Jacquemus ss21 review
Simon Porte Jacquemus presented his spring 2021 collection on a field about an hour outside of Paris. It’s one of the few physical shows we’ve seen this season, with about 100 VIP guests attending. Jacquemus became a force in the fashion industry to recon with after his spring 2018 collection titled La Bomba. His brand image became clear after that collection. Slinky 90’s dresses in vibrant colors, huge straw hats, flowy skirts, ridiculously tiny bags and sandals with high heels in geometric shapes, just what you would imagine Jane Birkin or Brigitte Bardot wearing in the south of France.
La Bomba
In a fashion landscape dominated by Alessandro Michele’s Gucci and Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga, who’s designs had a masculine undertone, Jacquemus’ collection became revolutionary due to its romantic and feminine design that would let women be feminine. It had a huge impact on fast fashion brands as well. Jacquemus is probably the reason to why we’ve seen an overload of flowy midi skirts in stores like Other stories and Zara.
But his commercial success and impact seems to have lead him to be stuck in one vision. There is no problem with having a brand image, on the contrary, I think that is what most designers should aspire to, but the latest Jacquemus collections all look very similar. If he would have shown his two latest collections on a white backdrop, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. In fact, I think that the shows themselves have been carrying the collections and been the reason to why we remember them. From the blooming lavender field in provence of his last spring collection to the wide landscape of hay outside Paris, those are the reason to why we find the collections so majestic.
If we dissect the spring 2021 collection itself, Simon Porte Jacquemus decided to name the collection “L’amour” after a meeting with dancer Alexander Ekman who’s choreography inspired to him to celebrate love in these times of a pandemic. To me the reference seems vague or at least how it’s reflected in the collection.
The show opened with a white footlength dress with spaghetti straps and straps going across the model’s decolletage and onto the arms.
After that followed two other white looks, one mini dress and a look made of a white short sleeved shirt with a maxi skirt.
Neither of the two first looks seems to fit very well and if you watch the show you can see how the straps on the dress bounce while the model is walking. Then followed a menswear look with ceramic forks and knives sewn onto a light yellow blazer and matching pants, which I think is an interesting design choice.
Jacquemus seem to have been going for an oversized silhouette with his menswear looks, but the problem is that the looks doesn't seem to have been designed oversized, instead they just look poorly fitted. I also find a lot of the pieces over designed, for example look 38 which just leads to the garments looking weird.
There were still looks that I found nice, for example look 3, 7, 10, 18 and 20. They had interesting design aspects like the buttons of the skirts being opened which showed an asymmetrical slit. The color palette of the collection was very nice, muted oranges and yellows, black, clay and white.
