58 THE CUT AUGUST SEPTEMBER,
Summer is at the heart of Jacque-
mus, the designer and his brand. As
a child, he was nicknamed Mr. Sun,
and this anniversary show was
timed to what is still called “cruise” season. And it was you’d-better-
not-be-wearing-much hot: On the day of the show, it was over 90
degrees without a cloud in the sky. Models were falling. Cell service
was scarce. Same for bottled water, briefly. Celebrities like Emily
Ratajkowski, editors like Emmanuelle Alt of FrenchVogue,and
the designer’s entire extended family were all given more sun-
screen and parasols upon arrival. Actually, wait a minute ... Where
islagrand-mèredeJacquemus? Someone forgot to pick her up.
The show started about an hour late, just as the sun began to fade.
“It was really like Fyre Festival,” Jacquemus told me afterward
with a laugh. “But only for, like, ten minutes.” His skin was the color
of a baguette, and his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a bountiful patch
of chest hair. “Everyone was like, ‘Ahhh!’
But me, I was like—” He theatrically
inhaled and exhaled. “I went for a walk in
the lavender.” Later that night, pizza and
bottomless rosé were served, and he
danced under the stars with his boy-
friend, Marco Maestri, who looks rather
a lot like him and is the brother of the
French rugby player Yoann Maestri, half-
naked star of the recent Jacquemus
menswear campaign.
Better to not think too much about
how this glorious heat wave was also evi-
dence of climate change. “Sun in your
face, sun in your face, sun in your face,”
the designer told me, clapping his hands
like a windup toy for emphasis. “I’ve been
like this since the beginning. I’m not
doing, like, an end-of-the-world show.”
Jacquemus, 29, was raised in the vil-
lage of Mallemort—population around
6,000—not far from here. He likes to say
that his barefoot country upbringing
instilled in him a sense of “naïveté.” He
uses that word a lot. Even his Instagram
bio—he has 1.3 million followers and was
a Tumblr native before that—reads like it
was written by a 10-year-old: “My name
is Simon Porte Jacquemus, I love blue
and white, stripes, sun, fruit, life, poetry,
Marseilles, and the ’80s.”
Critics sometimes roll their eyes: He’s been called both “preten-
tious” and a “bumpkin,” strong on pithy branding but short on
craft. The Financial Times recently mulled whether Jacquemus
should be better thought of as a designer or an influencer and
decided maybe he’s ... both, and that’s very right-now of him. Cer-
tainly, he’s a person who makes fashion for influencers, including
Kylie Jenner and Hailey Bieber, formerly Hailey Baldwin. (A
recent campaign was done in collaboration with the Instagram-
famous artist of louche, yet somehow innocent, self-display Chloe
Wise.) However much it is part of his authentic self, or just the
discipline of a young man raised on the mantra of having a “per-
sonal brand,” his social-media optimism is what sets him and his
clothing apart. He doesn’t take things too seriously, or seem to
suffer for his art. Even in person, he’ll tell you how he’s “realizing
his dreams.” How he’s “very in love.” And how his “only goal,” in
work and in life, is “being ’app-ee.”
His parents were farmers—his mother specializing in carrots,
his father spinach. But Jacquemus was clearly too charming, too
ambitious, and too cute for the non-hashtag version of life on the
farm. (He was cast in a Carambar’s-candy campaign as a kid, and
Karl Lagerfeld once called him “rather
pretty” on the subject of his work.)
Instead, Jacquemus dreamed of glam-
our, obsessing over French cinema and
studying copies of ItalianVogue.At the
age of 8, he wrote a letter to Jean Paul
Gaultier asking to be his stylist, arguing
that it would make for good press. On
weekends, Jacquemus sold vegetables
on the side of the road. He learned to
spot tourists from Paris, who were his
frequent customers. It’s a lesson he’s
held onto.
Soon he made his way to the city to
attend the École Supérieure des Arts
et Techniques de la Mode, at 18, in- He quickly learned that the
Parisian woman didn’t seem to enjoy
herself much. “I was like,Okay,notat
all,” Jacquemus remembers, scrunch-
ing his nose. “Not. At. All. They don’t
have the smile. I have no interest in
people who don’t have a smile.” Maybe
his mission has been to change that.
threedaysbeforethe Jacquemus
anniversary show in Provence, a gaggle
of casually dressed employees could be
found laughing and smoking cigarettes
outside his new studio on Rue de Mon-
ceau in Paris. He moved to the new location from Canal Saint-
Martin a few weeks earlier in June—coincidentally on his late
mother’s birthday, which he only realized the morning of.
The door to the Jacquemus operation is a classic French blue
but more teal than others on the block. I entered to find aarlier this summer, Simon Porte Jacquemus brought his tenth-anniversary fashion show to
the middle of a lavender field in Provence. He cheekily titled the collection “Le Coup de Soleil,” or “The
Sunburn,” and sent out bottles of branded sunscreen in the invitation. A 1,600-foot-long bright-
fuchsia runway was cut through rows of flowers, streaking across the groomed hillside like a neon
highlighter. If you search #provence on Instagram, you will find 3.4 million photos of basically the
same field, but without the hyperreal pink, which was inspired by both an iPad painting by David
Hockney and the work of artists Christo and Jeanne Claude. The e ect was FOMO-gasmic on social
media—an enchanted image of France by an adorable young French designer who embodies the
beguiling ideal of a carefree and well-tanned garçon.8. cmPHOTOGRAPHS: MODA OPERANDI/COURTESY OF JACQUEMUS (BAG); SASKIA LAWAKS (AFTER PARTY); ARNOLD JEROCKI/GETTY IMAGES (RUNWAY); EMANUELE D’ANGELO (RATAJKOWSKI)Actual size of a
Jacquemus micro-bag
(no, really).