Emilio Pucci Collaborator Christelle Kocher Sees Synergies Between Her Young Brand and the Heritage House
It’s been a banner couple of months for Christelle Kocher. The Koché designer inked a licensing deal with Renzo Rosso’s Only the Brave in November. Starting with fall 2020, OTB’s Staff International will develop, produce, and distribute her ready-to-wear and accessories for women and men. And yesterday, LVMH’s Emilio Pucci announced that she is the house’s first-ever guest designer (currently an in-house team designs the collection). Four years of operating on fashion’s fringes are paying off both operationally and optically for Kocher.
The 41-year-old French designer made a mark with her first show for spring 2016. Not only was it staged in the basement of Les Halles (subsequent shows would take place at the Folies Bergère and a gay-friendly Catholic church), but it featured a street cast of models, which was then a relatively new thing but has since become a badge of cool for designers across the fashion world. “I want to show the people’s Paris,” she said at the time. That notion was reflected in her clothes, which mashed up streetwear standards like shell suits and hoodies with haute couture flourishes. Even as she launched her own fledgling line, Kocher was artistic director of Lemarié, the plumassier to Chanel, where she worked closely with Karl Lagerfeld, and other couture houses.
Kocher’s most recognizable signature are the high-low dresses she collages from scraps of lace and football jerseys—she’s team Paris Saint-Germain. Her fabulous color sense and savvy patch-working make her an obvious choice for a collaboration with Pucci, where swirling geometric prints are the house patrimony. But how will her off-the-grid approach to show production and inclusive casting play out at this legacy house, which has been risk averse and conservative of late?
I spoke with Kocher to discuss the industry-spanning impact of her upstart brand, her vision for Pucci, and how fashion stays relevant in our hyper-speed world.
First off, congratulations. Why do you think LVMH came to you? What parallels do you see between your Koché brand and Pucci?
If you go back to the roots of the Pucci, it was about fluidity and movement, very inspired by sport. Emilio Pucci was doing a lot of sporting competitions. When he created his brand, he was trying to take elements of sportswear; he started to use jersey to allow women to be more free in movement. And that’s a value that is strong in my brand too. The prints, this atmosphere, he was so bold and also very joyful. It was a very happy brand, a very luminous brand. It’s something we have in common. Pucci is much more aristocratic; he was dressing all the Florentine families with all this history. Koché has a very different approach to fashion, with the unconventional way of showing with the models, with different kinds of people. It’s a good way to shake up a bit the brand. LVMH, Sidney Toledano, they wanted to bring a lot of freshness to the brand and shake up the business. I think it’s a good match. I’m super enthusiastic.
What did you do first?
I went to Florence and I saw the archive. It’s so rich. We only know a little portion of the house heritage. It was [also] really great to meet the daughter of Emilio Pucci, Laudomia. She told me so many stories about her father.
What do you want to do at Pucci? How will you make your imprint?
It’s just one season. Things are open, but for the moment, we do one collaboration with a strong statement during Milan Fashion Week. It feels really natural. Koché, the starting point, was mixing the couture, this more kind of heritage of the fashion world with elements of street culture and sportswear. I’ve collaborated with Nike, but this is much more elevated. That’s what I wanted to do always with my brand, to be able to be free, and navigate between different levels, but offering an experience with a strong point of view. It’s going to be fresh for customers of Koché, but also for customers of Pucci.
When you were offered the collaboration, what did LVMH hire you to do? Tell me about your directives.
It’s very nice; they left me very free. They opened the door to the archive, and asked me what I wanted to do, and I think they got excited about what I proposed for the brand: something which is into the history, but very new things that could bring some freshness to the brand. They were super open. They didn’t come with a collection plan: “We expect you to do dresses like that or prints like that.” They were quite open.
It’s a surprising arrangement considering you just signed a deal with Only the Brave and Staff International, is it not?
I want to show to the world that this is possible in fashion. Today I have a contract with Chanel. I ve been working for 10 years with the group Chanel with Lemarié. I’m working with OTB, and I am also doing a deal with LVMH or Nike or Converse. I think it’s beautiful, as long as it makes sense to my brand and my approach. For me, why not? I had the opportunity to know Karl [Lagerfeld]; he was working with so many different houses too. It’s a beautiful way to show that fashion can be open. It’s a big moment for the brand for me. The deal with Renzo [Rosso] will allow me to go to the next step: to make it more global, more mature, more qualitative. To do it at the same time as this collaboration with Pucci, it’s a good sign. It feels like, okay, we’re passing to the next step.
But how do you juggle all of it?
It’s a lot, but I’m very enthusiastic and very happy about what I do and I have a very strong team around me: supergood energetic people. I’m super organized and I’ve been trained by the best people, also. I was with Tomas Maier and Bottega Veneta at the same time. I was with Lemarié and I founded my brand alone, and it’s still 100% independent. It’s a lot of planning, but I’m spontaneous and enjoy-the-moment too.
