Jacquemus: the modernist with the heart of a small child, brought his fashion to Greece
If French tourism needed an ambassador, it could not have found a better role model for a romantic patriot than Jacquemus, the designer who, in an era of sweeping internationalisation, rooted his career in the colours and soil of his homeland, among the lavenders and sunflowers of Provence.
More than the fashion he produces, M. Porte Jacquemus has projected his origins from Mallemort, “a town in the middle of nowhere” an hour from Marshall, as he likes to say, where he grew up with the women in his life. He dug his first skirt at 8 years old, cutting a curtain, and gave it to his mom. She wore it, and it changed his life. “It was ugly and imperfect, believe me,” he told the New York Times in 2015, and we won’t contradict him, because to this day, the charm of his fashion is hidden in its imperfection.
And while many contemporary designers’ myths stem from their childhood experiences, the difference with the now 35-year-old, self-taught Jacquemus is that he identified his label’s aesthetic with his idyllic youth, replicating fragments of it in every collection. Artistic projects at school, chases in the fields, masquerading in clothes from his mother’s closet, a spontaneous strip off for a dip in the sea – similar mischievous images can be recognised in every piece of clothing, every accessory, every promotional video for this brand that shows no sign of growing up.
His clothes are not always original or technically impressive. But their conception, the atmosphere of an endless summer of polka dots, stripes and mats that you enjoy on the spot or put a piece of in your suitcase on the way home, is très Jacquemus.
In fact, Jacquemus has established casualness as a practice in his work, employing an instinctive design method where fabrics are cut and draped over his own body or that of his husband, Marco, with whom he acquired Mia and Sun last year, completing their bubble of bliss. Thus, the Jacquemus label preserves a naïve simplicity that has elevated the young French creative into a Wes Anderson of fashion, playing with nostalgia and visual styling not so much to sell as to engage.
I notice, as the collections and images succeed each other steadily in pastel tones and always bathed in light, that what began as a place of childish naivety has morphed into a model of bourgeois sensuality. The Jacquemus woman (without curves, preferably) looks like a bohemian European Barbie, with huge hats and intricate clothes that are better photographed than worn, while the man of his dreams is a Le Gadjo (that’s what the Roma slang term for “dude” in the south of France), a – sort of – peasant in baggy shorts, unbuttoned shirts and a shaggy chest, which he himself has. “There is no more hair in fashion,” he said in June 2018, presenting his first collection for men. He was forced, he said, to turn to his rugby-playing friends to find models with hair. “I searched all over Paris. Next time, I’ll go on Grindr,” he joked.
The Utopia of Beach Clubs
With such disarming levity and with “mermaids and dudes” standards in mind, Jacquemus draws a parade of glossy characters living an easy, luxurious life somewhere in the European South. Blending in cinematic, mostly cinematic, references, the designer serves up photogenic bubblegum from Ibiza and Monte Carlo to – most recently – Mykonos, creating a summer utopia that winks at the Mediterranean of beach clubs in the late ’60s.
His clothes are not always original or technically impressive. Their capture, however, the atmosphere of an endless summer of polka dots, stripes and mats that you enjoy on the spot or put a piece of in your suitcase on the way back is très Jacquemus.
His pop-up boutique on Nammos Beach encapsulates exactly that atmosphere that appeals to determined big spenders, those who travel to the Riviera (Italian, French and Greek) shores, satisfying their desires and desires in the ideal playgrounds created for them by mega-brands such as Chanel, Dior, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Louis Vuitton, a large part of whose legend (and turnover) is fed by leisure.
From June to the end of summer, Ibiza and St Tropez, Formentera and Taormina, Capri and Monte Carlo, Lake Como, Porto Fino and Mykonos offer high fashion backdrops to an ideal summer life. Despite Dior’s nine Dioriviera stores and Dolce & Gabbana’s seven in the Mediterranean, however, the real takeover of European summer strongholds has been by Jacquemus.
The most telling example of the young Frenchman’s mastery of resortwear is how he “layered” his commercial aesthetic at the world’s premier club Casa Jondal in Ibiza: Pale banana yellows and black-and-white stripes on forged metal frames and blond wood spread across the pop-up shop and plaza of this traditional farmhouse that the Dutch and Spanish owner transformed in 2020 into an esthetic retreat with understated service, a smart menu (only lobster, oysters and scorpionfish prepared in different ways) and ’90s video-clip vibes.
Jacquemus’ own fashion, sets and accessories from his limited summer collection which he is also showing in Mykonos, often seems complementary to the set design-like decor. This feeling is particularly strong in Monte-Carlo, on the dock under the Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer hotel, where the Jacquemus landing in the last week of May “spoke” of the creator’s other great love, after Provence, French cinema.
Cinematic postcards
With a promotional film she called “The Jacquemus Beach Club” – a little campaign, a little cinematic experiment, a little farce – Jacquemus takes us to an invented beach club of cinematic idleness in Monte Carlo – all clean, colourful, lined up with theatrical precision, retro and choreographed to the smallest detail. His protagonists are not flesh and blood people, they are bizarre characters whom Jacquemus “curates” in a stitching together of images borrowed from French cinema. The films are not named, though the references are obvious.
Traces of the summer landscapes of St Tropez can be seen in Eric Romer’s The Collector, of Cathrine Deneuve’s figure peering from under the shadow of her straw hat at Michel Piccoli in Alain Cavalier’s Submission, of the architectural presence of mythical houses like Casa Malaparte in Godard’s Contempt… For those who can see them, you can even see the frames, gestures and silences from Jacques Tati’s surreal masterpiece, “Playtime”.
A whole host of aesthetic references from the French cinematic tradition, particularly from the ’60s and ’70s, come together assimilated in Jacquemus’ signature spaces and clothing. Bourgeoisie and sarcasm, eroticism and absurdity, landscapes and silences. What is missing is melancholy, psychological over-analysis and political commentary. Simon’s fashion is nostalgically light, designed to be consumed without guilt.
The Jacquemus Beach Club
