ORANGE APPEAL: Simon Porte Jacquemus is returning to the Château de Versailles for his next fashion show, scheduled for June 29 at the tail end of men’s fashion week in Paris, WWD has learned.
The designer has chosen the Orangerie, which “Sun King” Louis XIV had built to shelter his citrus trees and palms in the winter, as the venue to unveil his fall 2025 collection.
The grandiose stone greenhouse was famously the site of a Dior haute couture show by John Galliano in 2007.
A childhood photo of Simon Porte Jacquemus.
Courtesy of Jacquemus
Jacquemus, who comes from a farming family in the South of France, has made lemons, straw and other pastoral references part of the fabric of his brand.
The designer staged his first show at the famous palace in 2023 that kicked off a brand elevation strategy — and fulfilled a childhood dream. For that runway spectacle, guests were ferried in small rowboats on the Grand Canal to watch models parade puffball shapes on one shore.
The French fashion brand returned to the Versailles palace a second time in 2023 for a dinner hosted by Net-a-porter to fete a Jacquemus eveningwear capsule — and it funded restoration work on the canal’s borders.
“Supporting such an historical French monument through (patronage) means a lot to me, especially to nurture this relationship in the long term as an independent designer,” he said, confessing that he’s been eyeing the Orangerie and “waiting for the right collection to show there.”
“Le Paysan felt like that moment, a collection that tells the story of where I come from, but also where we’re heading,” Jacquemus told WWD. “The Château de Versailles, to me, represents the proof that dreams can come true.”
Jacquemus has been teasing Le Paysan on Instagram, showing clips of ravishing country lanes, a donkey munching carrots, hands busy shelling beans and a boy selling sheafs of wheat at a roadside stand.
“This collection is an homage to my family, my roots, my culture, where I come from,” he wrote. “It’s also where I’m heading, and the dream I’m chasing.”