Picture the summer sun filtering through the curtains, the indolence of the heat slowly receding as you wake from a nap.
Although the temperature in Paris started to build up to another heat wave, it was post-siesta energy that Lemaire’s Sarah-Linh Tran and Christophe Lemaire wanted to tap into.
“We feel that today more than ever we have to be awakened and vertical,” Lemaire said backstage.
A first hint of their intention was the live performance of British Italian drummer and composer Valentina Magaletti and Japanese-born musician Susumu Mukai, known professionally as Zongamin, a gently rousing percussion sound that felt and matched the determined stride of the spring’s coed cast of go-getters.
And it’s not just bodies they wanted refreshed. The design duo said they also wanted to expand their breezy playbook in a more sensual and playful direction, trotting out transparencies, fluid textures, bared legs and a dash of color.
Make no mistake, the season wasn’t about floaty poetry despite layered chiffon gowns, boxy lightweight suits with curving sleeves cut from summer-weight wools that draped around the limbs or the first-time use of lace.
The Lemaire crowd remain urbanites with an appetite for brand staples like leather blousons, straight denim and flared pants with a ‘70s British air. They may find a new favorite in cropped harem culottes that came in various fabrications, from fluid and silky to buttery leather.
What the spring also telegraphed was that Lemaire archetypes are by no means limited to uber-Parisian types, much as these have been a bedrock for the brand over the years. Tran and Lemaire cast a global eye, looking to Vietnam’s traditional long áo dài tunic; alluding to the traditional skirts of China’s Miao minority, or nodding to the American West for studded shirts and bolo ties.
Those were the ideas that had guests perk up in the midday heat.