At Patou, Guillaume Henry occupies a unique position in fashion. His collections, usually staged on the eve of couture, take their cues from the midcentury glory days of the métier but are designed to be accessible both in price and sensibility for young women. “Patou was a couture house back in the day, so I want to keep that philosophy, with an atelier but with reality,” he said back in 2019, when he made his debut here. But it’s a tricky divide to bridge, especially as styles have become more casual in the years after the pandemic.
Right off the bat this season, Henry seemed to be emphasizing Patou’s accessibility. The opening look was a pair of roomy dark-denim jeans worn with a color-block top with allover ruching that kept it from reading too sporty. Backstage he clarified that he’s always done denim at Patou but never put it on the runway. Another thing that looked new: low-profile, slim sneakers of the sort that are trending elsewhere. Henry showed them with dresses in guipure lace or Gobelins tapestry fabric embroidered with colorful beads—silhouettes both short and sculptural, yet quite simple. “I wanted dresses that you can almost wear like sweatshirts,” he noted.
In a bit of an ironic twist, Henry said his references were medieval. “Don’t ask me why,” he laughed. “Maybe because of the state of the world.” With Baz Luhrmann’s Joan of Arc movie expected in 2027, we may be hearing more such allusions, but Henry treated his influences lightly enough that they were hard to detect beyond perhaps the pointed, flaring hems of dresses and coats and the capelet silhouette of a dress worn over a blouse printed in a motif apparently lifted from the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts. An amber-colored dress that reproduced that marginalia pattern in stretch-cut velvet struck the casual, couturish note Henry established as the Patou sweet spot back in the beginning.
