Showing at Versailles, Simon Porte Jacquemus returned to his home turf with poplin volumes, bobbin-woven tulle, and fruits and vegetable-inspired jewels.
With “Le Paysan” (The Peasant) for Spring 2026, Simon Porte Jacquemus turned Versailles into a snapshot of the French countryside. Showing in l’Orangerie on the final day of the men’s calendar, the designer laid out an autobiographical map: family albums, harvest snapshots, and Sunday-pressed cotton guided the collection’s route.
The line paired rustic memory with precise construction. For women, poplin skirts spun into circles, squares, triangles, and calissons, their edges scalloped like heirloom tablecloths. Aprons in inverted tulle and jackets built around inner half-corsets treated workwear as ceremony. A billowing bobbin-woven tulle dress consumed 700 meters of cord, while a sheer mousseline sheath held a lattice of silk-taffeta diamonds. As airy as a countryside dawn, yet plotted with the rigor of a Parisian pattern-cutting class.
Menswear centered on cropped jackets and wide-legged trousers worn with unstudied ease. Jackets ranged from warm leather lined in shearling to ultra-fine versions, while trousers in herringbone summer linen carried top-stitched stripes. Every piece bore the new Jacquemus label, and espadrilles, classic slip-ons or mules, were secured with wide grosgrain ribbons wrapped around the calves.
Accessories kept the market in view. Metal green-bean bangles, leather leeks, and garlic garlands offered pop-art produce, while raffia “Le Turismo” totes and rosemary-patterned “La Pochette Salon” nodded to village stalls. The debut “Le Valerie” bag, named for Jacquemus’s mother, bore Versailles polish yet latched with a simple ring.
Color moved from milky white and cream to sugared-almond pink, blue, and yellow. Between looks, kerchiefs, berets, and Arlésienne shawls flashed Frenchness, like postcards shuffled into a family scrapbook.
“I want to create an autobiographical journey for June: one that begins in the countryside, soft and minimal, with linen as the foundation. From there, it gradually transforms, blossoming into an explosion of bonbon hues, stripes, embroidery, and prints. Various colors emerge, all connected, culminating in a look that is totally couture,” Simon wrote on Instagram.
Jacquemus’ Spring/Summer 2026 show felt like a return home, sewn from personal memories and the quiet certainty that comes from knowing precisely where you began.
