As you're hopefully aware, Lemaire's second collaboration with Uniqlo hit stores on Friday, and once again, design duo Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran appealed to the aspiring French minimalist in all of us with a range of lightweight, preppy knits and sleek linens inspired by summer vacation and French new wave cinema.
To celebrate their deuxième collection launch, the enviably chic couple held court at the Uniqlo store in Paris's Marais neighborhood on Thursday night, just 24 hours after presenting their own fall 2016 collection as part of Paris Fashion Week (which is going on right now if you guys didn't know). Before buying just about all that was left in stock at the private shopping event, we chatted with the designers-slash-Yeezy fans about what inspires their untouchably cool aesthetic, the secret to that specifically French insouciant way of wearing casual clothes — and why we Americans shouldn't bother trying to attain it — and the very unique way they instructed the models to walk at their runway show. Read on for their responses, which we suggest trying to read with a French accent.
Aside from it being for spring weather rather than fall weather, how did the preparation for this collection differ from the first one?
Christophe Lemaire: Summer is not easy because you just want good shirts, good pants. We started from the style of our summer vacation. Very much inspired by some new age movies, some French '60s movies. This feeling of stylish but very easy, effortless, so it was very much about looking for good textures of cotton. Oxfords, washed poplins. And the colors were very much inspired by these specific movies. These burnt yellows.
Sarah-Linh Tran: Faded colors.
What inspires your design process in general? Is it a lot of movies and things like that, or do you think about what you and the people you know want to wear?
CL: Both. We start from reality because we are interested in creating good clothes. We're interested in the intimate relationship we have with clothes. So it starts from very concrete things: what we need everyday to wear, what we'd like to have in our wardrobes, the functionality of it, how to improve the comfort. But then you need to bring a little bit of a dream. So that's always the balance: between dream and reality.
Do you feel that the clothes you design are very specifically French-inspired? I feel like the French — and your brand specifically — have a way of doing casual clothes in a very chic way that you don't see anywhere else.
ST: The French are really thoughtless and chic at the same time. They never do too much. And I think they have this good balance of dressing. It's more about the personality and the gesture and the intelligence, for example, than having the proper clothes at the right time. So it's good if you feel that.
So it's about thinking less?
CL: And I think really good design is very difficult to capture. That's why it's very difficult to be.... To kind of pretend being someone that you aren't. And I think it's the roots [of the French]. The cultural roots are important. But we're not very conscious of that.
