Snow in summer, nonsense? Not in the hands of designer Simon Porte Jacquemus. On December 12, he managed to marry seemingly irreconcilable worlds during a spring-summer 2023 show outside the official calendar. Beneath one of the immense halls of the Parc des Expositions du Bourget (Seine-Saint-Denis), sheltered from the freezing cold of December, thousands of strands of straw fell from the ceiling, covering the 280 guests and the 54 mannequins often short-dressed.
The straw in question is raffia, this plant fiber obtained from palm leaves from Madagascar, which is often used to weave hats or bags, and which irrigates the entire collection. “As for my last show in June, “le papier”, I was obsessed with working the material in a very artisanal way. This time, I developed a raffia with [le brodeur et tisseur] Lesage that I wanted to put everywhere, even on the guests! »explains Simon Porte Jacquemus after his fashion show.
The 32-year-old designer has once again proven his reputation as a talented “director”: after unveiling collections in a saline reserve in the Camargue in June, in the middle of wheat fields in the Oise (in 2020) or of lavender in Provence (2019), this time he managed to make a hangar at the Paris airport poetic. A circular curtain that goes up to the ceiling delimits the podium. The models go around it under a storm of raffia which gradually covers the ground. The finale consists of a skilful play of lights with their silhouettes behind the veil which stand out in Chinese shadows.
Little fabric and a lot of flesh
The collection, mixed, offers a summer postcard. “I wanted to talk about summer, a summer that was too hot, almost heavy, with a touch of melancholy,” details the designer. On the women’s side, there is everything: reminiscences of Brigitte Bardot in polka dot cropped trousers, short cardigan tied on the chest and ballet flats. Unstructured black suit jackets that serve as dresses, with little fabric and a lot of flesh. Rigid skirts, as if supported by a crinoline, held to a bra by a simple rope. Ivory raffia coats that look like faux fur. Between the self-references to the house’s archives and the couture experiments, we also inhale a little scent of the 2000s: frayed low-rise baggy jeans, bare navels… and above all the presence in the audience of actress Pamela Anderson, whose outfit of the day (immaculate dress, XXL raffia hat, all by Jacquemus) is a nod to a memorable look she wore in September 1999 at the MTV Video Music Awards.
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