Guillaume Henry called his collection “Rose,” but it wasn’t just an exercise in color or floral forms, although there were a few bursts in evidence in this spring outing for Patou.
Instead, the designer said, his Rose is a composite portrait of the women who have inspired him. She could be any one of a number of feminine—and feminist—characters in French film, for example the Beirut-born French actress Delphine Seyrig, among many others unfamiliar to non-French audiences. “I wanted to channel a softness and a return to elegance, and as it happens the name Rose is very French and also very international,” Henry noted, adding, “she’s chic, and she’s efficient about it.”
On the runway, the designer mixed up signatures associated with Jean Patou—pleated skirts, dropped waistlines, midi lengths—with those of his predecessors: Karl Lagerfeld, Michel Goma, whose work Henry considers unjustly forgotten, and Christian Lacroix, whose famed pouf skirts he revisited here in a leggy millennial iteration. A couple of safari-inspired jackets, with wide belts and wider lapels, looked like they might gain commercial traction; ditto the sporty 1970s-style polos embroidered with a scaled-down version of the ‘JP’ logo. Other pieces–like a scallop-edged top and shorts informed by provençal boutis embroidery, well-cut jeans with a white top and black jacket, and a four-pocket shift with gold buttons–could be swiped straight from the runway to the streets of Paris or anywhere else. That chunky gold heart necklace, too, will likely be a hit by the time spring rolls around.
By the designer’s own admission, the thing about French film and women in love is that their plotlines are virtually impossible to summarize neatly. The ones he had in mind here turn on hope and forging ahead. Henry has been handed (another) hard remit here, so–to his credit–the same could be said about him.
