If you want to know how much work went into the Atlein collection, just count the number of Nespresso pods used for a pair of Paco Rabanne-esque designs he sent out.
“We finished last night so I don’t really have a number. It’s maybe 400, 500 of them,” Antonin Tron said backstage, explaining the collection was about “the archeology of the studio.”
The French designer felt like this was a moment to focus on the clothing and work of the atelier, which he symbolized by hiding the faces à la Martin Margiela. “When he did it, it was a counterpoint to the supermodel era, and I feel we are in a similar moment,” he said.
Hit with a draping frenzy – “it was almost as if I couldn’t stop,” he said – and congruent with his knack for upcycling, any materials that he found in his studio ended up attractively tucked and pleated into shape, from reworked prints from earlier collections to kite-surfing sails left by one of his friends.
After navigating the choppy waters of the pandemic as an independent label, the collection felt like a reaffirmation of Atlein’s unfussy, elegant angle. Paired with cropped jackets and blousons, another of Tron’s fortes — which added a tougher angle to his body-hugging designs — it made for an attractive, if rather quiet, pitch.