Carven (Q4041)
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madame carven
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Carven |
madame carven |
Statements
1995
artistic director of couture
1998
artistic director
creative director
Before the Carven show began, there was the feeling of a lively weekend open house—only this fifth-floor apartment happened to have one of the most spectacular panoramic views of Paris, spanning the Grand Palais to the Eiffel Tower. Emptied out except for the runway seating and some abundant plants, every room had its timeworn charm: remnants of floral wallpaper, colorful tiling, and other decorative traces that suggested a lush lifestyle more than flat-out decadence.But whatever traces remain of the family that apparently owned this residence for decades, the space now belongs to Carven and its parent company, ICCF Group (founder of Icicle). While the team is normally spread out across the rooms, lucky them, the real significance is that the building marks the historic origin of the maison, where Madame Carven began designing in 1945. Today, the Carven store on the ground level carries Louise Trotter’s fall collection. Thus, slowly but surely,6 Rond Point des Champs-Élyséesstands not just as the House of Carven but its home.It’s worth reiterating that Trotter is wonderfully at home here. So much so that she carried the idea straight into the collection, which opened with a luxuriantly minimal dress in a shade of champagne and constructed to hover just slightly away from the body—an altogether different statement than the coat-topped looks at the start of her lineups until now. And it hardly mattered whether the pieces were swaddling or peeling back, sliced open or enhanced with swishing strips, long and unstructured or layered in a loose unraveling of ruffles—there was this constant sense of an intimate world taking shape in unexpected ways. All the shoes, from slippers to puffy mules, set a bedroom mood for introverts and extroverts alike.And there was space: space to move, of course, but also space to let a pearl necklace drape down the back, or for lace underpinnings to appear discreetly from the back of a waistband. Trotter understands that dressing women means understanding their relationship to their clothes; her silhouettes are considered yet never overworked. The intriguing ambiguity of a rounded trench (coat or dress?) on Marte Mei and the extended white tuxedo shirtdress topped with an ample collarless black jacket on Jessica Miller were both standouts. “A dress is a dress. It’s the woman who wears that dress,” Trotter insisted. “She makes them of her time.
”Wherever the Carven woman is wearing these looks, for Trotter they represent “the quotidian, the rituals.” They have the potential to resonate with an interesting spectrum of clients, and the runway could reflect this more overtly. For as pleasing as it was to see Carven chez Carven, these clothes will make an even stronger impression when they’re out in the world.
28 September 2024
“It is not a nostalgic or particular prism of a woman,” said Louise Trotter, when asked how the heritage of Carven informs her approach. “It’s that sense of silhouette and sense of proportion with an ease of today.”Trotter has shown two runway collections since arriving at Carven. But by the quirk of pre-collection timing, this is the first glimpse of fall that customers can get their hands on—and not just at the Carven boutique or Net-a-Porter but at a wider array of stockists.If there is a sense of deference to the archive, it is with a light touch. Mainly, Trotter seems most interested in the 1950s column silhouette, which she might expand slightly in a pair of trousers or adjust proportionally through a more contemporary, tonal layering of a tank dress over a t-shirt.Browsing the lineup, it seemed noteworthy that the first and last looks featured what appeared to be the same ample, softly tailored coat, the former in double-face cashmere, the latter in chocolate wool gabardine. These deftly confirmed what she described as her masculine hand, while establishing that a mannish sensibility can be transposed to feminine silhouettes. See also the double-breasted jacket and turtleneck that give way to a gauzy, slip skirt, which Trotter explained as her ongoing exploration of dressed and undressed. The full-length black dress with straps that unzip—leaving one part to graze the arm if so desired—direct this pursuit into a single, highly desirable piece.Because so few of us have had the opportunity to interface with the brand, the item descriptions illustrate that fabric tactility is important to Trotter; that a sweatshirt in sheepskin or a technical Prince of Wales trouser go above and beyond basic. Discovering that two recurring (and wearable) shoe designs bear landmark names—Vendome for the squared-off slides and Garnier for the padded slippers—is a nice reminder that the house has always been part of the Parisian constellation of couturiers.While Trotter is guiding us towards a Carven that feels sophisticated yet within reach, we’re also seeing her own evolution in the realm of streamlined sportswear. “I want to find solutions for her life, as I do for myself,” she said. “It’s instinctive for me. These are pieces that I appreciate and want to wear.” Other women will, too.
8 July 2024
While it’s still early days, Louise Trotter is building a compelling vision at Carven. Her second show, presented in the same raw office space as the first, laid out a thoughtful and assured continuation rather than any sort of pivot, allowing us to get a clearer sense of her intentions.Without doubt, this is a more mature Carven than recent iterations. From the restrained and tonal palette (a jolt of red or chartreuse notwithstanding) to the masculine-feminine permutations of fabric and shape, Trotter is elevating the brand through both image and positioning. Mind you, her women are neither staid nor stuffy. They wear looks that blur notions of day- or eveningwear and put forth the body in less obvious ways—tops unzipped or slightly undressed from the back. They might also wear dancer’s layers with polished blazers and tailored wrap skirts, part of a laissez-faire approach to ladylike. “I want clothes to be intimate and personal and loved through the way I put them together,” she said.It’s worth noting that Trotter’s relaunch is not without a nod to the past. “[The collection] is not retrospective, but I want to be honorable and want to do Madame Carven’s legacy justice,” she said, adding that her main takeaway from the archives was the founder’s preference for column and hourglass silhouettes. And you can see how they surfaced throughout the lineup—sometimes simplified, sometimes more exaggerated—and how the majority of these contemporary constructions were precise but also forgiving. A pleated column dress in gray wool; roomy coats worn over full skirts; and softly molded tops over lingerie-style slips all had an elongating effect.If the collection could be summed up as calm and confident, Trotter also played cleverly with comfort. The bags resembling a flattened pillow had a kind of nondescript appeal, and if the padded ballerina slippers are anywhere as cushiony as they appear, they could prove a sleeper hit of the season. Carven is keeping a low profile for now, but with Trotter’s skills and female sensitivity, the brand is in excellent hands.
2 March 2024
From its revival in 2009 until 2018, Carven had been overseen by a series of male creative directors—each bringing a charismatic vision to a Paris fashion house that was founded and designed by a woman, Marie Louise Carven (born Carmen de Tommaso) in 1945. Today, Louise Trotter made her runway debut, the first woman to lead in Carven’s contemporary era.Just a dozen or so looks into the show, she had not only accomplished a total reset, it was clear she’s also discovered how to make Carven stand out. It goes something like this: Dressed up yet pared back, a Parisian woman from the ’50s exposed to ’90s minimalism. “I wanted to take the approach of less is more, really focus on what I wanted to say, and to create the silhouette and the woman,” Trotter said after the show, her two young daughters milling about nearby.This silhouette was essentially a riff on the hourglass, constructed to focus on the waist and hips. Many of the looks revealed a little something—whether the legs from within mid-length filmy skirts or the back from bustiers that attached from behind with a single fixture. While there were several transitional coats, there were very few pants. A sculpted top by day could be an insouciant dress by night. There were often contrasts of light and dark or else pale, tone-on-tone shades. Woven or beaded shoes in blocky flat shapes alternated with less eccentric squared-off mules and softer slippers. Bags were surprisingly expressive—large and slouchy in an array of colors with crafted and jeweled accents.Rather than send out myriad ideas to determine which would stick, Trotter showed confidence by committing to this template. And if it didn’t leave a lot of room for different body types—or those desiring a Carven pant—it took no stretch of the imagination to picture actual women in these looks come spring.Before joining Carven, Trotter was creative director at Lacoste, and prior to that, she spent nine years at Joseph. Wherever she goes, she evidently immerses herself in the language and sensibility; but already, she seems in her element here, working by creative instinct and commercial imperative simultaneously. “For sure we want to build, and we want to be a strong and big house; we don’t want to be niche. But we will take our time; we’ll do it carefully,” she said. “I want to bring my woman to the house, and I think that’s really where I am right now.” With this collection, she opened the door to welcome us back.
30 September 2023
How much of himself is Serge Ruffieux putting into Carven? One metal-sided handbag in this tightly packed, occasionally excellent collection suggested quite a lot: Stamped into those metal patterns was a line illustration of Waterhouse-inspired nymphs taken directly from a tattoo on the designer’s chest.As well as skin in the game, Ruffieux puts in sweat, too. He said his primary research for this collection was pounding Parisian streets, people-watching. The scavenged impressions brought back to Carven included an emphasis on oversize outerwear of a menswear provenance with twisted and tweaked fabrications, a cropped jacquard blanket coat lined with corduroy, another longer blanket jacket with a diamond-quilted back, and a pale yellow pared-down duffle with lily-etched shoulder details. This menswear was often (but not always) layered over strata that became filmier the lower they went: a high buffalo-check quilted jacket over a pottery-printed shirt over a gauzy bricolage embroidery skirt. There was a series of not totally original but still finely done mid-length ruched-by-ribbon dresses with bodies in slick-finish black fabric or dévoré pottery-patterned velvet with frayed hems at the sportswear inserts at the shoulder.The shoes at Ruffieux’s Carven are exceptionally great. To the seen-before-but-this-season-updated pom-pom fringe moccasins, he added a kind of “Mary Poppins has a breakdown” boot, heaped with ribbons and featuring an inverted chisel toe: one of my favorite things. Also, the oversize bags in olive and rusty orange were lovely.Garment-wise, Ruffieux delivered often but in isolation. The outerwear was good, as were his lozenge-hemmed skirts, his kilts, and his high-waisted multitudinously buttoned pants—and the tailoring, when presented full force, rocked. What this collection failed to do, however, was to alchemize the street-gleaned sourced material in combinations that really exploded on the eye. Ruffieux needs to refine his litmus for fashion alkaline and fashion acid, then put his yen for eclectica into combinations that fizz, pop, and make us beg him to do it again.
1 March 2018
What is Carven? Exactly!Although a totally known brand in the Paris pantheon, Carven is famous more for its founder and its fragrances than its codes. In its more recent iterations, Guillaume Henry successfully rebooted it as a mid-price label with a high-fashion provenance that offered great statement sweatshirts and other good stuff. Then it went off the boil.Today the task of turning up Carven’s heat again fell to Serge Ruffieux—an alum of Sonia Rykiel who had an eight-year stint at Dior that included the fall of Galliano, the (massively underrated) Gaytten interregnum, that flash of Raf, and then, pre-Chiuri, a brief stint designing with Lucie Meier (now at Jil). The fact that Carven’s name is bigger than its identity seems a huge opportunity for a designer taking on his first above-the-line-stewardship of a house—and today Ruffieux pretty convincingly grasped it.It’s unusual to start at the bottom, and no aspersion is being cast on the often-good clothes above, but the shoes at this first Ruffieux runway show were outstanding. Mashed-up, slashed-up, Gommino-style loafers—sometimes slingback, sometimes fully upper-ed—they featured fringing and faux-Naïf painting that hinted at the northern, Nordic, folk-primitive origin of the Weejun. If the photographers outside aren’t getting slipped discs from capturing these come February, there’s no justice.The looks that topped them were as inventive, but more diverse. Ruffieux often favored a triple-tier silhouette—cropped top over mid-length over full. That cropped top tended to be an easy to grasp but twisted bourgeois signifier; a Barbour (but not), or a shooting jacket with gun flap. Below these flowed inhalations and exhalations of volume, with punctuation marks of cinch and release traced in cockerel print or faux-Naïf (again) stitching or mixed silk print. The apparent haphazardness of embellishments on cute, gently kicked pants gave them a satisfyingly hand-hewn analogue vibe. Print dresses with drawstring gathers in climbing ropes were interestingly off-kilter.Neither a catastrophe nor a collection to applaud to the skies, Ruffieux’s debut-proper nonetheless showed flashes of blue to come for this recently mixed-weather house. After years of dancing deftly around the codes of others, Ruffieux has the rare opportunity to establish some of his own on a page that feels blank, an expanse of potential. We urge you Serge: Do it.
28 September 2017
Houses often treat collections between marquee designers with a sort of coy standoffishness, almost embarrassment: some awkward gap in the room with a wine stain on the carpet between two prize pieces of furniture. At today’s Carven presentation, the earnest and heavily committed-to-Carven designer who explained the rationale behind the clothes was not to be named (let’s call him Anonymous). Models were in situ, but there was certainly no runway.That was rather a shame. For as Carven awaits Serge Ruffieux to step into the spotlight in time for next season, Anonymous and his three colleagues in the house studio rustled up a fine interim offering. The conceit was excellent: This was a modern, Parisian version of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, darting around the city before an evening party while internally interrogating her life choices—had they gone wrong or right? This allowed Anonymous and co. to flash backward and forward on the girly-to-womanly index. “Mrs. Dalloway said that she would buy the flowers herself,” is the first line of Woolf’s novel, and it provided further spur to Anonymous and his team to incorporate florals in magnolia prints and lily-furl necklines on black double-crepe shirts and dresses. Gingham tailoring, cotton shirting, a deep teal velvet skirt, pale violet or peach velvet track tops, and crepe dresses were cutely cinched and gathered by golden studs. There was a super-cute graphic T-shirt—the illustration was just a rouged lip silhouette and a nostril—that reminded me powerfully of a lovely (but tragically cracked) painted Carven glass advertisement I inherited from my mother, and there were two cracking faux-shearling coats in rosewood and green. Shoe-wise, the ankle-strapped loafers with more golden studs were handsome, too. Ruffieux is fortunate to inherit a team that so cutely intuits the Carven heritage of lightly expressed Parisian free-spirited femininity—a 1940s-rooted precursor to Chloé’s prêt-à-porter retelling—which has handled this interregnum with such aplomb.
2 March 2017
Carven has yet to appoint the successor(s) to designers Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, who left the label in October upon “mutual agreement.” As usually happens in these cases, the ensuing collections are executed by the existing studio team who are charged with making the transition seamless and sellable. Hence the noticeable pivot away from the duo’s idiosyncratic spin on Mme Carven—manipulated mash-ups of sweet-meets-tart—toward a restrained mix of everyday pieces for a modern ingenue. With the exception of a flaming ’80s magenta, the color register was lowered to a spectrum of neutrals; gone were the novelty surface treatments; and silhouettes boasted just enough modification to defy basic. Rounded shoulders, undulating necklines, and flounced hemlines were the type of benign details that felt fresh enough to persuade retailers; while a recurring floral motif of an argemone (a poppy species) seemed in keeping with Carven tradition.The irony of such an easy offering is that it couldn’t be easy for those overseeing the work to establish a vision during this state of limbo. To their credit, the checked blouson with sheepskin sleeves, polished yet faintly punk footwear, and neo-preppie styling expressed enough personality to carry the brand through. As proof, the requisite slogan tops this season read “Moi Aussi” as a declaration from within that those unnamed are essential to Carven, too.
3 January 2017
Serge Ruffieux didn’t need to spell out the Arte Povera aspect of the Carven Pre-Fall collection. The sturdy tailored coat with exposed threads vaguely referencing Joseph Beuys; hand-stitchedX’s marking various spots on knits; skirts bordered in assorted ribbons; pattern mixing and various tactile surfaces—all these details resulted in clothes that felt directly made, so that the outcome proved a thoughtful, well-executed take on homespun.With his third undertaking at Carven, Ruffieux’s repertoire is emerging. Unlike creative directors at other houses who must inevitably contend with archives, this alum of Dior and Sonia Rykiel has considerable freedom to define an identity without the pressure of historical comparison; few among us could paint a clear picture of Carven circa 1950. As it happens, between the globally inspired flourishes embedded in the footwear and the deconstructed, whimsically reassembled outerwear, reducing his direction to a few buzzwords isn’t so easy either. Even Ruffieux seems to grasp for an exact articulation. But the coexistence of folkloric, quasi–outsider art motifs populating a print and a delicate graphic dévoré velvet make for a lively randomness that jibes with Madame Carven’s interest in travel and textiles. Meanwhile, ample jeans in a Japanese cotton-wool that reveal a ticker tape logo on their upturned cuffs are every bit a product of the present.Other nonbranded pieces—notably, the double-sided bags accented with removable charms or climbing cord—will almost surely pique people’s curiosity. As such, Ruffieux’s noticeable efforts will be more and more recognized as Carven. It’s always a good sign when clothes are conversation starters.
11 January 2018
Carven has begun its rollout under Serge Ruffieux with outdoor ads appearing around Paris that place a girl somewhere in the city that’s a bit grittier. She’s wearing an ample shirt boasting an eye-catching geometric print, and then a softer ‘30s-inspired cinched dress—two of the Resort looks which he previewed this week from a remarkably transformed showroom. Formerly airy and all-white, it was now boxed in—ceiling dropped and carpeted—with only a sliver of the original skylight visible. The idea, he explained, was to appear undecorated, as a conceptual take on an old archive. Ruffieux is overseeing the global image of Carven, so these early decisions reveal glimpses of his vision, especially while we await his runway debut in September. It only takes a quick glance of the lookbook to see the Carven muse bears little relation to her two most recent predecessors—this includes the one designed by Guillaume Henry, who commendably revived the house. Ruffieux, who many will remember has come from Christian Dior where he shared the creative director role with Lucie Meier between Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri, has put an eccentric, sporty spin on a young, ladylike persona.If you haven’t noticed already, the footwear is all kinds of flat, and all kinds of fun, and ever so slightly folk. In the showroom, prime real estate was dedicated to these tasseled slides, braided cord sandals, and cut-out moccasins—here’s betting this will be the case in stores, too. Those excited to show they’ve bought into Ruffieux-era Carven can start with the intarsia insect knits and idiosyncratic scarf prints—a motif of chains and what could only be described as a scrapbook of little lambs. But the jacket details and volumes—judicious hand-embroidery on a field jacket; a gaping quilted back on a sporty vest; gathered, articulated sleeves—were more indicative of his vision over the longer term. What’s clear for now is that he’s bringing back Mme Carven’s fondness for green, both big as an ongoing color story, and small as X-stitched branding on entry-level items. It seems like a good sign.
22 June 2017
In a season of this much industry shift and change, one might do well to remember the following: 1.) It is certainly not easy to be an entrepreneur, to break out and create your own brand. 2.) But it may in fact be harder to take up the reins and attempt to steer somebody else’s. 3.) This industry necessitates both situations. The result is that, increasingly, young designers tasked with taking storied (read: old) brands into the (young and fun) future seem to instead turn to the past.At their Spring show forCarven, Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud imagined “Madame Carven’s imaginary heiress” traipsing with friends through her family’s stately pile, digging around in the designer’s archive and reinterpreting the old classics. This had been Anthony Vaccarello’s take on Saint Laurent, too: thrift-shop finds from the house’s halcyon days in the 1980s, cut and customized by the young, hip, girl-about-town of today. At Carven, it meant stripes and florals and crests and narrow cargo pants, a thickly bejeweled belt around the waist, and scarf-patterned silks worn as asymmetrical skirts. Several items were meant to conjure the image of a girl draping herself in an old wedding veil, à la Miss Havisham.The problem with reinterpreting the classics is, well, sometimes you just want something new. At Carven, bits and pieces did come through: The odd baby doll dress was charming in tiered cotton poplin, and the chunky, wide-heeled mules in kooky leathers (animal print! snakeskin! a glittery crest!) were something that everyone could agree on. While clear plastic trousers felt a little close to Jonathan Anderson’s experiments with the same at Loewe last Spring, placing a largely useless item like a transparent pink-tinged plastic miniskirt over an otherwise shapeless printed dress was a good styling trick. At the end of the day, playing dress-up is all well and good, but with ample talents like Martial and Caillaudaud’s—which they proved again here, in the case of the buckle-front black felt coat worn over a tiered lace skirt—one hopes the future holds clothes that will also make the transition to real closets.
29 September 2016
For a brand that has never overtly positioned itself as activewear,Carvensure made a point to prove otherwise with its latest collection. Men’s artistic director Barnabé Hardy enlisted I Could Never Be a Dancer, a Paris-based choreography duo who specialize in crossover fashion, art, and music projects, to show off the clothes with maximum movement. The troupe of dancers flexed, leaped, moonwalked, and body-rolled in Hardy’s chambray Bermuda shorts jumpsuit, neon flocked parka, and seersucker suits boasting double-face back flaps. Gripping elasticized bands lined within a giant frame, they lunged as they would in a TRX workout, all while dressed in color-blocked knits and slim-cut pants with enough lightness, natural stretch, and geometric decorative accents to ensure unrestricted ease and graphic appeal.This flow of dancers demonstrated how Carven menswear is less concerned with gender fluidity (what with womenswear the label’s marquee) than fluidity in general. Abstracted patterns of feathers and watery ink marks gave the impression that Hardy wanted to avoid anything—be it materials or mood—that would weigh down the collection. Unsurprisingly, footwear played an essential role in the performance; monogrammed sneakers and thick-soled deck shoes encouraged extra bounce, while the Michael Jackson–esque sparkle socks added offbeat kick.Backstage, Hardy admitted that he would adore the opportunity to design actual dance costumes, perhaps even reinvigorating a classical production with similarly streetwise looks. Whether or not this was an audition, he effectively showed it could be done.
23 June 2016
Carven’s creative directors, Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, introduced their latest Resort collection by explaining how they had imagined a group of ’90s-inspired girls taking a vacation at a family home in the Aeolian islands (north of Sicily), where they discover a treasure trove of clothes belonging to one of their grandmothers. Cue the granny grunge mash-ups: the low-slung ladylike skirt offset at the seams worn with an oversize patterned tank, the lace sheath turned inside out and over-dyed, and the striped silk blouse reworked as an asymmetrical top. The duo say this sort of storytelling is key to their creation process, as it allows them to situate the Carven gal and interpret her style in that moment. But turning a narrative construct into an original collection requires an additional chain of decisions, and this is where the duo assert their distinct edge. They overlaid more influences, so that the artist Yumi Okita’s embroidered moths morphed into a heavy metal–esque logo. Nods to the late-’60s Italian architecture firm Superstudio were apparent in both linear prints and a “3-D lace” dress featuring a grid of discs trembling like paillettes. An archive photo of floral embroidery was revived and applied to various pieces.Carven devotees will find no shortage of refreshed standbys including flounced minis, shorts, and a particularly sassy black leather slip dress; novelty knits (i.e., lustrous silver with smocked detailing, or a “sunset” ombré effect); and a statement trench (this time, in a vinyl resembling wet clay). They may even detect the makings of a monogram on a jacquard used liberally, from a bandeau to a new bag style. While Martial and Caillaudaud seem eager to quirk up Carven, the pieces can be recombined and the looks toned down. Their story is easy to edit, in other words.
7 June 2016
Get ready, because PVC pants areeverywherefor Fall. While a larger conclusion about what this means for the world and the culture—beyond a certain water-repelling, well-insulated, and perpetually attention-getting appeal—remains evasive, I can tell you from some personal experience that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Though, unlike the pairs that required baby powder and a firm yank that could be picked up in seedier environs than say, Barneys New York, the ones at Carven’s Fall 2016 presentation were slung low on the hip and worn with just enough loose swagger to ensure a certain boyish charm. This is the new cut forCarven, Adrien Caillaudaud and Alexis Martial explained backstage before the show, versus the high and tight “crazy legs” of previous seasons. (Rest assured that those searching for the Catwoman effect will still have plenty of options.)What a long, strange trip it would be, to Kathmandu and back; who could blame you for losing the plot a bit and falling into a psychedelic fantasyland of crystal caverns and astrological projections? Not Martial and Caillaudaud, whose girl for Fall is part biker chick, part ’60s sweetheart (and in that era, the two aren’t always so different), and more than a little into sci-fi. As usual, the mood board held some particularly groovy gamines, namelyJane Birkin, Janis Joplin, Marianne Faithfull, and Corinne Day–eraKate Moss—and the intended feel was that of a woman who grabbed her bike and set off in search of adventure, wrapping herself in a trim shearling moto jacket, an asymmetrical shearling-collared gray cocoon, or a faux-fur princess-cut topper whose print was inspired by Bengal cats. A-line skirts and dresses in a variety of prints will be an easy purchase for the Carven customer, as will the oversize slouchy knits.Outerwear has proven to be an arena where Martial and Caillaudaud’s eye for tailoring and awareness of what their client wants to wear really shines. Along with the cropped bombers with shearling collars, a black vinyl trench for the “typical French girl” was both entirely winning and an excellent proposition to combat Paris’s atypical weather movements this week. Lace tops and dresses inspired by motocross attire were similarly appealing, and a thick-soled patent riding boot with one serious, don’t-mess-with-me heel heralded the return of footwear with some oomph behind it.
Where things got tripped up was when they got a bittootrippy, as in the case of tops with graphically rendered hands holding floating crystals or the sequined tie-on bibs. But we all have our weird stints; the tomboy babe rides on.
3 March 2016
GoogleRod Stewartandlegwarmersand you will find the image that kick-started Barnabé Hardy’s second men’s collection forCarven. There were other cues, too, including the Space Invaders arcade game; but detecting the presence of pixelated critters within the knitwear patterning would have been more difficult than spotting the street art–tiled versions in New York or Paris. And anyway, knowing these references wouldn’t much influence your opinion of the clothes, which proved youthful and appealing, in style and substance.Rather than seizing too heavily on a late ’70s moment, Hardy painted over his nostalgia with bold gestures of color. He also resisted retro styling, streamlining jackets in Donegal tweed and adding just enough slouch to the corresponding pants. Mostly though, suiting took a supporting role to the sweaters and outerwear, both of which offered enough points of interest to bookmark for a later date. The graphic zigzag flocked, quilted, and printed on coats, for instance, revealed a small skateboarder and his restless trail. Meanwhile, Hardy allowed his knits to invade all sorts of unfamiliar spaces: the outer sides of slacks, shawl collars on jackets, and over-sleeves. Those arm warmers, coupled with the never-ending scarves, signaled a deliberate decision against anything serious; perhaps that’s why the looks landed somewhere between Wes Anderson andThe College Dropout–eraKanye West.Incidentally, the presentation took place against a backdrop of screens featuring digital pattern animations by artist Justin Morin, possibly underscoring that this comfy, cool collection has a place in the future. For the Parisian creatives who were in the crowd, all vocalizing their praise, that future can’t come soon enough.
21 January 2016
For all the British points of reference appearing on the latestCarveninspiration board (Twiggy, bearskin caps, Prince of Wales check), the corresponding collection did not amount to an Anglo-inflected pastiche. Instead, it seemed as if Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud treated these visual cues as raw ingredients, simmering, braising, and Carven-izing them so that the label’s faithful gamines would feel right at home. The boiled wool pastel cocoon coats that have become a brand standby returned in sharper hues (a vibrant lilac, azure blue) with softer, curving collars. Skirts stopped reliably above the knee yet presented unexpected elements, such as the frayed carpet effect achieved by turning an unfinished jacquard inside out.Each wardrobe mainstay, in fact, boasted some sort of boosted detail—from the slouchy supple leather pants in spirulina green to metallic windowpane patterning on a proper navy tunic. Crepe soles on schoolgirl loafers had been supersized. The requisite sweatshirt bloomed with embroidered Japonisme buds. Bags were shown in pairs—carryall plus CD case (obviously not, but the size was right!). With this collection, the designers have completed a full cycle. They’ve found their groove by serving up more pep than you usually see from the Paris houses. And this—even more than the frilled collar knits and toggle closure tweed jackets—might have been the most Anglo influence of all.
6 January 2016
Alexis MartialandAdrien Caillaudaudtook the ultra-gamine Carven girl on a deep-sea dive for their Spring 2016 collection, exercising their ability to produce neat tailoring, sporty details, and the type of kicky, youthful A-line silhouettes that consistently bring the ingenues running, credit cards extended. The story, said Martial and Caillaudaud backstage—while standing before an inspiration board posted with Corinne Day’s portraits ofKate MossforThe Face, early female scuba divers, and assorted oceanic creatures—was of a girl in search of a seaside adventure. She ditches her boyfriend (but “packs some of his shirts to wear with her minis”) and learns to scuba dive. Eventually, as the looks lead into evening, she goes back to the city; only now she’s wearing her souvenirs.And true to the narrative, nautical touches on suiting and separates (eyelets as portholes!) gave way to transparent logo tees paired with aGrey Gardens–esque shirt-as-skirt (“Because you’re on the boat and you really don’t care,” said Caillaudaud) and, eventually, a long and lean silhouette, often centered around a narrow crepe pant anchored by a clunky sandal. But while prints were derived from sea creatures (jellyfish, octopuses, striped puffer fish, all covered in fluorescent spots and striations) and one stiff frock’s frilled edges were reminiscent of undulating tentacles, most of the clothes—barring at least one excellent knit, which boasted dangling, beaded fringe—lacked the movement inherent to the life aquatic, favoring instead the rigid thickness of decidedly un-casual clothes. Adventure, after all, is about freedom—and even ingenues need some wiggle room.
1 October 2015
Stencils of ginkgo leaves lined the steps and floor leading up to the Carven showroom, which had been walled off with perforated gingko-patterned paper screens. This collection marks Barnabé Hardy's debut as menswear designer for the brand; and if turning over a new leaf wasn't directly implied, his self-confessed superstitious side made sure the gingko was well represented (stitched onto a mahogany suede jacket, rendered as corsage pins or charms hanging from leather cord, and integrated into a shirt pattern). If this sounds almost hippie, it wasn't representative of the overall look, which veered largely city sleek, alternating minimalist shawl-collar shirting with graphic, streamlined sportswear. Hardy explained how the shifting interplay of light and shadow within the architecture of a modern environment led to windowpane patterns, swirling embroidered motifs, and a trompe l'oeil placket down the front of a jacket. But to touch his irregularly quilted coat (a variation on the old-fashioned technique ofboutis) and the enlarged basket-weave jacquard was to realize his appreciation for tactile detail and how a little savoir faire can go a long way. While there's a chance Carven customers won't detect a difference between this creative changing of the guard, new zipper hardware—a C within a circle—reveals a new imprint. Given that the brand's menswear history is still so fresh, Hardy is in the privileged position of strengthening Carven's codes on his own terms. He's certainly off to a strong enough start.
24 June 2015
Technically, Resort is the sophomore collection for Carven designers Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud. But because the runway is where the magic—or media impressions—have a greater impact, they can kind of get away with any missteps now, knowing that they have time to fine-tune for Spring '16.But here's the thing: There weren't many, which says much about their ability to transition Carven seamlessly without spinning the same yarn. Guillaume Henry will always be credited for revitalizing the brand—and for believing that girls would glom onto kidney-shaped cutouts, pastel coats, borderline twee sweatshirts, and a Hieronymus Bosch print. Meanwhile, this duo—whose history dates back to their first day at fashion design school—quickly realized that Carven had been lacking a must-have pant. If their cascading bootlegs preclude cycling to work, they do fit perfectly where it matters most (and length is negotiable, anyway). Leather, too, had never before been a Carven standby. Now there are cinched-waist utility-style jackets, close-cropped variations, and snap-front skirts. The polished discs accenting platform wedges, sensible stilettos, and white sneakers established a discreet signature, while the designers made a single concession to the logo tops of yore with a silver thermo-printed "Carven" across a vintage suburban street.Collectively, there was something appealingly jolie laide to the looks—the unevenly scalloped hemlines (simultaneously nodding to clovers and clouds), counterintuitive color combinations (highlighter orange and lilac), woven filmy T-shirts and loofah-textured knits. However, there were also a few extremes: the floral organza and cotton openwork that hewed jolie, and the '70s upholstery-inspired floral that hewed laide. Martial and Caillaudaud repeatedly referred to antithetical notions of "natural and synthetic," "casual and elegant." But as tempting as it is to ascribe an opposites-attract theory to their personalities, they insist it's just not the case. Fine then, the collection is a credit to their compatibility.
9 June 2015
Under Guillaume Henry, Carven became one of the most commercially compelling fashion reboots of recent years: Couture heritage and a philosophy of mid-price quirk proved customer catnip. So how to reinvent that reinvention? "Make it electric," said new designer Adrien Caillaudaud. "She is a nice Parisienne, but now we want to give her a nice twist, to electrolyze her." With his partner Alexis Martial—who only started working (officially) three days ago—Caillaudaud presented a debut Carven collection today that duly zinged.The first look of their reign was a wraparound lilac mini and a white organza shirt with cloudy puffs of flock. The gold amulet necklace—inspired by Olafur Eliasson'sWeather Projectat Tate Modern—and the rubber-slung slingback clogs teamed with knit ankle socks flickered throughout. The newly electrolyzed Carven girl favors unforgiving pants: leanly cut, high-waisted, and 1960s skiwear-touched. Eel-skin overcoats, paillette-speckled knitwear, and foam-collared bombers, gilets, jackets, and pants in pulsating, nostalgic floral jacquards were all easy on the eye, yet looked potentially problematic on the pocket. A black-piped, boiled-wool overcoat in navy; a drill parka in khaki; and jasper-print separates appeared to be less soul-searching, but similarly satisfying purchases.Martial and Caillaudaud met 12 years ago—on their first day of fashion school—and have long plotted to work together. This collection was a sparky enough first outing à deux. It should prove fun to see how much electricity they can generate.
5 March 2015
Some Carven devotees may not even realize that Guillaume Henry has moved on from the house; they buy for the label, not the designer. And in this way, Carven simply needed to maintain a baseline of desirability this season. Yet, if this was Henry's vision in the hands of the studio, as the brand claims, the clothes for Fall exceeded expectations. At Nina Ricci, Henry will no longer be designing men's collections, so to some extent the pleated and/or cropped pants that he often wears felt like a personal send-off. Meanwhile, sculpted coats, boxy yet tapered, will be held up in magazine editorials as evidence that the '80s are once again having a moment in menswear. Those who prefer a less pronounced silhouette will likely favor the bouclé wool bomber jackets and classic black caban, both with sloped shoulders as a subtle update.The various looks in nickel gray were easy on the eyes, with one so seamless as to appear like a jumpsuit. Two shirting developments, a technical poplin turtleneck and a collarless wool chalk-stripe blouse, were daring enough to confirm that the studio was not just coasting on autopilot. Furthermore, a bunch of new accessories—notably, a sailor-inspired bag, a handheld clutch, and a leather-trimmed platform oxford—shifted the focus toward a category that has perennial growth potential.Will the incoming designer continue the ever-popular sweatshirts that have proved a successful entry point? The latest versions here were emblazoned with the same wry, retro cassette-tape and television imagery that was first seen in the women's Pre-Fall offering. Slogan tees reading "Parlez après le bip" ("Speak after the beep") and "Laissez un message" ("Leave a message") continued the notion of obsolescence. The message here: Relevance is relative.
22 January 2015
With its retro electronics, striped chaise longues, sepia-tinged fashion photos, and a snail's coiled shell, Carven's Pre-Fall mood board suggested a desire to dial things back. Nostalgia aside, who, in the age of the Apple Watch and wearable tech, wouldn't chuckle upon seeing lo-fi symbols as street-style bait? In the absence of Guillaume Henry, who has moved on to Nina Ricci, the Carven studio proved clever in the realm of construction as well, offsetting hemlines, shirt collars, and jacquard patterning so details that could easily have looked askew somehow ended up on point. Like the op art examples also tacked onto the mood board, panels of striped poplin shirting and wool suiting veered diagonally at times. Purists might find this dizzying, but if you're searching for an excuse to add another men's shirt to your wardrobe, you've got one.Indeed, the menswear thrust stood out as the most noticeable shift for a line that has reveled in its gamine-ness. Even city shorts threatened to outnumber the miniskirts. But then certain codes—the sweetheart neckline, the lace inserts—brought familiarity to seersucker and flannel, and the balance felt once again restored. The smartest move here was the focus on outerwear. The new selection includes a sporty sartorial bomber in Prince of Wales check; classic wool coats, either bicolored or printed with painterly stripes; and elongated gilets. Sentimentalists will be pleased to find a pink coat (a Henry signature), this one slightly dustier and in boiled wool. A welcome rewind before the brand fast-forwards.
5 January 2015
Today's Carven show was built for speed. You might even say it was builtfromspeed: As Guillaume Henry explained, his key reference this season was racing, taking in everything from Formula 1 team uniforms to the blurred stripe of a brightly colored car taking a curve at a couple hundred miles per hour. To which the reply had to be, "Sure, yeah, but maybe the 1960s were kind of a thing, too. And what about Japan?" It wasn't like Henry was trying to be sly—alongside all the racing motifs, the mod silhouettes and Edo-style illustration prints were front and center here. As were the big ol' bags many of the models cuddled under their arms, a little distractingly, like helmets. The bags will sell, and so will the clothes—the spiffy bike shorts and zip-up tops, the PVC-python coats with daggered lapels, the kicky A-line minidresses. There may have been a straightforward commercial aspect here, but given that Henry has presided over such a rapid expansion of this only lately relaunched brand, perhaps it's fair to recognize retail appeal as a key part of the Carven vocabulary—right in the mix with lace (printed here) and strong shapes for coats (to wit, those bladelike lapels).
25 September 2014
If you rise early enough in Paris, you will see a certain cadre of young apprentices—a baker in training or a butcher's assistant, say—on their way to work. Guillaume Henry was sufficiently inspired by their uncontrived (ahem, overtired) coolness to consider how they might dress if they weren't, in fact, en route to their underpaid posts. Echoing his Resort offering, Henry is in a streamlined state of mind. He is also thinking functional comfort, as evidenced in pants cuffed like sweats or trimmed with stretch inserts, and zippered shirts with roll-necked collars. But here's the thing: Carven guys aren't musclemen, and in this way, shorts and trousers were cut to emphasize leanness. As were the roomy shirts with fabric-blocked sleeves, which had the added bonus of good ventilation—Henry expressed concern about heat waves. The same polished faille technique from Resort re-emerged as an elongated, spread collar Mackintosh. If the safety orange registered too shocking, the coat also appeared in accessible black and putty. Henry borrowed the safety vest striping as a framing trick toward the end of the collection. No one will mistake it for a harness—yet it was the only idea that seemed overthought.Henry didn't push his sharp new logo proposition as strongly here as with the womenswear—and this seemed like a missed opportunity given how deeply fellas fell for his branded floral sweatshirts a few seasons back. His final two looks included black blousons with scratched-out text that riffed on Parisian instructions for sorting trash, in addition to an embroidered snowdrop flower whose petals were littered across the body and sleeves. Those same petals dappled one of the three Resort dresses he added to the mix (because girls can be apprentices, too). Like the guys, his sporty ingenues wore Carven's version of a Birkenstock. There were sneakers and double monks, as well, but the sandals and white ankle socks were clearly Henry's way of paying respect to those who wake at the crack of dawn.
24 June 2014
In an age of neoprene and laser-cut leather, faille is the type of polished, classic fabric that harks back to the days when Carven's founder, Carmen de Tommaso, would have been designing chic ready-to-wear for soigné Parisians. So to hear Guillaume Henry describe a coat as "faille technique" was to understand his sensitivity to the past and the possibilities of the present. More to the point, he gave this offering an overall zing in a way you don't normally associate with the brand, owing largely to color (pylon orange) and material blocking (sporty black inserts that curved from the chest down each arm in a single panel per side). Henry was sufficiently seduced by this moto-meets-mademoiselle juxtaposition to propose it again elsewhere, applying an athletic collar to a slim, cropped graphic jacket offset by a flirty kick skirt, and showing an athletic-inspired dress with sloped raglan sleeves fronted by a sweet springtime flower. Even the Carven logo morphed from the cursive script of seasons past to aerodynamic, sans-serif all-caps, giving the brand name a forward (if slightly less personable) thrust. If a sleeker statement was Henry's goal, a slim-line navy dress that looked like two pieces (thanks to a strategic cutout at the back waistline) was his winning look. And as much as sneakers are a prerequisite today (the ones here were printed), the sixties-era bourgeois flats proved he didn't get stuck in a sporty rut. Sacrificing some of the throwback femininity allows Henry to catch up to his ever-evolving ingenues, which possibly accounts for the broader logo presence—a streamlined Carven is one that is proudly worn.
23 June 2014
There was a lot of feeling on the runway at Carven today. The show featured a ton of great-looking forties-inspired clothes, but the special thing was that these conjured a state of mind, a certain mix of dislocation and resolve translated into glamour that seemed right for a woman in the midst of war. Kudos to Guillaume Henry for capturing that. Now on to the clothes, bags, and shoes, which, come autumn, ought to be flying out the doors of the fast-expanding network of Carven stores. Standouts here included the belted wool jackets and coats with rolling collars, the short skirts with revealed pleats to one side, and dresses bedazzled with this way/that way crystal arrows. The soigné, long-line suits and frocks also had a lot of appeal, but the silhouette may not prove as convincing to the Carven customer as, say, a short, flared gray dress with a touch of crystal embellishment about the collarbone, or an abbreviated tweed suit with leopard-print pockets. Likewise, the graphic prints here will probably be an easier sell than the looks featuring disembodied figures collaged here and there—those, Henry explained, were an homage to Dadaists such as Blumenfeld, Picabia, and Man Ray. So far, so cool. But the killer part of this show was the footwear. Women are going to be murdering each other for the over-the-knee boots and peep-toe heels.Cadavres exquis, indeed.
26 February 2014
Guillaume Henry began pursuing a tougher look for his Carven girl last season; actresses who came of age in the edgier-than-now nineties like Drew Barrymore and Liv Tyler influenced him. This time, he said his muse was Bonnie Parker, the ultimate girl outlaw, as played by Faye Dunaway. But there was nothing quite so obvious in his Pre-Fall lineup as a beret—not much tough about those anyway. Instead, he created prints inspired by Brassaï's early photos of street art for a flared mini and a trim button-down, and cut a mannish coat in a bold white tartan. Outerwear was a big part of the story. Shearling bombers and aviators, along with wool toggle coats in navy or camel, took their cues from military uniforms. The more boyish vibe aligns Henry with the direction other labels are heading in this season. Ladylike is on the wane. But once an ingenue, always an ingenue. The signature Carven charm materialized most obviously in shrunken sweaters and short A-line skirts, and on a great little long-sleeved dress made from silvery-white lace.
20 January 2014
The Carven man has, until now, looked like he's never so much asseenthe wrong side of the tracks—Guillaume Henry's vision for his menswear has been much more tender than that. No one who has been following the collection would have expected him to look to vintage mug shots as inspiration, and fewer still would have expected them to toughen up the designs in a way that helped dispel the fussiness that has dogged the line since its inception.The customary Carven fineness was still in evidence. It was there in the way Henry cut a collar just slightly too large, or a lapel slightly too small. But while previous collections read as cute, this one had more cockeyed charm. "It wasn't that they were underlining an image of danger that was interesting me," Henry said of the men in his source material. "What I liked was that they were looking right at the camera. They were in a police station and they were charming."With the palette reduced to basics—mostly black, white, cream, and gray—and ornamentation all but stripped away, the clothes had a plainspoken appeal. Even the forays into the idiom of eveningwear, from the use of velvet to the patent-leather lace-ups, didn't knock the collection out of its groove. These pieces weren't challenging, they were reliably approachable, which hasn't always been the Carven case. The handful of girls who turned up in the show seemed almost irresistibly pulled in. Henry was adamant that they weren't mere molls. "They're part of the group," he said. The Carven good girl has joined the gang?Her?"They've always been bad girls," he insisted. "You don't see everything at the same time." This lineup proved the point. Time reveals new shadings.
14 January 2014
Like many designers, Carven's Guillaume Henry was preoccupied with the nineties this season. And he found an appealing angle into the era, conjuring not its sneering riot grrrls but its sweethearts. "I was thinking about the girls I went to college with, first of all," Henry explained after the show, "but then also about women like Drew Barrymore and Liv Tyler. There was something tough about them, but they also seemed upbeat and approachable." Henry certainly got at the upbeat-ness, what with his bright florals, gingham check, and frisson of rodeo chic. And certain of his pieces, like the buttoned, waistband-free skirts, had a real cool-girl authority. But this collection wasn't entirely convincing. For one thing, the inflated volumes of the jackets came off forced, especially alongside so many trimmer looks that felt fresher. Another quibble was with Henry's emphasis on curvilinear matte-crystal embroidery that read as a bit carbuncular (though the way it had been worked into the garments was impressive when seen up close). More generally, though, Henry just succeeded too well at reanimating the hip mall-rat chick of the late nineties, and fell a touch too short at elevating the reference for the runway. That said, there were plenty of items here that ought to sell like hotcakes, starting with those buttoned skirts and ending with the bow-tied slingback platforms.
25 September 2013
Even in their most multivolume biographies, more space is devoted to the great artists' affairs than their attire. Guillaume Henry set out to fill in the gaps. He imagined a painter toiling away in the south of France, a fantasy conglom of everyone from Giacometti to Morandi, whose famous still lifes the show's bottle-lined set suggested. These men were "spontaneous and elegant," Henry said, and whether they ever wore colors as sherbet-bright as those at Carven, they certainly used them. It's not too far a stretch to imagine them painting their own windowpane checks on their trousers as Henry did here. The man of fashion is his own canvas.In any case, here's proof of what the great can inspire in the good. Whether it was the prism of other artists, or the displacement of an earlier era (there were clear notes of the fifties and sixties, what Henry calls his favorite era), the collection had less of the preciousness that has beset his earlier work. There was even a dose of hardy functionality, in boxy pull-on poplin shirts modeled on painters' smocks, and more denim throughout than in any Carven collection before.
25 June 2013
Carven's Guillaume Henry traded Montmartre for Mali for Resort. He'd been inspired, he said during a brief visit to New York, by the work of Malick Sidibé, the Malian photographer whose 1960s photo reportage is one of street style's midcentury predecessors. The youth of Bamako, Henry said, "mixed European influence with their own origin," adapting as they went. Their contribution to his collection, he added, was a more casual element: "not as pretty or ladylike."In keeping with the theme, Henry sketched sixties shapes—simple sheath dresses, bell-shaped coats, all with oversized collars—in zippy colors. (Sidibé shot in black-and-white, but here was a good case for petal pink, mustard, ice blue, and persimmon.) Henry's materials had a kind of make-do-and-mend scrappiness: silk shantung mixed with poly, cotton woven with plastic. It veered a little close to the precipice of American political incorrectness, but more to the point, it raised the question of how appealing polyester is as a selling point.Still, there was a kicky modishness to the whole, with the cute puff-skirted dresses, the oversized costume jewelry (inspired in part by pieces worn by Nina Simone), and the models' spidery lashes. And the mood was infectious. You can practically hear the music in a Sidibé photo, so Henry paired his dresses with flats, one style made in conjunction with Ancient Greek Sandals. "For dancing," he said.
9 June 2013
The rubber-coated invite suggested we were in for something different at Guillaume Henry's Carven today. Then there were the half-dozen sawed-off old cars stacked up at the back of the catwalk. If nothing else, Henry's got a bigger budget for runway-show expenses. It does seem that business is doing well: Carven opened its second Paris store on the Left Bank's Rue de Grenelle today.But back to the rubber. Innuendo has been part of this label's appeal since Henry took the reins more than three years ago. For Fall, though, he turned it up. That means in addition to the signature cutouts on knits and the familiar midriff-baring tops beneath jackets, there were racy new zebra prints, some in silk-screened rubber jacquard on sheer fabrics that played peekaboo with the skin beneath. It's a long way from the toiles de Jouy and Hieronymus Bosch prints of the past couple of seasons. Ultimately, the zebra stripes weren't such an obvious fit for Henry's brand of French preppy. An abstracted digital print of headlights and stoplights at night was also a departure, but a more believable one when he used it for a robe coat.Rounding out the collection—round being the operative word—were oversize coats in teddy bear textures and some of the colors of the season: baby blue, pink, camel, blush. Pinafore dresses in the same spongy materials worn over lightweight knits will give shoppers a look similar to the one Miuccia Prada showed for Fall. That's a coincidence that will work to Henry's advantage, we're guessing. But no assistance will be necessary to get women into his fabulous coats.
27 February 2013
Office wear. Skiwear. Guillaume Henry threaded the two together. He had the idea that for the workers headed to La Défense, Paris' office-towered business district, the winter-morning commute wasn't so different from heading up the mountain. What's the Métro but a kind of underground chairlift, delivering the frigid multitude to the day's precipitous drop?The Carven guy, long a little-brother type, is growing up, going to work. Carven is growing, too: The Saint-Germain-des-Prés space where Henry staged his first Paris runway show is the label's new office, no doubt part of the reason Henry had work spaces on the brain, and kitted out his runway with a retro fifties office set.There was cause to wonder, though, if the Carven guy is growing faster than his clothes. His suit pants tended to end just below the knee, in a length you could only call capri. Henry explained that this was a traditional ski-pant length in the fifties—they'd be worn with high, woolen socks—which itself made a kind of cosmic sense, as Carven's first heyday was in that decade. That's a long story for a short pant, which felt a bit excruciatingly cute. Jackets, in contrast, were given a more mature shape than they've had in seasons past. They remain affordable and easily wearable, which is to say, safely in the Carven sweet spot. Joining them there were ski-slope Fair Isle sweaters, fuzzy and fizzy with the addition of mohair.
15 January 2013
If you could bottle French insouciance, it'd smell like Carven. For pre-fall, Guillaume Henry took his cues from Isabelle Adjani in the 1976 Roman Polanski filmThe Tenant.On the studio wall, a video of a cat lolling around on rumpled white bedsheets played, and the models took turns perching on a pile of new mattresses. The clothes were just as irreverent. Models wore thick ribbed tights with winter sandals and tossed oversize sporty parkas on top of adorable narrowly cut lace dresses. Skirtsuits, a Carven staple, came in awkward chic proportions, with hand-knit sweaters underneath, or they were cut with arching hems that revealed a hint of thigh. This season's clever print was inspired by Jacques Villeglé, the man behind Françoise Hardy's album covers. Describing the look, Henry said, "She's creative in the way she mixes things together, she likes texture, and doesn't care about the right shoe with the right bag."He definitely got things right this season. One of Style.com's most die-hard shoppers left the presentation saying it was exactly how she wanted to look at fashion week next month.
6 January 2013
In the three years Guillaume Henry has headed up Carven, he's established new codes for the old couture house with surprising swiftness and confidence. The cheeky cutouts, the snug little sweaters, and the trim and neat tailleurs that made today's front row look like a convention of naughty prep school girls all made reappearances on the runway. The difference was this collection's new mood. "Lost in India in the middle of the twentieth century" was how Henry described it, though he also cited influences like the Art Nouveau star Émile Gallé and African safaris. How we describe it: moodier, sophisticated, more grown-up.That's thanks to new silhouettes like fuller, A-line skirts in place of last season's bubble minis and elongated, belted jackets that looked almost stately. Fabrics like a thick, substantial tweed seemed richer (not to mention fall-like—designers are shrugging off seasons more and more), but Henry hasn't lost his cheekier sensibilities. The safari print featured not just animals but also caravans and binoculars-wielding tourists. As for those cutouts, they were everywhere you looked: heart-shaped at the waist of suit jackets, above the bust on a coat-dress, on the sides of a racer-back sheath. If anything, Henry relied on them too much this season. They felt fresh when they were laser-cut in Gallé-esque Art Nouveau patterns, but Henry's next step forward should be to define some new signatures for the brand.
26 September 2012
When Guillaume Henry got the invitation to bring Carven to Pitti, he knew at once, he said, that he wanted to present the brand, not the collection. Clothes make the brand, of course, but the show he staged tonight—emphasis on show—was more spirited than a typical runway romp. "It's Paris meets Firenze," he said, and meant it quite in earnest: He brought with him a French tradition, the waiters' race, hired an Italian band, and rented out a city velodrome. As costumed waiters made their way around the track, their progress barked along in Italian by an announcer, racing-style, they were joined by Carven-clad models. Afterwards, a Florentine military band played them off.With so much pomp and circumstance, it was inevitable that the clothes would play second fiddle to the mise en scene. Up close, they conformed to the Caven type Henry's been plying for several seasons. The goods skew young. Though Henry, who once cited little brothers and childhood memories as touchstones, now name drops Jon-Jon Kennedy, the look still has room to grow. (That's Jon-Jon, mind you, not John, Jr.) He spoke of mixing casual elements with business ones, "the office meets the weekend." In some cases, the meetup was literal, as with oxford-cloth sleeves growing from a casual denim shirt. Elsewhere, it was stylistic, as with shorts (shortshorts) with tailored garb.A garden-fresh feel ran through much of the collection. A botanical print was a major push, for both clothes and accessories. It marked the return to Carven of its former totem color, green. Before the show, Henry explained that the house founder, Mrs. Carven, began her line post-World War II, when rations meant that cloth was scarce. She cut a dress from leftover green-and-white-striped deck-chair fabric and had herself an unlikely hit. Thereafter, green was never absent.Henry has avoided it all three years he's been at the helm, but he's emboldened himself to bring it back. That's a gesture of confidence and ownership, not unlike racing waiters during showtime. Love it or leave it—for the record, both reactions ran through the crowd today—the designer has made Carven his own.
20 June 2012
A Chequered Past, Peter Schlesinger's photographic history of 1970's style icons like David Hockney, Bryan Ferry, Rudolf Nureyev, and Twiggy, set Carven's Guillaume Henry down the garden path for Resort. An English garden, to be precise. Henry re-created one using real flowers, bushels of them, in a Meatpacking District studio today and used it as a backdrop for a fresh, colorful, slightly bohemian collection of the kind of tailored separates and little dresses he's made his specialty at the Paris label.The bohemian element was the news here. A paisley-print shift tapped into the gypsy feeling seen at other houses this season, as did another little dress with a bodice that wrapped like a sari, showing off a triangle of skin below the bust line. Another little number in black piped with royal blue had a deep, wide neckline that Schlesinger subject Ossie Clark wouldn't have minded putting his own name on. How a black leather padded motorcycle jacket in the Celine mold fit the story isn't entirely clear, but "the mix of personalities," as Henry put it, was part of his point this season. In any case, it'll find customers when Carven opens its first New York store sometime in 2013.
11 June 2012
The Renaissance keeps bubbling up on the Fall runways. Carven's Guillaume Henry used Hieronymus Bosch'sGarden of Earthly Delightsas inspiration for a colorful print. Don't worry though, girls, Henry hasn't suddenly gotten religious or become a strict moralist. The full, rounded hips of his dresses and skirts may have suggested a newfound modesty, but they were subverted by other things. Hemlines, for one, which inched their way up to mid-thigh. Also: keyhole slits on dress bodices and peekaboo laser cutting on other frocks that evoked stained glass. Despite a print of rose windows, and bouncy wings on the shoulders of a cocktail dress—influenced, the designer said, by a portrait of the Madonna—this collection was every bit as young and fun as usual.Carven is the kind of show where editors and retailers make personal shopping lists. IPhones were snapping pictures extra fast when a pair of ribbed sweaters that were split at the sides over pannier miniskirts came down the aisle. Same goes for a khaki mac with red satin lapels, and the other neat and trim outerwear. If there's one quibble, it's this: It'd be nice to see Henry apply his design savvy to pants next time.
29 February 2012
Country boy goes to Paris. It sounds like the recipe for some Balzacian fall from innocence. But the way Carven's Guillaume Henry does it, plenty of innocence remains. Henry imagined a young guy headed to the big city, suitcase in hand: a few schoolboy staples, a sweater knitted by grandma, his father's borrowed coat. "But," he said with a twinkle, "he doesn't know how it all goes." The result, he explained, is "spontaneous elegance, a charming naiveté."It wasn't short on charm. But the operative word here may be "young." There were touches throughout that kept the collection feeling slightly underaged, from the leather pocket protectors to the recurring donkey's-ears motif. (It's the French equivalent of the dunce cap.) Carven's gloves even came with strings to attach to your coat. Henry admitted he loses his without them.That kind of revelation made you think. Henry himself is a young, Paris-based designer from the countryside in Dijon. It's tempting to read into his chosen theme, though he disclaims any notion that he's designing a memoir-in-clothes. Whatever the case, the buoyant spirit and accessible price point make the label beginner-friendly. Very few of the lines that show during the Paris week can say the same. Guys of any age can appreciate Carven's hybrid-spliced merino sweaters, boxy blazers, and ultrathin leather K-way jackets. Youth is wasted on the young, anyway.
19 January 2012
Guillaume Henry went back to the 1960's for pre-fall, specifically the era before prêt-à-porter was born. It was a time when Parisian women old and young wore the same polished, couture-inspired clothes, the only things setting daughters apart from mothers being undone coiffures and extra-thick cat-eye liner. Three years into his tenure at Carven, the sixties have become Henry's decade, so the A-line silhouettes and short hemlines here looked familiar. With other designers revisiting the mod look, his creations also felt timely. His fans will fall for the extra-thick cable-knit turtlenecks, all the coats but especially the black satin princess style, and the match-y skirtsuits. Accessories like plastic tortoiseshell pumps and miniature round shoulder bags had charm, too. If anything, the bad-girl element of previous collections went missing, but it's a good bet we'll be seeing it back on the runway in March.
8 January 2012
Guillaume Henry is the real thing: an upstart with a vision and the good fortune to have the support of a brand behind him. The crowds at his shows keep getting bigger, and he didn't disappoint the top-of-the-masthead types who turned up this morning at the Jeu de Paume. His latest collection is very much in keeping with the codes he's established for the house—bright, young, optimistic, and leggy. Carven dresses always come with a wink: a lace inset that zigzags underneath the neckline, cutouts below the bust, removable collars or dickeys. The tailoring is well done, but cheeky, too, particularly when it comes to those high-waisted shorts.For Spring, Henry spun a folkloric tale. Leather harnesses on top of dresses or underneath jackets recalled lederhosen; colorful prints inspired by native embroideries appeared on baby dolls, shirtdresses, and a striking off-the-shoulder pleated look. Bells jangled on the heels of sandals. But other than that, the designer had a light touch, especially when it came to his evening numbers. Inès de la Fressange, who wore a draped goddess style from his Fall show at the Cannes film festival, will have a lot of competition for this season's effortless little confections in technical taffeta.
28 September 2011
Carven may be a far cry from haute couture, but that doesn't stop designer Guillaume Henry from romancing his message. "It's not just clothes, that would be boring. There's always a story," he said at the label's rue Royale headquarters today. For his first-ever pre-collection, the story is a holiday in Switzerland. It gave him the opportunity to revisit some previous hits in clever new ways. The lace appliqués that he used to provocative effect on his Fall runway were altogether sweet here, creating trompe l'oeil lederhosen on a sweater or an apron on a skirt. A photo print of vintage postcards of the Alps appeared on both a silk shift and a nicer-price cotton T-shirt dress. Colorful map prints also turned up on tops and skirts. Basics with a difference make up a big part of the line, and Henry delivered those in the form of a mac cropped at the waist, a toggle coat cut in rugged white denim, and a trench left unlined so it can be worn all the way through summer.The brand is growing by leaps and bounds. In addition to larger-than-ever offerings of shoes and bags, Henry showed his first bathing suit, a white maillot with a cutout above the midriff. Not much of a connection to Switzerland there, but the cutout will be familiar to his fans, and that's even more important.
4 July 2011
While Guillaume Henry has been breathing new life into Carven's womenswear, the men's line has been on hiatus since last December. Prior to that, the label had been quietly treading water in menswear, making office-friendly attire for the French middle class. The designer mentioned his businessman brother had been a big Carven customer. But times change, and after the bang-up, back-from-the-dead revival Henry has effected with the house's womenswear, the brand's owners have added a menswear relaunch to his purview, too. He's calling his Spring outing not collection 1, but collection 0. "It's just to get a feeling for the boy," he said modestly. The perspective he brings to it is fashion-savvy rather than business-casual—in other words, a change of course from what's come before. "I'm not sure if my brother will be in the collection anymore," he admitted with a laugh. Maybe not, but buyers are already buzzing.The brother story is apt here. Womenswear designers venturing into men's often imagine designing for their female client's boyfriend or husband. Not Henry. "I was thinking of a family picture," he said at a showroom appointment, "of the brother of the Carven girl." The younger brother. Inspired by clothes worn in childhood, the collection had a schoolboyishness that Henry further played up with his styling. He featured pleated shorts and Peter Pan collars and even decked out looks with leather pocket protectors. There were instances where the child's-play theme went too far, as with a piqué cotton polo turned into a short all-in-one; best to leave that one in the hazy days of youth. But there was ease and chic in Japanese cotton suiting and straight-leg denim, chinos and cotton shirting (with contrast collars in grosgrain and mackintosh fabric). An added bonus can be found in Carven's prices: Jackets will retail for around €400, pants around €120.As a first collection, this one suggested Henry has the chops to mix design and commercial considerations in fine balance. Some might argue that his men—well, boys, really—seem a bit too well behaved. (In one look, a sweater was knotted preppily around the shoulders of a rubberized leather Perfecto.The Not Very Wild One?) But that's the Carven way, these days. Henry, unlike many of his peers, is an unapologetic fan of good manners and good taste. That's a strength, not a weakness, and young vandals already have plenty of outfitters.
Still, you can't help imagining how good Carven could be when little brother enters his rebel phase.
26 June 2011
Guillaume Henry coined a new word, "showtation," for the hybrid catwalk/presentation he put on today for Carven. The open houses of previous seasons are too small a stage for a label that has ignited quickly after launching just two years ago. But if the setup was different, Henry's signature—brainy bourgeois—is evolving in a well-considered, step-by-step way. Citing Simone de Beauvoir and Lee Miller as muses, he called the lookbonne manière. "It means to be properly dressed; I can't fight what I like."His girl may be proper—choosing skirts over pants, never saying no to a little white collar, opting to cover up rather than going bare (at least most of the time)—but she isn't dull. The skirt is a lampshade shape worn with a shrunken, double-breasted patent jacket with arches cut into the hips. And joining a pair of sweaters with an animal figure knitted into the shoulders was a blouse with moon-shaped cutouts above the breasts. Equally suggestive were a red tartan dress with nude lace decorating the bust, and a barely-there velvet bra worn under a cropped jacket and draped jersey skirt.Titillation is only a small part of the story here, though. Other looks, like the navy cropped ribbed sweater that topped a slim L.B.D., balanced safe and chic in a smart way that will have Henry's customers returning again and again. Clothes that are hardworking and easy on the bank account? That's a can't-miss combination.
1 March 2011
Madame Carven was a couturier in the middle part of the last century whose contribution to the craft was her sporty, woman-friendly approach (she was apparently the first to do haute couture outfits for tennis and skiing). Guillaume Henry has revived the brand for today, retaining the founder's sensibility but producing it at wallet-friendly prices.Spring 2011 is just the third season in the label's new incarnation, and already it's sold everywhere from stalwart Paris department stores to edgy boutiques. That has something to do with the clever, versatile way Henry builds the collection, cutting a simple sleeveless shift, say, in a black and white landscape print and offering it with a removable shirt collar in contrasting point d'esprit. Without the collar, it's destined for Printemps or Galeries Lafayette; with it, Opening Ceremony or Dover Street Market. Similarly, the deeply cutaway bodice of a full-skirted navy and black cocktail dress revealed a camel cashmere bra. You could just as easily wear it with a favorite button-down."Bourgeois, but with a nasty side" is how the designer described the collection's vibe, which explains the presence of the cutouts that are quickly becoming a key theme on this season's runways. Here, they turned up on the back of a shirtdress made from squares of printed silk scarves, as well as on ruched body dresses made from T-shirt jersey. With a retail price of about €200 on those, Henry is about to make plenty more friends.
28 September 2010