Little-known fact: The handsome and debonair couturier Jean Patou had a cocktail bar installed in his salon, so that his in-house showings always turned into parties. This was in the 1920s—and a century later, it’s as if the playful Guillaume Henry is up to the same thing. His show took place around a central DJ-booth in a mock-club situation lit neon-pink. “To me, fashion should bring a smile,” he said. “This collection is dedicated to the customer we love, and considering the energy of what’s happening everywhere, my personal mood was wanting to put something to put a smile on people’s faces.”
Kooky, accessible, brightly-colored French-girl style is Henry’s thing. He called the disco-worthy collection “Dancing Diaries,” a mint, pink, orange, and peach cocktail designed to be served at one of the summer Sunday-evening clubs he remembers going to once upon a time in Paris. As a sequel to last season’s “Shopping Diaries” show, which portrayed his gaggle of his customers pulling their wheelie-bags around the Samaritaine department store one morning, the conceit this time was that they’d all actually been hunting for clothes to party in.
Henry isn’t a designer with his head in high-flown theories and elaborate moodboard references. He prefers to vibe off his friends and young female colleagues—and, by the look of it, the wide inclusive world of Patou influencer-friends. “You know, Patou isn’t really inspired by fashion, but more by people.” What he diagnoses now is the urge to sparkle, show lots of leg, and generally indulge in a lighthearted fun-loving attitude to life.
The styling—somewhere out of the ’60s or ‘70s with a touch of the poufy taffeta of Lacroix in the ’80s—nails in a Patou way the sexy escapist mood that’s highly visible in French brands like Jacquemus. Another version might have come from Hedi Slimane’s permanently youth-centric Celine, but he decided to cancel the show because of the rioting that’s been rocking France after the shooting of a 17-year-old boy by a policeman.
It’s hardly the first time that unserious clothes have been played against serious times. That, after all, is a kind of essential purpose of fashion: to keep people buying even when things are down. One thing that makes Patou different in the post-pandemic rush back to shows is that it’s one brand that has not forgotten to talk about adhering to sustainable strategies. Henry noted that 70% of the fabrics he used are recycled or sustainably-sourced. Even the zig-zaggy sparkly embroidery was made from glass beads, not environmentally-worse sequins. “So it’s not plastic, I want to underline that.”
