Let us praise the designers who make clothes for everyday life. At Patou, Guillaume Henry signed up to that thoughtful, helpful—and all too scarce—contingent for fall 2024. What’s happening in the world caused him to make a 180-degree turn from the escapist teen disco party presentation he threw last season. This time, there was a distinct upgrade: a formal show venue at the Palais de Tokyo, and a full set of grown-up French-accented wardrobe options on the runway.
“There aren’t any themes. It’s about respect for the woman who’s going to wear it,” he said before the show. “So maybe there’s something greater, more elevated in the casting, and in the clothes. The price range is still the same, but I really wanted to dress a woman with dignity. And,” he added, “we’re really proud that we are 100% eco and sustainable. That was our challenge and we managed to do it. So we’re super happy with that—but it’s desire first, silhouette first.”
A strong component of Henry’s talent is his ability to read the room and the zeitgeist. In fact, he’s been doing modernized French classics since he arrived at Patou—like neat navy coats and 1970s bootcut pants, shirts with foulard necklines and gold jewelry—but now’s the moment to foreground and build the range. Camel coats and suits led out a collection that had something for everyone: short skirts and swingy fit-and-flare midis, on-point flared pant trousers suits, striped menswear shirting in Cambridge blue or candy pink, and more casual pieces like a quilted parka or a generous trapeze-shaped denim jacket.
Patou has a past as a Parisian couture house. Henry said he’d been looking again at what’s in the archive. His eye was caught by a coincidence: that both the founder Jean Patou, in the 1920s, and Christian Lacroix, who was making his extravagant poufy ballgowns at the house in the early 1980s, used polka-dots. For some reason, spots are breaking out as a minor trend this season—the ideal moment for his great-looking black-on-cream polka-dots on a blouse and a midi-dress, and then the long, slim, bias-cut halter evening dress.
Henry hasn’t shown formal gowns of the ‘event’ kind at Patou before. He didn’t show them on kooky ingenue-types, but on elegant grown-ups; women with a presence about them. Although Patou is positioned as an accessibly-priced label, it has an in-house atelier, and this time, Henry made that skill nicely apparent.
