White noise quiet at Lemaire's SS27 show A collection that brings nature into the city summer
Everyone spending the summer in the sweltering heat of the city dreams of the peace and quiet of nature. Among them is Lemaire, who for its SS27 show brought a vast wooden runway inside the Opéra Bastille in Paris and presented the collection (to the relief of everyone in attendance, we imagine) in a semi-darkness. Central to the experience was a soundtrack made of pure white noise: birdsong, footsteps, the murmur of a café, a phone call, falling rain. A sonic backdrop evoking an idyllic, rainy yet distant nature, which also served as a diegetic stage and background with which the models interacted — now lifting their faces, now pulling a hood down over their eyes, as though walking through a scene that could only be imagined.
The tone of the show was sober, calm, verging on melancholic, like a rainy day in summer spent in the city. And indeed, the spring season the clothes spoke of was unfolding neither on the beach nor in the mountains, but among buildings and pavements. Serious, sometimes hurried, sometimes reflective, the models moved down the runway as though heading to work or strolling through a park, wearing blazers and trench coats in shades of grey, dark browns, and light or pale garments with loose, nonchalant proportions.
The white noise surrounding them spoke not only of the real-world context in which the clothes belong, but also of that practical spirit — always keeping wearability in focus alongside concept — that is so characteristic of Lemaire's work. The sense of heat and summer was evoked indirectly through Asian-inspired constructions: wrap shirts inspired by Japanese yukata, mandarin-collar jackets, nature-themed prints by artist Claudine Wick. Elsewhere, jeans were treated to simulate tree bark, jewellery took the form of pine cones and tobacco pouches, and transparent layers in both organic materials such as cotton voile and synthetic ones such as nylon blurred the boundaries between tailoring and sportswear.
The summer the duo of designers behind the brand had in mind was perhaps closer to that of Olivier Assayas films like Late August, Early September or Cold Water than to those of Éric Rohmer — equally pensive, but far more colourful and luminous. A season that feels almost more northern despite its references to tropical tailoring, in which blouses resemble oversized anoraks with dropped waists, in which garments drape rather than cling or reveal, in which the freedom of flip-flops in the city is paired with the never-overbearing protection of a simple canvas jacket. It is a sense of summer that is authentic and never picture-postcard, where the only concession to a knowing self-satisfaction lies in the unexpected clip holding a sleeve aloft, the details of a trench coat's lining, the soft, pliable quality of a bag.
The sense of quiet confidence that emanates from the collection and its staging comes precisely from the fact that the summery themes being evoked are found more at the deep level of the garments' construction than on the surface, as mere superficial messaging. Like the tailored pieces in shantung, the intimate ease of summer is conjured through implicit sensations rather than explicit declarations. Nor can one speak of the kind of haughtiness that usually comes with the feeling of being cooler than everyone else — something the designers had explored in a taut and brilliant way throughout their 2024 collections — so much as a sense of calm and composure, of equanimity. And equanimity is exactly what you need when you spend a summer in the city.
