A Little Bad Taste by the Sea

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/fashion/jacquemus-paris-mens-fashion-week.html

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If France Tourism needs a new spokesman, it could do worse than Simon Porte Jacquemus. Even in our age of global fashion, global communication, global everything, he maintains the earthy terroir of his motherland. For his new men’s collection, he bypassed Paris Fashion Week, where he shows his women’s wear, and headed down to Marseille, on the Mediterranean coast.

Mr. Porte Jacquemus is a Provençal, from Mallemort, an hour outside of Marseille — “a nowhere town,” he said, “really nowhere.” But when he began designing for men, he loved the ideal of a Mediterranean man, and where better to place one? He secured the scenic beach of the Calanque de Sormiou, a national park in Marseille, and off he went.

The guys that crowd the coastal beaches are not necessarily fashion types. But fashion types are not necessarily what appeal to Mr. Porte Jacquemus, at least where men’s wear is concerned. He preferred the gritty reality of a little bad taste.

“I really love to have those bad taste things,” he said — the kitschy sunflower print, the coordinated tracksuits, the neckties (on the beach, no less!).

The Jacquemus women’s collection began from a place of almost unbelievable naïveté; over the years, he has transformed his childlike innocent into a kind of bourgeoise sexpot.

His men’s wear likewise will have a journey to make from innocence to experience. But for the moment, he is committed to keeping it affordable, relative to his designer peers, and the Canadian retailer SSENSE has committed to introducing it online in August.

He called the collection “Le Gadjo,” Romani slang, common in the South of France, where it is shorthand, more or less, for “dude.” Which meant that to show it he needed to find some. Let us stipulate that manliness does not require any particular concentration of hair, but for Mr. Porte Jacquemus, a thatch was to be desired. But he had to live with what he could find.

“There’s no hair in the industry,” he said. “I really texted all the agencies, saying, ‘Please, do you have some hair?’ I even talked to my rugby player friends, and even in the rugby, there is no hair anymore. I did an investigation through Paris. Next time I’m going to go on Grindr.”