Porte Jacquemus prides himself on being a savvy storyteller, and he’s especially well-versed in his own narrative. The new store, he argues, carries a deep significance that transcends commerce. “Being here for five minutes, I’ve been stopped by everyone, like, ‘Oh my God. We can’t wait for the opening,’ ” he says. That’s because, as he puts it, “It’s not just an opening…. They’re following a person who is making his dreams come true.”
Perhaps, I point out, the United States has embraced his very French brand because in a way he represents an American story of self-made success. “Yes, it’s Ralph Lauren,” he replies, adding, “I was working in the grand magasin in Paris when I was 18 years old, so yeah, it’s totally that.” (Lauren famously sold his ties at Bloomingdale’s in the early days.) “The sales assistant who became the boss of his [own] company. For an American, it’s refreshing, I think.”
BUREAU BETAK COURTESY OF JACQUEMUS
The comparison might strike some as overripe, but as Ralph Lauren embodied the essence of his time, Porte Jacquemus just might embody something about our image-obsessed age. There’s the fact that he’s got rugby player limbs and a poreless, leading-man face. With the photogenic quality comes a charisma so strong that it jumps off a screen and can overwhelm in person. The stylist and editor Mel Ottenberg can clearly recall his introduction to Porte Jacquemus at a Paris showroom around the time of the brand’s first show. “I remember being like, Oh my God, you’re a famous fashion designer. You’re going to become really famous and successful. He had the bravado and the charm and the looks, and there was a language to the clothes that is still there. It was easy to walk in and see the full picture.” In Capri, a model who frequently works with the brand put it to me more bluntly: “It’s easy to forget when you’re a model, but Simon is hot.”
Today, Porte Jacquemus is wearing a blindingly white T-shirt, faded green jeans, white Top-Siders, and dark Wayfarers. In a blazer and tie, I look like I’m here to make sure the construction is up to code; he looks like he’s having lunch at Le Club 55. Though he’s much less eccentric than many famous fashion designers, his worship of the star at the center of our solar system is almost religious. At one point, he turns his face to the sky and the early-fall rays sparkle on his perpetually high-August tan. “Ugh, I am dreaming,” he whispers, exhaling like a meditation app narrator. In April 2024 he and husband Marco Maestri welcomed baby twins named Mia and, you guessed it, Sun.
I ask about his summer. I can only assume it was a perfect collision of boats and beaches and striped towels and Speedos, an endless wave of leisure, an embodiment of the brand’s luxury aspiration: a life as sexy as it is simple, surrounded by beautiful people and things.
To my surprise, Porte Jacquemus couldn’t be more excited that the leaves are on the cusp of changing. “It was quite a long summer,” he says, sighing. It turns out that he bristles at the notion, not exactly refuted by the brand image he’s carefully built, that he’s perpetually on holiday: “I love working, so I was quite bored. I prefer a long weekend to a long vacation.” This apparently does not apply to his friends, who packed the house in the South of France he shares with Maestri and their twins. At one point, they had 19 guests, and there was a lunch where Porte Jacquemus asked the table who was planning to leave that day. He mimics a large group of French people hemming and hawing and avoiding eye contact. “I’m like, ‘Please, guys, I can’t organize the cucumber salad for all of you!’ ” When people enter the world of Jacquemus, they don’t often want to leave.
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