Patou

Guillaume Henry’s irrepressible excitement about showing at Paris Fashion Week is as bubbly as the aerated, ballooning, colorful shapes that burst through his iPad screen on his tour of Patou this morning. “When we’re close to Fashion Week, suddenly I’ve got butterflies in my stomach!” he said. “And you know it’s a celebration expressing all the joy, the excitement, the fantasy we have while we’re working on a fashion project. So even if we do it by distance—we do it.” This was his invitation to a walk around the “winter garden” that he’d set up for virtual visitors to the Patou studio. “I wanted a very fresh, enthusiastic winter. So every single room here is a bouquet, each with its own range of color.”

Turquoise, orange, lilac, pink, red, yellow; vast volumes here, gigantic collars there; flower-power-y prints on ’70s-flavored tailoring. This garden of Henry’s had everything going on, including the bird-whistle toggles on a coat. Really, though, everything had grown from the signatures that Henry has planted over the last several seasons to such clever effect—the flavor of French regional costume, the Provençal embroidery, the Parisian-girl suiting, the playful, jaunty accessories. Last summer’s drop of mini-florals—including the pouf skirt and puff-sleeved blouse which was showered with girl-love across the internet—just gave rise to an even more exaggerated blooming of silhouettes this season. Yet, as Henry demonstrated by smoothing down what appeared to be a pair of the widest leg’o’mutton sleeves ever suggested (as seen in the look book), the shape of fabric can be tweaked by the wearer just as she pleases. Voila!

There was one more secret property of that magic, uncrushable fabric: It was “eco faille” in 100% recycled polyester. “We have have reached 70% organic or recycled this season,” said Henry. “And the prices are really on-point. We’ve worked on that a lot.” A large part of his talent is considering how to make haute-looking fashion work for lots of girls with differing tastes, lives and body-types. “Patou was always about generous couture volumes,” Henry said, delving into the details of elasticated hems and ribbon tie-waists. Everything adjustable, not nipping. “You know, when we’re normally talking about comfort, it’s yoga pants and cocooning things. I’m so not into sportswear. So why don’t we make it comfy, with ease—and all about Patou?”

He found more Patou-ness in the archives too. “We discovered these naïve, colorful, sort of flower-power prints which were made by Michel Goma in the ’70s,” he said. “In that period flowers meant freedom, too. I met him the other week—he’s 91, and he showed me everything he did back in the day. It was so full of joy.” Each look was really a pile-up of elements—turtlenecks, hand-crocheted folkloric vests, smart tailoring, detachable collars—ready to be dismantled by the customer. “It depends on the woman you are—more flamboyant or more modest, you can make it sexy, you can make it shy,” said Henry. “On our website, you know, we take one piece and show how it can be worn in four different ways.” It’s high fantasia for Fashion Week, that’s for sure; all of it rooted in authentic, refreshed references, but also grounded in Henry’s energetic, practical empathy for what the women who surround him will wear. “We love this—it’s a wardrobe. At the beginning of every season we always start with: What is needed? What are you missing?” And this, even in a year of lockdown, is how the garden of Patou grows, putting on sales, adding fans and followers, season by season.