and
Eckhaus Latta—is an inspirational web of muses
and collaborators stretching across the globe.
Atlein
By Nicole Phelps
ANTONIN TRON, 35, the designer
behind the three-year-old French
label Atlein, is quite comfortable with
contradictions. Though he calls fash-
ion’s claims to sustainability “fake,”
his designs are far greener than those
of his peers. And while he’s certainly
passionate about his own brand,
he’s also a passionate activist working
with Extinction Rebellion in Paris—
in fact, some meetings of the local
chapter of the environmental organi-
zation (which has been behind recent
nonviolent civilian disobedience
actions on the Pont de Sully and the
Trocadero) have been held in Tron’s
20th-arrondissement atelier. “When
I was on the bridge getting gassed by
the police, I was thinking, What am I
doing here?” he says. “I reconcile it
with this idea of doing things our own
way—with Atlein, we carry certain
values that are positive.”
Dichotomy is at the heart of his
collections, too, with their persuasive
mix of jersey cocktail dresses and
sharp, military-strict tailoring. “I’m
just instinctual,” Tron says. When he
launched his label in late 2016, fashion
was in peak streetwear mode, but
Atlein is adamantly not a streetwear
brand. “My mom restored painting in
churches—that was her job,” he says.
“I remember as a kid being close to the
paintings, and the drape of the fabric
is something I quote a lot.”
Tron crushes, sculpts, twists, and
ruches material for results that are engi-
neered as much as they are designed—
most of his dresses, for example, are
constructed entirely without zippers.
Still, though he’s nodded to the artists
John Chamberlain and Steven Parrino
and the ceramicist Magdalene Odundo,
he’s motivated less by themes and the-
atrics than by his core group of friends.
“Women today don’t want logos,” he
says. “They CONTINUED ON PAGE 162
