"S il vous plaît! Allô!" Stéphane Ashpool s models quieted their preshow chatter for, ooh, perhaps 10 seconds, after this stentorian admonishment—but given the circumstances, that seemed like pretty good going. Tonight s Pigalle presentation was a heartwarming slice of urban utopia, at which the clothes seemed a sideshow, part of a larger, lovely yarn. We were in the small lycée (school) where Ashpool himself was once a pupil, just down the road from the unambiguously evasive Club Evasion, in the heart of the not-as-seedy-as-it-once-was (but still pretty neon-lit) neighborhood after which he named this label. The models were the 12- to 14-year-old boys in the Pigalle basketball team that Ashpool and his best friend spend their weekends coaching. "I spent a lot of time coaching them. We play in the Paris league. We ended up third this season and we have the play-offs going on, so it s amazing," said the designer.
Downstairs, in the school s courtyard, we milled about and ate barbecue, waiting for the off. A film about the team was shown—titled Ensemble—in which we watched Ashpool urging his squad on (and consoling them when they were off) whilst wearing a powerfully pastel cardigan and painted nails: You don t see that in the NBA. Then, down a concrete spiral staircase and into the yard, came that team. They gave great runway. The audience whooped. Chief looks included a pink ear-flap baseball cap over a loose silk coat that was faux-paint-spattered in a pattern meant to evoke kids going bananas on their last day of school. A loose, soft-pink mohair cardigan was worn with a white vest, grosgrain-flashed violet basketball shorts, and a wide-brimmed synthetic spearmint hat. There was a pleasing patched-suede jacket—two of them, one in pinks and one in blues. A marble-swirl nylon tracksuit was paired with a piped CND-logo tee, a silver-collared, pink-bodied MA-1, and—for Ashpool s co-coach—a dashing cream high-hemmed top coat.
As the players, the coaches, and emcee Larry Vickers (Ashpool s godfather, the chap in the first look) gathered on the runway for a team photo at the end of it all, the yard filled with extra-loud whooping. Too good and pure a story for any marketing man to make up, Pigalle seems cynicism-free and sincere—or, "authentic," as those by-their-nature-unauthentic marketing folks might term it. Soft color can subvert hard situations and bring pleasure. Or as Ashpool said afterward: "I try to bring color because I see the life in color. The diversity of skin color, of clothes color … fashion can be open."
