In an industry where defining a point of view leaves designers reaching for concepts every six months, Pierre Mahéo takes the opposite tack. Wherever he wanders, he keeps an old-school notebook to hand and jots down the colors, materials, associations, and attitudes of everyday life in and around Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Then he goes back to his studio near Montparnasse and filters miscellaneous ideas and photos through the Officine Générale prism.
And though he has an enviable location in the most famous epicenter of Parisian creative life, Mahéo had never leaned into the art scene and lifestyle that exists, in its own fashion, in each of the capital’s 20 arrondissements.
“I wanted to study a certain detachment that means you don’t spend hours in front of a mirror, which might be slightly off because your focus is elsewhere, on what you’re doing,” the designer offered during a showroom preview. Ideas converged over dinner with his wife, Nina, and friends Gladys and Ollivier of Galerie Chenel—a specialist in archaeological objects and, particularly, ancient Roman sculpture, which became the backdrop for this look book.
For summer, arty nonchalance comes in fluid, light fabrics and easy, ample cuts, with suiting in linen and cotton-linen blends and timeless staples—crisp blazers, workwear-inspired jackets, neat vests, easy trousers and tees—in a palette of marble white, sandy beige, olive, navy and black, with an occasional shot of satiny emerald (an oblique nod, Mahéo said, to the way Alber Elbaz worked the material at Lanvin). Figurative prints—leopard spots so abstracted they might be a floral, a graphic black-and-white print—knit ties and polos, an embroidered floral, and a fluid chevron motif brought extra texture to pieces made for easy mixing out there in the real world.
