Patou (Q1870)
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French fashion house
- Jean Patou Paris
- House of Patou
- Jean Patoe
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Patou |
French fashion house |
|
Statements
2019
creative director
designer
1958
designer
Guillaume Henry called his collection “Rose,” but it wasn’t just an exercise in color or floral forms, although there were a few bursts in evidence in this spring outing for Patou.Instead, the designer said, his Rose is a composite portrait of the women who have inspired him. She could be any one of a number of feminine—and feminist—characters in French film, for example the Beirut-born French actress Delphine Seyrig, among many others unfamiliar to non-French audiences. “I wanted to channel a softness and a return to elegance, and as it happens the name Rose is very French and also very international,” Henry noted, adding, “she’s chic, and she’s efficient about it.”On the runway, the designer mixed up signatures associated with Jean Patou—pleated skirts, dropped waistlines, midi lengths—with those of his predecessors: Karl Lagerfeld, Michel Goma, whose work Henry considers unjustly forgotten, and Christian Lacroix, whose famed pouf skirts he revisited here in a leggy millennial iteration. A couple of safari-inspired jackets, with wide belts and wider lapels, looked like they might gain commercial traction; ditto the sporty 1970s-style polos embroidered with a scaled-down version of the ‘JP’ logo. Other pieces–like a scallop-edged top and shorts informed by provençal boutis embroidery, well-cut jeans with a white top and black jacket, and a four-pocket shift with gold buttons–could be swiped straight from the runway to the streets of Paris or anywhere else. That chunky gold heart necklace, too, will likely be a hit by the time spring rolls around.By the designer’s own admission, the thing about French film and women in love is that their plotlines are virtually impossible to summarize neatly. The ones he had in mind here turn on hope and forging ahead. Henry has been handed (another) hard remit here, so–to his credit–the same could be said about him.
28 June 2024
Let us praise the designers who make clothes for everyday life. At Patou, Guillaume Henry signed up to that thoughtful, helpful—and all too scarce—contingent for fall 2024. What’s happening in the world caused him to make a 180-degree turn from the escapist teen disco party presentation he threw last season. This time, there was a distinct upgrade: a formal show venue at the Palais de Tokyo, and a full set of grown-up French-accented wardrobe options on the runway.“There aren’t any themes. It’s about respect for the woman who’s going to wear it,” he said before the show. “So maybe there’s something greater, more elevated in the casting, and in the clothes. The price range is still the same, but I really wanted to dress a woman with dignity. And,” he added, “we’re really proud that we are 100% eco and sustainable. That was our challenge and we managed to do it. So we’re super happy with that—but it’s desire first, silhouette first.”A strong component of Henry’s talent is his ability to read the room and the zeitgeist. In fact, he’s been doing modernized French classics since he arrived at Patou—like neat navy coats and 1970s bootcut pants, shirts with foulard necklines and gold jewelry—but now’s the moment to foreground and build the range. Camel coats and suits led out a collection that had something for everyone: short skirts and swingy fit-and-flare midis, on-point flared pant trousers suits, striped menswear shirting in Cambridge blue or candy pink, and more casual pieces like a quilted parka or a generous trapeze-shaped denim jacket.Patou has a past as a Parisian couture house. Henry said he’d been looking again at what’s in the archive. His eye was caught by a coincidence: that both the founder Jean Patou, in the 1920s, and Christian Lacroix, who was making his extravagant poufy ballgowns at the house in the early 1980s, used polka-dots. For some reason, spots are breaking out as a minor trend this season—the ideal moment for his great-looking black-on-cream polka-dots on a blouse and a midi-dress, and then the long, slim, bias-cut halter evening dress.Henry hasn’t shown formal gowns of the ‘event’ kind at Patou before. He didn’t show them on kooky ingenue-types, but on elegant grown-ups; women with a presence about them. Although Patou is positioned as an accessibly-priced label, it has an in-house atelier, and this time, Henry made that skill nicely apparent.
26 January 2024
Little-known fact: The handsome and debonair couturier Jean Patou had a cocktail bar installed in his salon, so that his in-house showings always turned into parties. This was in the 1920s—and a century later, it’s as if the playful Guillaume Henry is up to the same thing. His show took place around a central DJ-booth in a mock-club situation lit neon-pink. “To me, fashion should bring a smile,” he said. “This collection is dedicated to the customer we love, and considering the energy of what’s happening everywhere, my personal mood was wanting to put something to put a smile on people’s faces.”Kooky, accessible, brightly-colored French-girl style is Henry’s thing. He called the disco-worthy collection “Dancing Diaries,” a mint, pink, orange, and peach cocktail designed to be served at one of the summer Sunday-evening clubs he remembers going to once upon a time in Paris. As a sequel to last season’s “Shopping Diaries” show, which portrayed his gaggle of his customers pulling their wheelie-bags around the Samaritaine department store one morning, the conceit this time was that they’d all actually been hunting for clothes to party in.Henry isn’t a designer with his head in high-flown theories and elaborate moodboard references. He prefers to vibe off his friends and young female colleagues—and, by the look of it, the wide inclusive world of Patou influencer-friends. “You know, Patou isn’t really inspired by fashion, but more by people.” What he diagnoses now is the urge to sparkle, show lots of leg, and generally indulge in a lighthearted fun-loving attitude to life.The styling—somewhere out of the ’60s or ‘70s with a touch of the poufy taffeta of Lacroix in the ’80s—nails in a Patou way the sexy escapist mood that’s highly visible in French brands like Jacquemus. Another version might have come from Hedi Slimane’s permanently youth-centric Celine, but he decided to cancel the show because of the rioting that’s been rocking France after the shooting of a 17-year-old boy by a policeman.It’s hardly the first time that unserious clothes have been played against serious times. That, after all, is a kind of essential purpose of fashion: to keep people buying even when things are down. One thing that makes Patou different in the post-pandemic rush back to shows is that it’s one brand that has not forgotten to talk about adhering to sustainable strategies. Henry noted that 70% of the fabrics he used are recycled or sustainably-sourced.
Even the zig-zaggy sparkly embroidery was made from glass beads, not environmentally-worse sequins. “So it’s not plastic, I want to underline that.”
2 July 2023
Models were hurrying around the top floor of the La Samaritaine department store at Guillaume Henry’s Patou show. A couple of them were pulling Patou-branded shopping bags—a collaboration with the French wheelie bag company Caddie. This very Parisian scene, under the gilded, lavishly-restored art nouveau vaulted ceiling, was what Henry called a “love letter to Patou customers. It’s dedicated to the woman who loves to shop. Because there’s nothing that brings me more joy than seeing people wearing the clothes.”The flavor Henry’s cooked up for Patou is simultaneously effervescent and practical. His recipe is super-Frenchness flavored with wit, whipped up from whatever fresh ingredients are on the market trend-wise. On his specials-of-the-day list was a Y2K platter of Parisian style: all-red tiny coats, crop tops with flippy box-pleat minis or slashed pencil skirts, puffers, laced-up thigh-boots, bucket hats, ski hats, and matching bags.His menu has expanded this season to serve the many tastes and preferences of the women he’s observed shopping around the fashion floors of department stores. “I’ve loved the idea of wardrobes since day one. Women can be whoever they want in Patou. They can be sporty, fierce, superficial, shy, bourgeois. Or,” he added, “they can love the idea of a beautiful coat in an amazing fabric. Because we’re really dedicated to quality apparel.”Henry’s provisions for the more raffiné and reserved were in grays and burgundy—a passage that enumerated the range of Patou’s knits, separates, and tailoring. About this point, it became clear that he’d neatly caught the slim, elongated silhouette of the season in body-con knitted dresses as well as skirt suits.The takeover of this chic-sexy look—at moments it almost recalled Karl Lagerfeld in the 2000s—means that Patou has moved away from the original playfulness of the voluminous taffeta things that Henry made a brand signifier during the pandemic. Now the signifying has mostly shifted to Patou logo, although one big printed peasant dress did suddenly pop up in the middle of the show.But then again, girls on the loose post-lockdown aren’t exactly partying in smocks. Henry’s finale picked up that other, ultra- French tradition for evening: the little black dress. It has a wiggle and a shimmy in its walk. He winked at the idea of Parisian party girls passing the store. “Breakfast at La Samaritaine!” he quipped.
29 January 2023
Guillaume Henry had his first walking show for Patou at the brand’s charming headquarters in the Île de la Cité. Over the pandemic, Patou built up its identity as a playful young Parisian brand that’s popular with influencers with a collection that was early into the celebration of exuberant oversized shapes on French themes. Well, post-isolation years, it’s as if Patou has shed its chrysalis and emerged into the sunshine in super slimmed-down body-conscious shape. Tiny mini shifts, hourglass curve-clinging dresses, sexy high waisted bootcuts, little cropped tops. The voluminous flounces had more or less flounced out.And there was Julia Fox. The fact that she topped off the show in a body-dress with an Art Nouveau print is an indication, perhaps, of how far the perception of this brand has penetrated. But Henry always said that his main way of designing is listening to what his coworkers (mostly female) and girlfriends say, clocking who they admire, who they’re talking about, and observing what they’re actually wearing on a daily basis. Which brought him around to the idea of muses—a classification to which Fox seems to belong right now.In Henry’s mind, it was deeper than that—considering that muse culture has very high art French roots. He found photos of young women students carving clay maquettes at the Beaux Arts school in the late 19th century, the time of the Belle Epoque and Toulouse Lautrec, and of female stage and cabaret performers. He wanted to capture something of that in a self-directed way for the worlds young women are inhabiting these days.To that end, he collaborated with the extraordinary Maison Ernest, the footwear company which set up in 1904, specializing in lace-up boots for the stars of the Folies Bergères. Amazingly, they’re still going strong. “Honestly, the girls in the show loved them,” he declared.
4 July 2022
Guillaume Henry took his ideas for Patou in a different direction from the cute, exaggeratedly French-costume-y character he’s built for the brand in the last few years. This fall collection went overtly sporty-cum-body-con, falling in sync with the puffer-jacket, sexy dressing and visible logo-stamped trend that’s currently all over mainstream social media.“It was less about frou-frou, frills or big effects with sleeves,” he said at the static presentation. “It’s more about, How do I want to be comfortable?’ I wanted to embrace the idea of speed, of something easy to live in. Because Jean Patou was all about sportswear and movement.”Cue a 1980s vintage Lamborghini, parked in a field. Draped across it, mock assertively, is Élise Crombez, she of the great generation of Belgian supermodels, in a knitted black romper suit, PATOU logo cap and thigh-high waders. Or a khaki-green rib-knit midi with criss-cross straps. And in another scenario, the sweet babyfaced new model Maartje Convens variously in pale mauve, fuchsia or pastel blue cropped puffers, sweatshirts, jersey flares and a PATOU bucket hat, posing in a bedroom with a fluffy miniature dog.Henry still has his wittiness about him—the video, which was shot outside his country house, lightly spoofs on a film crew fussing around a celebrity star who’s vamping around a gas-guzzling status car. The difference is that, even though many of the accompanying clothes may look plastic-y, the materials in the collection are “90% upcycled or organic.”
2 March 2022
At Patou, Guillaume Henry has been taking a bit of a cavalier attitude towards spring—almost literally. “I really wanted to have this fantasy in mind,” he said. “She could be a musketeer, she could be a princess; she’s the hero of her own life. She’s not necessarily the girl waiting for her prince to come.”He remembered that when he looked out of the Patou studio during the big confinement and saw someone passing who had made an effort to wear something interesting, “I wanted to open the window and applaud.” As he riffed in his effervescent way around the static exhibition of his spring collection he said of lockdown, “I was so bored of yoga pants, you have no idea! Then things started to get better and better. And we knew that we will meet again.“With the relaunch of Patou, Henry has managed to strike an ingeniously playful balance between exaggerated couture-heritage volumes and clothes that are a) self-adaptable b) affordable and c) resourced with a care for curbing their environmental impacts. That’s catnip for Gen-Z audiences—along with this season’s pie-frill collars, organic lace-trimmed swashbuckling sleeves, pouf-y bubble-shorts and Instagram and TikTok- friendly PATOU logo branding on bucket hats, bags and sweatshirts.Prints this season were sourced from the archives of the great French artist-illustrators Christian Bérard and Gustave Moreau. Keeping an haute flag flying for French fashion while making a wardrobe that girls can wear on the street, for work, at parties, or wherever they fancy is Henry’s thing. Bravo to that.
29 September 2021
Guillaume Henry’s irrepressible excitement about showing at Paris Fashion Week is as bubbly as the aerated, ballooning, colorful shapes that burst through his iPad screen on his tour of Patou this morning. “When we’re close to Fashion Week, suddenly I’ve got butterflies in my stomach!” he said. “And you know it’s a celebration expressing all the joy, the excitement, the fantasy we have while we’re working on a fashion project. So even if we do it by distance—we do it.” This was his invitation to a walk around the “winter garden” that he’d set up for virtual visitors to the Patou studio. “I wanted a very fresh, enthusiastic winter. So every single room here is a bouquet, each with its own range of color.”Turquoise, orange, lilac, pink, red, yellow; vast volumes here, gigantic collars there; flower-power-y prints on ’70s-flavored tailoring. This garden of Henry’s had everything going on, including the bird-whistle toggles on a coat. Really, though, everything had grown from the signatures that Henry has planted over the last several seasons to such clever effect—the flavor of French regional costume, the Provençal embroidery, the Parisian-girl suiting, the playful, jaunty accessories. Last summer’s drop of mini-florals—including the pouf skirt and puff-sleeved blouse which was showered with girl-love across the internet—just gave rise to an even more exaggerated blooming of silhouettes this season. Yet, as Henry demonstrated by smoothing down what appeared to be a pair of the widest leg’o’mutton sleeves ever suggested (as seen in the look book), the shape of fabric can be tweaked by the wearer just as she pleases. Voila!There was one more secret property of that magic, uncrushable fabric: It was “eco faille” in 100% recycled polyester. “We have have reached 70% organic or recycled this season,” said Henry. “And the prices are really on-point. We’ve worked on that a lot.” A large part of his talent is considering how to make haute-looking fashion work for lots of girls with differing tastes, lives and body-types. “Patou was always about generous couture volumes,” Henry said, delving into the details of elasticated hems and ribbon tie-waists. Everything adjustable, not nipping. “You know, when we’re normally talking about comfort, it’s yoga pants and cocooning things. I’m so not into sportswear. So why don’t we make it comfy, with ease—and all about Patou?”
3 March 2021
Guillaume Henry welcomed people to an absolutely delightful Patou runway show that didn’t really happen today. “It’s a show with empty seats and no models!” he laughed. “We’ve turned our studio into a catwalk.” The models you see sauntering across the parquet in their puffballs, voluminous smocks, Provençal collars, and jaunty sailor hats had played their parts, sans audience, a couple of days ago at the label’s Île de la Cité HQ. Me, I was about to “go in” via a friendly FaceTime walk-around of today’s static installation—the humans now replaced by frocked-up dummies—with the quintessentially French designer himself.Henry had thoughtfully sent fabric swatches to my house in London for the occasion. All set: As he started to explain how Look 1, a mouthwatering meringue of Provençal-printed puffed sleeves, a pie-frill collar, and a mini-balloon skirt, came from his 1980s childhood imagination, I was simultaneously perusing its material origins on the label. Organic cotton poplin: 100% GOTS cotton, it said. “Yes, we’re 70% recycled and organic materials in this collection,” Henry exclaimed, “and we’re aiming for 100%.”This is the most modern thing about the rebirth of Patou: It comes with full-on French style, transparent sourcing, and non-ridiculous prices—factors that have definitely never fit into the same sentence before now. “Patou is about a wardrobe, and it will always be,” said Henry. “But this time we turned this wardrobe into something more fantasy! I wanted to go back to this love of fashion I had when I was nine years old, drawing dresses in my bedroom—and nobody was talking about fear or the economy. It was just about fun, flamboyance, joy, enthusiasm. I wanted to go back to that exuberance.”And so it reads, even from afar. Exaggerated silhouettes have been steadily inflating over the past few seasons—surely something to do with standing out on social media. Ideal timing, then, for the comeback of Henry’s memories of being enthralled by watching the likes of Christian Lacroix on French TV news. “He was a huge influence on me when I was nine, 10, in the late ’80s, early ’90s. So I wanted the silhouette to be ‘couture’ even if you can break it all down separately.”Lacroix, as all fashion history geeks know, started his rise to fame at the house of Patou, so his puffball silhouettes, succulent bows, and French-regional references resonate happily through Henry’s collection.
The difference, in the hands of the younger designer, is the practicality and sense of economy that underpins his design. The huge white collars are accessories—they’re meant to be laundered and used as styling pieces. The silhouettes that appear to be frivolous one-party outing dresses (like the captivating Provençal look) are often actually skirts and tops, intended for multiple reconfigurations. “A blouse, a skirt, and a dress,” as he put it.Kudos to him for cheering spirits, considering customers, and being mindful of Patou’s carbon footprint, all at once.
30 September 2020
“At Patou, we deliver winter in winter, spring in spring, like vegetables or fruit in the market.” Guillaume Henry has a delectable way of combining the French vernacular of down-to-earth, traditional work with flights of fashion fancy. His resort collection is beginning to drop now. Part of it was inspired by looking at vintage photographs of Les Forts des Halles, the porters at the old Les Halles market in the center of Paris, who used to wear felt hats to carry crates of farm produce. That’s where the oversized, turned-back-brim hats in his collection originated; one of his charming side strategies for keeping French regional working-class culture alive and relevant for a new generation.It’s cold right now in the northern hemisphere. Just time, perhaps, for one of his oversized, cocooning duffle coats. Perfect for lockdown walks and hikes, they have huge hoods against the weather, and come fastened with a set of big wooden toggles, which are actually bird whistles of the sort used in the French countryside. Purpose and playfulness, all nicely wrapped up in one cozy coat.Henry’s talent for the current art of exaggeration in fashion—the kind of puffed-up, smock-y, flippy silhouettes made to jump out on an Instagram page—is all over this collection. That, and his knack for taking a detail and making it a signature, such as the unmissable white lace Provençal-influenced collar, which has grown even bigger since last season (an accessory pragmatically designed to be laundered, just begging to be gifted to someone).Kudos, anyway, to the Patou people for pulling off this collection, which was managed during the most severe days of lockdown in Paris. “Everyone was at home, exchanging ideas on Zoom,” Henry says. “My magic team!” The look book models are the Belgian singer Tessa Dixon and some of the Patou team. What they’ve come up with—despite it all—is a continuation of the optimism and joie de vivre of the house, grounded in that French-girl taste for useful, classic tailoring. The gold brocade dress, the feather-trimmed trousers, and the multicolored, stylized ’70s prints must have felt like a shot in the dark when they were designing them—for who among us could project forward into a party-time-to-come a few months ago? But love them, they raised their spirits, and voted for hope anyway.
24 November 2020
It was a dark and anxious day when we trooped up to see Guillaume Henry give his guided tour around Patou in March. The pandemic was approaching, and it seemed all but impossible to imagine a future, but when we rounded a corner, here was this happy sight. “Oh!” I thought, “Maybe there will be a summer after all!”Well, summer has arrived, and so, on this first day of July, Henry’s delightful summer clothes have landed online. His proposition is so quintessentially French, so cleverly balanced between purpose and playfulness, between city and beach, that you can only smile. “Well, I’m French, and I can’t fight that!” he remarks, deadpan, on the phone from Paris.The tweaks and the tropes of French tradition—starting with the jaunty sailor cap which has taken on its own life as a meme—extend throughout the collection, confidently treading the line between familiarity (marinière trousers, white blazers) and youthful freshness (poufy skirts, cute puffed sleeves).Now that people are out and about again in cafés and restaurants, and the Patou team—members of whom always feature in the look book shoots—are working together (as they have been for weeks) in the Île de la Cité house that functions as Patou’s headquarters, Henry says: “It’s a joy! It’s more like a family business here, though of course we’re owned by LVMH.”Optimism and charm are in-built at Patou—stacked espadrilles with pom-pom toes; pumps with funny bunny-ear bows—but so is responsibility. Henry came into the Patou re-make with definite ideas about how to plan a wardrobe for lots of kinds of women, without being snobby or dictatorial, while also running a tight ship on sourcing and waste. “Everything we use is eco, bio, or recycled,” he says. “We don’t force ourselves to kill the things we do from one season to the next. We’ve taken inspiration more from the food industry, where restaurant owners explain where things come from, and people come back because they can find the same thing they love on the menu.”So while customers can click on the Patou menu and discover the ingredients of, say, the black taffeta bow-front dress (recycled nylon) or the denim (organic, from one of the few mills which do that), what goes into production is also refined by what women regard as both delicious and useful. It could be the house tailoring: “We obsess on the fit of a jacket, but then, we know she’ll wear it with jeans, like it’s nothing—that’s very French.
” Or it could be a timeless, ageless, black linen summer dress with Provencal cutout embroidery detail, or the incredibly practical fact that the pristine white sailor collars on dresses and jackets can be buttoned off, to wash.Or again it could be the new “Patou Plage” swimsuits, just launched. “We didn’t want to do sexy-sexy for the beach. They’re kind of graphical. I was inspired to see a friend who was wearing a swimsuit under her skirt in town—it’s logical!” he declares. “And anyway, if your balcony or heading for your nearest swimming pool is your ‘beach’ this summer, that’s great too! Everything we make is for living it the way you want it.”
1 July 2020
There’s something so refreshing about the way Guillaume Henry is putting Patou back on the map. It occupies a small house—actually a wood-paneled former girl’s school on the Seine—where Henry invited a few dozen press people to wander about, mingle with models, have a poke around the rails, and a try-on of jewelry, if you fancied it. “What we do here is a wardrobe,” he said. “We don’t do shows. Maybe the show will be your own life!”It’s easy to imagine Patou as a bit of a friendly girl’s club now. It has fun-silly signatures like sailor caps topped with pom-poms and ’80s pumps with rabbit-ear bows on the toes. But there’s nothing gimmicky about it. It’s a brand Henry wants people to rely on, for a great peacoat, a striped marinere sweater—and for really useful dresses, in many configurations.Stylistically too, the label has its own compass. Henry explained how Jean Patou had set up his company “a hundred years ago. He had a bar in his store so people could relax and have a drink, and his in-house shows would turn into parties after. And he was one of the first to design for the weekend, when everyone started going to Deauville and Biarritz and all that.”The Deco-redux JP logo, with its tweaked ’20s feel appears here and there, embroidered or knitted into sweaters. And then, of course, there’s the Jean Patou of the 1980s. “Christian Lacroix was here! And Karl Lagerfeld too. It was his first job!” Hence Henry’s taffeta puffball skirts, and perhaps the nod to Provençal lace blouses.But it’s really more the youthful atmosphere—and the determination not to get involved with old-fashioned ways of doing things, like adhering to the rituals of shows, and seasons, and going too fast, which sets this enterprise apart. It’s owned by LVMH, but it has the feel of an indie startup, and perhaps even a testing-ground as a model for new thinking.Well, lots of interesting things come out in conversation that can’t get conveyed on runways. The point for Henry is that this is a brand that has been reimagined as relatable, very French—“Well, I am French!”—not insanely priced, and also set up to be as transparent and mindful about sourcing as it can be as it goes along.That last point—in balance with Henry’s understanding of what Parisians—and those legions of foreign girls who dream of being Parisian—like to wear, is what makes Patou feel modern, in a non-hypey way that pays great attention to product.
The wool and taffeta is upcycled, cotton is organic, and the company takes care to explain certifications and its supply chain to customers. On its website is a page named The Patou Way—and under it, tabs titled Greenpacked, Sustainable Factories, and Eco-Friendly Materials. Like everything else around this place, the contents are well-designed, directly communicated, and calculated to put a smile on your face.
26 February 2020
Welcome back, Guillaume Henry! Today he officially opened the doors at Patou, showed many of people around the new house on the banks of the Seine, and proceeded to charm absolutely everyone to death. “Personally, I want to go back to dressing my friends,” he said. ”Patou was a couture house back in the day, so I want to keep that philosophy, with an atelier—but with reality.”There was no show, no sit-down presentation-launch formula, just Henry taking people around the two-story headquarters as girls wearing the collection hung out in its rooms. As mixed a bunch as the women editors were, there was something for everyone to identify with. It could be the lace blouses and very French short navy A-line skirts, could be the bubble dress, or the chic-modern pink wide-leg trouser suit with a silk shirt with an extra long, trailing scarf-tie. Or it might be the neat, sporty sweaters with the original JP logo from the ’20s and superbly cut jeans.“It’s a friendly brand; I’m dressing real girls,” said Henry. ”I want it to have a smile and enthusiasm.”Patou, reborn, is not a brand-as-usual, destined to be “mass,” but a thoroughly modern, cute Parisian-girl label built over the last 18 months on a lot of good instincts. Henry, who made a huge success out of relaunching Carven as a contemporary brand, has been given time by his new bosses, LVMH, to carefully think through what will really chime now in a crowded marketplace. He decided that personality, honest design values, and practical and emotional relatability are all of a piece with putting in as much transparency as possible. “We’re not politicians, we do this with a smile! But every piece will have a QR code you can scan, which will introduce you to the people who made it in our factories, and where every fabric comes from,” he said.All this, and much more affordable prices than the sky-high tags on today’s luxury goods, to boot. (And the boots were lace-up sports shoes, embroidered alternatives to trainers.) In a world where Gen-Z girls are increasingly critical of fast fashion, Patou offers a haven, a place to go for clothes that won’t be everywhere, and have lots of character. A kind of Parisian club, really, but without the snobbery. The scent of something that will really work was in the air.
25 September 2019