It was September 2017 when Simon Porte Jacquemus invited us to the Musée Picasso for the first time. Back then, he was a young talent with a knack for making the impossible possible. It was the one-and-only time the museum had been used for a fashion show up to that point, and to my knowledge it hasn’t been used again. Over the eight years since, Jacquemus has built his label into an independent powerhouse with stores in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Paris, with more on the way.
Tonight he was back at the Musée Picasso, the occasion being a new collection dedicated to his ongoing obsession with Paloma Picasso. On his moodboard he’d pinned Helmut Newton’s powerful black-and-white photograph of the jewelry designer and daughter of Pablo, wearing a black dress with one strap slipped off the shoulder, her exposed breast obscured by the tall glass she holds. “I wanted to have this strong woman, the spirit of the ’80s, the cut of the ’50s, and the sensuality of the ’90s,” he said.
Jacquemus’s previous show was a deeply personal one, nodding at the designer’s Provençal roots and his late mother. He said he wanted a change. A chance meeting with Picasso set him off in this new direction, the full skirts and fulsome volumes of last season replaced by a rigorous midi-length tailleur, the skirt defined by a basque at the hips and a flaring pleated hem, and the jacket by its lapel-less collar, raglan shoulder construction, and nipped waist.
The silhouette had a sort of retro formality that was accentuated by the extravagant hats paired with it, and the way the models wiggled up the marble stairs of the museum with their hands on their hips. Exaggeration is in vogue, but Porte Jacquemus was at his best here working with the natural lines of the body and clingy knits. Hourglass dresses in a velvet fish intarsia (a nod to the ’80s fashion star Jean Charles de Castelbajac) in optic polka dots, and in solid butter yellow or black with deep looped fringes at the hem were the stars of the show, every slithery inch as sensual as intended. A pair of looks combining the scoop-neck leather bomber jackets that are top sellers in Jacquemus stores and matching pencil skirts were similarly convincing—supple and inviting.
On the men’s side, Porte Jacquemus made room for whimsy: a smoking jacket was paired with glorified boxers and a blouson was embellished with tiny multicolor dots, some sprouting feathers. You could see the white tuxedo jacket with asymmetric black lapels that conjured something aquatic getting noticed on the award show circuit. For the finale he recreated Picasso’s one shoulder dress, breast concealing glass and all. A thousand young Jacquemus fans who’ve never seen the image will seek it out and in all likelihood develop fixations of their own. Fashion is full of paeans of this sort, and retro deep-dives, too, but at this stage of his career, you want to see Porte Jacquemus writing his own history.
