Unveiling the Genius
In a world where realism and practicality seem to reign supreme, someone is sharply showing us all a different interpretation of life. Playful, magical, or simply surreal.
Jacquemus “Les Sculptures”, S/S 2024
We all ended up loving Jacquemus. We all fell in love with the talent of a young designer who named the brand after his mother. The undeniable genius of Simon Porte Jacquemus, in 2012, officially became the youngest designer to ever present his fashion at Paris Fashion Week. And let’s not forget about 2015, when he received the LVMH Prize. His curriculum is a tornado of positive air, making us realize the importance of believing in ourselves and our dreams—and working hard to achieve them. If you knew the brand even just a little bit, you’d surely know that Jacquemus is Simon. And Simon is Jacquemus. If at first, we didn’t know what the bigger picture would have consisted of, today we may have a clue where to look. We realize that they are the two faces of the same coin. They are nothing without each other. And this is the first step to understanding the success of their story.
Symbiosis.
Nobody can be sure if this is merely a well-constructed branding strategy or if it is simply the way things are. But, it remains unquestionable the parallelism of characters shown by both the label and the designer via socials. If someone took the username off the screen, we honestly wouldn’t be able to distinguish the two profiles. Similar in color palette. Identical in the abstractism of the images’ selection. It almost feels like being in a contemporary museum, where you don’t necessarily get what you’re seeing. But you’d sure as hell love it. Here and there, out of the blue, you have Simon Jacquemus taking a selfie while eating watermelon on a boat or posting himself while in the elevator in a perfectly boomer-style snap. You suddenly have the feeling that it’s the same song you’re listening to. No discrepancies. Just a meticulous detail-oriented painting where the details concur to create a beautiful and carefree world.
Simon Porte Jacquemus, IG
Virality & Social Media.
I’m not quite sure if you’ve ever been in a conversation centered on Instagram’s obsolescence. For me, it’s not the first time I heard someone forecasting IG’s imminent downfall. They’re obviously not so wrong in the matter, due to the non-stop oversaturation the platform has reached in the most recent times. Making yourself known to the world has become quite challenging. A crazy competition and the risk of falling into an ocean of shadows can be quite scary. But there’s a but. But if that were true, how would it be possible to still witness specific cases of brands and personalities not only being able to stay afloat but even turning their presence into real successful empires? Well, why don’t we ask Jacquemus? The brand has intercepted the formula to crack the code. On a platform where normality is definitely not the winning factor, Jacquemus has developed a strategy based on uniqueness and strangeness. What do they equal to? Virality. The key to not only staying in the game but to winning the competition is represented by a simple element—that yes, someone could say that it’s easy to say, but not so much to accomplish: stay in people’s mouths by making word of mouth the ace up your sleeve. Sure, tastes are tastes. But no one can avoid the gripping effect of a buzzing impetuosity that will make people talk until the end of our existence. Sometimes, the best way to be noticed is to think outside the box and make bold moves. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. And it seems like Jacquemus has quite the curriculum in this field. If we were to tell someone not of this world, that one day while passing by on the streets we saw giant bags on wheels moving around just like cars would do? Would it be feasible to believe? Well, it should because it actually happened. In April 2023, the brand posted an 8-second IG clip of its Bambino bags cruising the streets of Paris. The internet was shocked. There was quite a feeling of doubt on whether they were real or not. But regardless of the physical existence of that event, Jacquemus had the world talking and wondering. By using digital installations as settings of vivid performances, the brand played around with several themes such as surrealism, magic, and fun. That’s why spotting a giant blow-up version of their Bambino handbag floating in the ocean on the shores of France shouldn’t come as a surprise. And if you were planning on going to the South of Italy this summer—specifically on the Amalfi Coast—watch out for random giant lemons falling down from the sky. Apparently, according to Jacquemus, it could happen. Therefore, what places the brand a notch above the rest, it’s the unpredictability of its actions. With the vision of Simon and his team, you’ll never know what could pop out in your feed on a random day. It could be someone standing on a surfboard and ironing a white shirt, or Simon himself getting into a shouting contest with Gigi Hadid.
Jacquemus IG
Surprise n.1: pop-ups.
As we just said, Jacquemus is all about surprises and entertainment. If from a digital and social point of view, the only way to achieve amazement is to conceive original and bizarre content, when it comes to the real world the music is different. The question should be: how can you translate the same creativity you have for the digital universe into tangible actions to apply to the ground human level? Regardless of the skills you might have, how big of a range of maneuver you’d be allowed to navigate? Once again, what the brand has done clearly sets the exception to the rule. When taking a harmless stroll around a city, there’s no news about the possibility of running into new store openings. Business has demands and looking up and suddenly seeing the sign of our favorite brand in a new spot wouldn’t certainly bring newness to the scene. What if instead of targeting a major business city like Milan or London, the choice fell on a quite rather small town? That’s the case of the pop-up strategy applied by Jacquemus on the occasion of the launch of specific collections. Choosing peculiar locations like Como, Saint-Tropez, Portofino, and Courchevel, tells us so much about the mission and spirit of the brand. By continuing the tour of Europe’s chicest resorts, Jacquemus has strengthened its association with the values of originality, taste, and refinement. But of course, this is not simply a well-constructed set of actions to keep on polishing their public image. It becomes much more than that thanks to the intelligence of the team standing behind. What would cause more chaos and buzz? A pop-up in London or Sanremo? Targeting a major city would make us pass by unobserved and I guess that’s not what we want. Instead, shocking everyone with the opening of a tiny store in a small location would drive the internet crazy. The word of mouth would do the work for us. Our only job would be to arrange the place, the set-up, the price, etc.
The Jacquemus pop-up in Portofino by Adrien Dirand
Surprise n.2: fashion shows.
In the fashion world, social media platforms are certainly your biggest ally. They can literally make you go viral in a matter of seconds. If you’re creative, well, that helps. But before even thinking about leveraging their power for your strategies, there has to be something at the base. Nothing will ever come out of nothing. There has to be a sort of effort and dedication put into the research and development of content—and especially one that reflects the values of a brand. As we outlined before, doing a good job in the digital world is not enough. The physical reality wants its part in it. People need to be able to touch you. Feel you. They need to conceive an authentic and tangible idea of what you are. That’s why everybody in fashion knows that if you ever got the famous 15 minutes of fame of Andy Warhol, well, that would happen at a fashion show. A moment where all eyes will be set on you only. A chance to represent the philosophy and vision of your design culture, going further than what the simple clothes suggest. And if you can make those 15 minutes unforgettable as well, that’s even better. If anyone should hold a university class on how to be remembered in people’s minds, that would be Jacquemus. As far as our memory goes back in time, there are at least 10 times the French brand has literally enchanted everyone around. Let’s start from 2020, Spring/Summer. On the occasion of the brand's 10th anniversary, the designer decided to stage his Le Coup de Soleil show amongst beautiful lavender fields in full bloom. What better way to create a noteworthy contrast than making models walk down a hot pink runway, conceiving an opera of captivating beauty.
Le Coup de Soleil show, S/S 2020, by Arnold Jerocki
In 2022, for the Fall/Winter collection, Simon Jacquemus chose France, again, to host one of his most iconic shows ever. If while watching the runway, you thought for even just a second that everything was set outside planet Earth, you weren’t the only one. The precision and care put into selecting a location of this caliber, easily translated into a feeling of extraterrestrial poetic minimalism. Entitled Le Papier and staged on the scenic salt marshes of Aigues-Mortes in southern France, the show showcased models walking down in fluid, and white-toned clothes.
Le Papier show, F/W 2022, Getty Images
Whoever of you thought that fashion shows had to be practical, placed in locations of easy access, it means you never met Simon Jacquemus. For the Spring/Summer 2024, he took the concept of the fashion show—already elitist—up a notch. If in the current imaginary, it is associated with a certain degree of exclusivity and inaccessibility, well, the team this time took the definition literally. Located on the most extreme east coast of Capri, at a 32-meter height, Casa Malaparte really does the trick. Under the Mediterranean sunlight, models walked up the villa's redbrick stairs up to a rooftop terrace. There, they were greeted by stunning views of rugged landscapes and the blue sea below, creating a perfect postcard setting worthy of the true Dolce Vita lifestyle.
Capri Show, F/W 2024, by Aissaoui Nacer / Splashnews.com
At this point, after the breakdown of these pillars, what is it that we can extrapolate out of all of this? It’s certainly not the style. The creativity of the design—even though it is extremely relevant to the brand’s success—is mainly subjective. The social appearance, yes, it’s crucial as well—it’s one of the biggest contributing factors that placed Jacquemus on a high pedestal. But no, it’s not even that. What we should absorb as a sponge would do is the attitude. A fearless face-to-face with the entire world. An indisputable indifference toward what other people might think. A certain pride taken in developing a narrative that is not the average one. A fashion show that even though will take longer to arrange, will certainly bring greater and way more memorable results in the long term. A new lens, with which to interpret life, that is rooted in a deep awareness of the close-knit bond between Earth and Digital. A vision that embraces technology with open arms, without ever forgetting about the real-life level we all live at.
