AUGUST SEPTEMBER , THE CUT 83fund more “arty” endeavors. One of Jacque-
mus’s first hits, for example, was a simple
red, white, and blue T-shirt from the fall
2014 collection. He also tried his hand at
more intellectual projects, dressing women
up like paper dolls, as Kawakubo did in
2012, but the results were less avant-garde
and more arts-and-crafts.
Despite his connection to Joffe, and his
growing circle of French “It” girls like DJ
Clara 3000 and Jeanne Damas, Jacque-
mus still felt like an outsider. “I don’t have
a lot of friends in fashion,” he says. “From
the beginning, I was by myself and doing it
a bit by my own rules.”
In 2015, Jacquemus won the LVMH
“Special Jury Prize” for emerging talent—a
stamp of approval from fashion’s ultimate
insiders as well as the source of a €150,000
check and a yearlong mentorship. Because
he had no formal training, his adviser,
Sophie Brocart, suggested that he invest in
staff members with “technical expertise” and
take on the role of CEO, or face of the brand,
himself. Most designers his age aren’t up for
that. Even if he didn’t graduate at the top of
his class from Central Saint Martins, Jac-
quemus did have “the right personality,
vision, and charisma” to succeed, in Bro-
cart’s opinion.
With seasoned tailors now on his team,
the Jacquemus silhouette came into focus.
His deconstructed suiting, for example,
now looked like it was falling apart on pur-
pose. Following a strong spring 2016 show,
The Business of Fashion dubbed Jacque-
mus the “hottest young designer in Paris.”
He was no longer “just cute or French, or a
sensation,” as Jacquemus himself put it.
Better yet, he was making money.
Gradually, Jacquemus evolved his aes-
thetic. The arty Comme des Garçons influ-
ences began being edited out. For spring
2017, he returned to the sunny, Spanish-
influenced style of his youth—lace blouses,
straw hats, matador shoulders, and
corseted waists—inspired by the flirty the-
atricality of Christian Lacroix’s ’80s haute
couture. The following collection imagined
what it would look like if a Parisian girl fell
in love with what he’d referred to as a
southern “gypsy.”
After he found a photograph of his
mother wearing a headscarf, ceramic ear-
rings, and a wrap skirt, the Jacquemus
woman we know today, or “La Bomba,”
suddenly came to life. For starters, you
could actually see her. Instead of oversize
blazers, she wore droopy button-up shirts
that exposed her breasts and itty-bitty,
skintight knits over her long, tan legs.
Spring 2018 marked a return to his roots,
but instead of Charlotte Gainsbourg, his
muse was his own DNA. “She was sexy,”
Jacquemus told Vogue of his mother,recalling the “village beauty” who was
always smiling. Pretty soon, he became
known as the guy who calls his mom
“sexy”—but is there anything more French
than that?
Skimpy summer collections like “La
Bomba” now sell twice as well as fall ones,
but the success of that particular season
also had to do with its introduction of play-
fully scaled accessories. To balance out
gigantic straw hats the size of a Hula-Hoop,
Jacquemus designed miniature leather
bags, shrinking a style from the previous
season down to a crossbody that measured
just two and a half inches tall and four wide.
“People were like, ‘Simon, it’s never going to
sell; you can just put some cards and keys in
it,’ ” the designer recalls. “I was like, ‘Mmm,
I’m sure it’s going to sell. It’s too cute and
too viral not to.’ ”
He was right. Le Chiquito was snatched
up by Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Kim Kar-
dashian and now accounts for 30 percent
of the brand’s revenues at $520 a pop. (Its
pleasures are hard to explain, or maybe
justify, but—full disclosure—I own one,
and love it. Not only does it free me from
the tyranny of stuff, but holding its cute
little handle gives you the same pleasure
zap as looking at a lavender field through
a tiny phone screen.)
Le Petit Chiquito’s even-tinier spawn,
Le Micro Chiquito, which debuted in Feb-
ruary at the size of a binder clip for $258,
is selling out as well, despite the fact that
you can’t put anything in it. “If you don’t
consider it a bag, consider it jewelry, you
know?,” the designer said this summer,
tossing it over his shoulder with one fin-
ger. Memes abound.
Last year, Jacquemus teased his follow-
ers with rumors of a #newjob, but the big
reveal turned out to be menswear. His
first collection, shown at a beach in Mar-
seille, was a hunky answer to La Bomba.
Titled Le Gadjo, which, he explained, is
local slang describing a type of tourist:
“He’s a bad-taste guy, but he’s cute.” Simi-
larly, his show in the lavender field had a
second level you might not notice, refer-
encing the tourists he used to sell vegeta-
bles to when he was young, with clever
cosplay of farmer chic. Models in loud
floral prints sported fake tan lines and
corn-on-the-cob key chains in the style of
people who clumsily overcompensate for
being visitors by dressing a “bit too much
where they are,” as he puts it. Expect to
see this look in your feed. So many people
are posing naked on beaches underneath
one of his La Bomba giant straw hats that
the manufacturer ran out of straw.
This is his insight, his particular genius.
He knows we’re all posing, hoping for a
hashtag selfie in the sun. ■O
ne month intohis first
semester at fashion school,
Jacquemus’s mother, Valé-
rie, died in a car accident.
He dropped out shortly
thereafter and started his own line. Jacque-
mus was her maiden name. “I didn’t want
to waste time,” he said later of the choice. “I
wasn’t learning anything there anyway.”
Jacquemus paid a curtain-maker €100
to sew his first piece, staging a fake “pro-
test” outside Dior on Avenue Montaigne
during Paris Fashion Week for his debut
show. He always had an instinct for a media
stunt. “French people love striking,” he told
the press. “Strike uniforms are so sexy!”
By 2012, he’d worked his way onto the
official Paris Fashion Week calendar, one of
the youngest designers ever to do so. His
breakout show took place in a swimming
pool. Critics were charmed by the “inno-
cent,” “playful,” almost panderingly French
aesthetic of his early collections. Phrases
likej’aime la viewere printed over pic-
tures of sailboats. “I remember him telling
me: ‘I’m a daytime designer,’ ” recalled Clara
Cornet, who is now a creative director at
Galeries Lafayette (where he recently
opened his own lemon-themed café, Cit-
ron). “There are nighttime designers, and I
am daytime.”
To fund his collections, which were mini-
mal simply because that’s what the budget
allowed, Jacquemus got a job working as a
sales assistant at the Comme des Garçons
store on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
Adrian Joffe, Rei Kawakubo’s partner in
business and life, became a supporter,
stocking the brand at Dover Street Market
after only a few seasons. “He charmed me,”
Joffe said in an email. “I was so impressed
with his vision and his conviction.”
Working at Comme allowed Jacquemus
to support himself. He also calls the experi-
ence his “real school.” To start, he learned
who Kawakubo was. (Thanks, Google.) He
also internalized what he calls the “Rei
Kawakubo spirit,” which is “following
something forever, like a line.” In other
words, sticking to your guns, even if those
guns spew rainbows. He also discovered
that affordable products, like Comme des
Garçons: Play T-shirts and wallets, canCONTINUED FROM PAGE 59Life in the
Sunshine