Last week, in a vast warehouse on the outskirts of Paris, Simon Porte Jacquemus sent a small child (his cousin, Jean) down a circular runway, pushing a gigantic woven red ball of fabric. This was the beginning of his performative Spring/Summer 2016 runway show – a moving, surrealist vision that had models weaving around the runway in hyper-deconstructed, at times pantless, sometimes one-legged, suit-inspired garments – all while the audience, including members of the general public, sat inside the designer’s day-sleep nightmare. Jacquemus related the presentation back to a season of sickness (the red ball was a red nose) and personal struggles, and the abstract interpretation – complete with the designer himself walking the runway with a regal white horse – lent a gravitas to otherwise characteristically playful clothes. The girls in the show, key to Jacquemus’ creation of Breton-inflected boyswear-for-women, were the sort of independent characters who have come to define his aesthetic.
“I don’t have a focus for one girl,” mused Jacquemus after the show. “If I meet a girl, if I like them, I tell them. I don’t have any rules; it’s instinctive. I say, ‘Oh, she’s good.’ It’s very simple. Reactive." Christian Kjaerulf Praksti of AM Casting, the agency behind the curation of Jacquemus’ singular beauties, echoed the designers’s sentiment. “I think that we were looking for a girl that represented the sort of boyishness that Simon had in this collection, and for a sense of character. Each girl is telling a unique story – and each, in her own way, is almost a piece of Simon. There's something very signature to Simon, which is that he wants a girl to have an underlying quality of intrinsic beauty. Even when a girl is a character, he likes her to be uniquely beautiful." Here, we speak with the girls of the show – some teary-eyed, fresh off the runway – to get a feel for how they captured Jacquemus' S/S16 vision, alongside pre-show portraits by David Luraschi.
Irina Kravchenko
Secret obsession?
Cats! Everything to do with cats...
How do you like to unwind after a long day of shows?
Shiva, meditation and sleep!
Highlight of the season...
When my mom called me. It made me relax and feel like everything was okay again.
Madison Stubbington
Song of the moment?
I like to run to Honey, I’m good by Andy Grammer. Yeah, I like that one. It’s catchy.
Hidden talent?
Well, I don’t know about that, but I spend a lot of my life on Instagram. I follow a lot of food accounts, because I like to cook.
Highlight of the season...
I've gotten to be a part of so many great shows; I can’t really pick one. I guess it's all pretty up there in terms of life experiences...
Mona Matsuoka
Your current earworm?
I’ve been listening to The Weeknd so much, but I’m going to say my song right now is The Model by Kraftwerk.
Secret obsession?
Singing! I’ve been doing voice training recently; I love music.
How do you like to unwind after a long day of shows?
By seeing someone I really truly love as a person and just hanging out, bitching about things and talking about stuff.
Julee Huang
Song of the moment?
The Hills by The Weeknd.
What can't you leave the house without?
Cardigans. Yeah, because I like to stay warm.
Hidden talent?
Volleyball... but I can also juggle!
