“I really want to go back to an idea of
smiley fashion,” says Guillaume Henry,
smiling broadly. Henry, the creative director of the newly
relaunched Patou, is determined, as he puts it, “to wake
up this sleeping beauty”—by which he means Patou,
a brand from the Jazz Age that has been lying dormant
since 1987. Henry says that he wants to make impeccable
clothes that are sleek and fun and pretty—serious in
execution but playful in personality. “It’s about desire,
about being spontaneous—everything I love!”
The designer, who has astonishingly blue eyes
and looks a little like a grown-up Tintin, previously
reinvented Carven a decade ago, making that label
a destination for young Parisiennes (and Parisienne
pretenders around the world) and served for three years
as creative director of Nina Ricci. He came to Patou
in 2018, showing his first collection last September
with the intention, he says, “of dressing women in
a sporty way, but with couture touches. I want to dress
people in the fashion industry, of course, but I also
want to dress my cousin in Dijon—she loves fashion
too!” And it is perhaps this frankly democratic impulse
that makes these clothes seem exactly right for this
moment, when old categories of what is appropriate
for day and night, for work and play, have collapsed
and when an unstuffy spirit is prized over clothes that
merely look like they cost a lot.
You can imagine both that jaded insider and Henry’s
cousin falling in love with Patou’s irresistible wide-
legged, high-waisted jeans; the sleek satin dresses with
feathered cuffs; the bright frocks happily sporting
big bows; the oversize silk brocade coats in eggshell
pink. There is even a sweater decorated with a perfume
bottle—a sly reference to the fragrance Joy, which
kept the Patou name alive long after the couture house
had gone into that good night. (For the record, the real
Jean Patou was an elegant bon vivant, a rule-breaker—
known for the sportif charm of his designs—who
horrified le tout Paris in the 1920s whenFASHION
With Guillaume Henry
at its head, the fabled
house of Patou has made
a charming—and
thoroughly contemporary—
return to form.Get Happy!