This past summer, French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus took to his ever-familiar rural runway to debut his summer 2021 Jacquemus collection. The creative director of his namesake brand thrives on neutral and muted tones. Showing a collection a year in advance is not typical for a major fashion house. Many would argue that a collection preview that early would be forgotten with time. In celebration of SS21 fashion week, Jacquemus released photos of the clothes to build up anticipation for the summer 2021 collection.
Lauded for its knit work, oversized silhouettes and undersized purses, the Jacquemus brand has garnered mass appeal from stylish celebs like the Kardashians, the Jenners and the Hadids. For the SS21 show, models strolled through a field of wheat as though they were ready to harvest crops for the family farm. For its 10th anniversary, the brand reprised much of what has made it famous — the neutral tones and understated colors, showing skin, high-waisted pants and skirts as well as a balance between masculine and feminine womenswear.
With ‘L’amour’ as the title of the collection, Simon is declaring summer 2021 to be the summer of love. As part of a promotion for the upcoming collection, Jacquemus released a series of editorialized social media posts showcasing couples being affectionate with their significant others and wearing Jacquemus. The brief campaign attracted attention on social media gaining a decent amount of engagement for its classic vintage aesthetic and diverse representation in ethnicity and sexuality. Strategically used sex appeal has become something of a trademark for the very modern and liberated brand. “As an idea for this collection, L’Amour began as something different. I imagined people gathered together celebrating love … what’s so beautiful about L’Amour is how it can endure—sometimes even grow stronger—in the absence of people being together,” Jacquemus writes on Instagram.
For the ‘L’amour’ social media campaign, Simon went a provocative route, choosing to showcase many same-sex couples in overtly sexual photos. Some of the couples are pictured without tops, without pants or just in their underwear. Male and female models wear Jacquemus jeans in both khaki, black and botticelli blue checkerboard. Knit suits and bralettes are featured among the women, while casual hoodies, shorts of varying lengths are featured among the men. Signature Jacquemus tiny bag necklaces and earrings were in full focus.
Jacquemus is a rather vintage brand doing something on the edgier side; we don’t often see this kind of representation in high-fashion, specifically black lesbian love is almost never seen in media. Simon, who affectionately posts pictures with his boyfriend on social media often, is making a statement in showing off his upcoming collection: all love deserves to not only be recognized, but celebrated.