In a moment of somewhat eerie clairvoyance, now a tenant in the canon of modern fashion history, then up-and coming designer Simon Porte Jacquemus staged a fashion ‘strike’, flanked by a bevy of sultry models before Dior’s S/S 2012 presentation location. The subsequent years have given way to a rapid ascension through ranks of Paris’ fashion landscape, with Jacquemus irreversibly shifting its parameters with a cheekily sarcastic, and often endearingly childlike, approach, perhaps best attested to by the brand’s infamous marketing materials, with recent adverts starring none other but the fresh face of the designer’s child self. Yet, while Jacquemus’ A/W16 collection, with its being presented at the Espace Tuileries proof of the brands graduation to a higher playing field, held onto the established collage-like playfulness, with multi-coloured polka dot prints on purple satin, cutesy bow ties and comically proportioned upturned trouser hems, the collection seemed to take on a much more grown-up air with codes of business wear, hyperbolised angles and a more refined approach to the brand’s geometric preoccupation taking centre stage.
Self assurance and confidence dripped from every pore; wide set, razor-edged jackets, shoulders filed to near right angles, were paired with suit trousers, either tapered or flared, seemingly referencing disparate codes of sartorial empowerment, with the celebratory flamboyance of the 70s and the clipped drama of the 80s invited to put down their tiles in the Jacquemus mosaic. An interest in basic geometric forms shone through with high-waisted circular skirts in chocolate brown and forest green, as well as with shoes healed with wooden cuboids.
A familiar take of business dress, or rather a dismantling thereof, was on brazen show, with pinstripes and checkers patterning slashed oversized shirt sleeves; the accolade of the collection’s stand out look is doubtless to be awarded to a boxy suit, slashed diagonally and held together by twee bow ties. Such cutesy touches found themselves worked into the exaggerated spaghetti strap tops that peppered the collection, lending it a familiar air of childhood, with the pieces drawing a girl who finds her way into mother’s wardrobe, lavishing in the swathes of fabric more than a few sizes too big, to mind. But the ethics of playfulness idiosyncratic to Jacquemus also seems to have matured, with thigh high boots in hues of chocolate brown, candy pink, vibrant orange and delicate white imparting fetish and salacity.
All images via vogue.com
