Today, Porte styles himself Simon Porte Jacquemus: a hybrid of man and brand and, conveniently, in French, a promotional pun (“Simon Wears Jacquemus”). And he does wear his wares, not just on runways and red carpets but across the glamorous-seeming daily rhythms of his life. People feel they know him from his 300,000-follower personal Instagram feed (to say nothing of the brand’s much larger but also intimate-seeming account), which functions as one part personal diary, one part global marketing platform, and four parts window display for, as he puts it, “the Jacquemus world.” “The models, the photographers, everything we work with can be very elevated,” Marco Maestri, his husband, a viral marketer who does consulting for the brand, says. “But everyone can feel part of the Jacquemus story.” Designers traditionally present themselves in public as preening demigods or fussy, difficult eccentrics, but neither is the vibe that Porte Jacquemus gives off. He grew up in the South of France and comes across, on his feeds and platforms, as laid-back, sun-drenched, semiamphibious, and buoyed by human charm. An architect I know, also not especially a fashion person, described becoming aware of the brand after being struck, on Instagram, by Porte Jacquemus’s “very impressive chest hair.”
In person, Porte Jacquemus at first seems true to Insta-filtered form. He is of medium height and built like a tumbling gymnast, with a brown brush of beard, a wide toothy smile, and, even in Paris, where he works, the mood of a breezier place. When I meet him for the first time, at Jacquemus’s new 8th arrondissement headquarters (a geometric minimalist building, of his own interior design, with terra-cotta floors and other emblems of the warm French South), he guides me to a private terrace trimmed with lemon trees. “Sometimes I’m here on the terrace, and I’m like, Oh, Simon, enjoy this moment, because you never know what will happen next,” he says, gazing at the trees. At a time when Paris fashion and French fashion are often believed to be interchangeable, the windows of the Place Vendôme standing in for the tastes of a nation, Porte Jacquemus insists on something else. Rather than trading in chic fragrances and powerwear, the label is emblematized by striped beach towels and bags in Jacques Demy hues. Porte Jacquemus is dressed today in a big white T-shirt, black shorts, and lemon yellow Chuck Taylor high-tops, as if himself ready to grab a towel and head—well, where? “Sous les pavés, la plage,” went an old May ’68 slogan: beneath the paving stones, the beach. In Jacquemus’s Paris, one almost believes it’s true.
To produce his first collection in 2009, he bought some yards of fabric and approached the local seamstress—“I said, ‘How much for doing a skirt?’ She was like, ‘A hundred fifty.’ I was like, ‘A hundred, and I’m coming back tomorrow’ ”—and designed his own website, and, voilà!, the brand’s laid-back sparkle was set. For a while, he ran his brand while working at Comme des Garçons—not as a designer but as a salesman, seeing close-up how merchandise connected with shoppers. As his profile rose, Jacquemus and its creator, with their chillaxing mien and swaggering Fauve-print shirts, were described as “himbo”; in caricature, the label is a brand of sun bums, cliff divers, voluptuaries, and the sorts of people who party on boats, with its founder as ringleader: “He’s just so there for a good time and such a free spirit,” says Dua Lipa, one of Porte Jacquemus’s close friends and muses since they met on a French TV show in 2018. “He’s someone I know I can lean on in the everyday—but also on the dance floor.”