Jacquemus pour celles qui débutent

The Le Chiquito — a bag the size of a business card, worn crossbody with a strap long enough to trip over — arrived in 2018 and promptly broke the internet. Which is to say: it became a meme, a punchline, a tiny leather monument to irony. It also sold out. That tension, between the absurd and the covetable, is where Jacquemus lives. And if you're just now considering a piece from Simon Porte Jacquemus's house, understanding that tension is half the work.

L'histoire, rapidement

Simon Porte Jacquemus launched his eponymous label in 2009, aged nineteen, with no formal training and a suitcase of prototypes. The name is his mother's maiden name; she died when he was eighteen, and the brand has always carried that biographical weight, even as it pivoted toward sun-drenched optimism. Early collections were spare, conceptual, shown in borrowed spaces. By 2013, he was staging runway shows. By 2015, the press had begun using the word phénomène.

What set Jacquemus apart was not technique — the construction was often rudimentary — but point of view. He showed straw hats the size of café tables. He opened a show with a model in an oversized shirt and nothing else, walking through a field of lavender. He turned the South of France into a brand territory as legible as Chanel's tweed or Hermès's saddlery. In doing so, he managed something rare: he made French fashion feel young again, without the usual Parisian severity.

The house remains independent. Jacquemus owns it outright, produces roughly four collections a year, and has built a business estimated north of €200 million annually. He works fast, pivots faster, and his shows — often staged outdoors, in fields or on salt flats — generate more social content than some heritage maisons manage in a decade. Whether that makes him a genius or a very good marketer is a question the industry has stopped asking. The work does both.

Ce qu'on achète vraiment

If you're entering Jacquemus now, you're entering at a point where the house has settled into a handful of recurring gestures. These are not archival pillars in the Dior sense, but they repeat often enough to constitute a vocabulary.

Le Chiquito remains the house's most recognisable bag, though its practicality is, charitably, limited. It holds a credit card, a lipstick, perhaps a folded twenty-euro note. The current iteration starts around €260 for the micro size, climbing to €490 for the slightly-less-micro version. The bag is not an investment in utility. It is, however, an effective signal — playful, self-aware, unmistakably Jacquemus. If that appeals, fine. If it feels like a joke you're paying to be in on, skip it.

More useful: Le Grand Bambino, the larger sibling, which starts around €590 and can actually carry a phone, wallet, and keys. The shape is clean, the hardware minimal, and the seasonal colours — often drawn from fruit, or beach umbrellas, or some other bit of Mediterranean visual shorthand — tend to photograph well. The leather is decent, though not exceptional. You are not buying Hermès facture here. You are buying a shape and a colour story.

Le Bambino and Le Bisou (a heart-shaped style) occupy a similar price band, €500 to €700, and both read as more whimsical than the Grand Bambino. The Bisou, in particular, requires a certain confidence. It is not a bag that fades into an outfit. If you are the sort of person who enjoys being asked 'Where did you get that?', it will serve you well.

On the ready-to-wear side, Jacquemus has built a reputation around a few recurring silhouettes. La Robe Valensole — a long, bias-cut slip dress in linen or viscose — appears nearly every season, priced between €390 and €590 depending on fabric. It is simple, flattering on a range of bodies, and packs without complaint. If you want one piece that captures the house's aesthetic without requiring explanation, this is it.

The asymmetric tops — one shoulder bare, or a single sleeve trailing past the wrist — are more polarising. They photograph beautifully. They are also fussy to wear, and the construction does not always forgive movement. Priced around €350 to €500, they occupy a strange middle ground: too expensive to feel disposable, not quite special enough to justify the cost on craft alone. You are paying for the line, the idea of the thing. Whether that satisfies depends on how you value design over make.

Knits, when Jacquemus does them, tend to be cropped, ribbed, and priced between €290 and €450. The quality is acceptable — not Loro Piana, not Zara — but the shapes are often more interesting than the yarn itself. A recent cardigan, cut to sit just below the bust with exaggerated sleeves, sold through in three colourways within a week of release. It looked good in photographs. Whether it will hold up over five years is another question.

La question du prix

Jacquemus occupies an awkward position in the market. It is too expensive to be accessible, not quite expensive enough to feel like a true luxury purchase. A Chiquito at €260 costs more than a well-made leather wallet from a heritage goods maker, but less than an entry-level piece from Loewe or Bottega Veneta. You are not buying the same level of material or atelier time. You are buying the design, the association, the fact that it reads as Jacquemus from across a room.

This is not inherently a problem, but it does require clarity about what you want. If you value craft and longevity above all, there are better places to spend €500. If you value a specific aesthetic — one that feels young, irreverent, and very much of this moment — Jacquemus delivers that with unusual consistency.

The house also moves quickly through styles. A bag shape introduced in spring may not return by autumn. This creates a certain urgency, which is by design, but it also means that what you buy now may feel distinctly of 2025 in a way that, say, a Goyard tote does not. Whether that matters depends on how you relate to fashion's calendar.

Où en est la maison maintenant

Jacquemus has spent the past two years expanding beyond clothing and bags. There have been collaborations with Nike, a beauty line, a homeware collection that included €80 linen napkins and a €1,200 ceramic vase. The strategy is recognisable: extend the world, monetise the aesthetic, reach beyond the customer who can afford a €600 bag.

Some of this works. The Nike collaboration — pastel Air Humara sneakers, priced around €160 — sold out within hours and now trades for double that on resale platforms. The beauty line, launched in 2023, offers lip oils and blushes in the house's signature shades (terracotta, coral, a particular dusty pink) for €28 to €38. It is competent, pleasant, and entirely optional.

What has not changed is the core proposition: Jacquemus offers a version of French ease that feels more accessible, more photogenic, and more attuned to social media than most of its peers. The shows remain events. The imagery remains strong. And Simon Porte Jacquemus himself remains the face of the house, appearing in campaigns, narrating the vision, performing a version of the designer-as-character that feels both genuine and carefully managed.

The risk, which the house has not yet confronted, is that this model depends on momentum. The moment a collection feels predictable, or a bag shape stops generating conversation, the spell weakens. Jacquemus has avoided that so far by moving quickly, by staging spectacle, by keeping the press interested. How long that can continue is an open question.

Pour conclure, une image

At the Spring 2024 show, staged in a field of wheat outside Versailles, a model walked out in an ivory linen dress, cut long and loose, with a single exaggerated bow at the shoulder. The dress cost €690. It was beautiful in the way that simple things in good light are beautiful. Behind her, the wheat moved in the wind, and the whole scene looked like an advertisement for a life no one actually lives. Which is, in the end, what Jacquemus sells: not the life, but the advertisement. Whether you want to buy into that is a decision only you can make. But at least now you know the price.