Who Isabel Marant
Where Left Bank boutique in Paris
What A daring approach to fashion, discarding the overtly feminine
Why Marant clothes may not be photographed for glossy magazine fashion spreads, but she has gained a cult status for her streetwise combination of mixing elegant and casual.
www.isabelmarant.tm.fr
Season after season designers scour the Earth for sources of inspiration and for sites to enshrine as the new centre of chic. But no city aspiring to become the "New Paris" ever quite lives up to Paris itself. And few French designers embody effortless Parisian elegance like Isabel Marant.
Marant began her career in fashion as a model, and graduated to become a director at the prestigious Elite Modelling Agency. It was in 1985 that she attended Studio Berçot fashion school in Paris before then working with French sportswear designer Michel Klein during the late 1980s, and then Claude Montana and Michael Perry. She finally launched her own label in Paris in 1994 and four years later started a lingerie line, children's collection and an affordable line called Isabel Marant Etoile. Since then, her signature star-shaped logo has adorned the garments of countless chic girls and earned accolades for timeless, café-friendly cool.
Marant's aesthetic tends towards femininity without veering into girly or matronly territory. She has dressed her fans in loosely cut silk python-print trousers, matching tidy checked dresses and jackets, and sheer t-shirts. She often adds charming bohemian touches to her structured cuts, with feather earrings, chain mail scarves and other rock-chick details. But her style is best known for its sophisticated “wearability” and sexy maturity. "Her clothes allow you to do everything all day and still feel pristine," says Paris-based video artist Cecile B. Evans. "She mixes up plaids, ethnic prints, rough materials, all with clean cuts - you never feel busy. She makes me feel gamine and grown-up all at once."
Marant's many fans from around the world are eager to see her expand, and those in the United States will be the first to rejoice when she opens shops in New York and Los Angeles early next year. As a precursor, her current Fall/ Winter 2009 collection was championed by Vogue writers as recession-proof "clothes that girls want to wear." In other words, editors and tastemakers might turn to more experimental looks for new stories, while at the same time they wear Isabel Marant to their editorial meetings. For Parisians, Marant is what Daryl K is to New Yorkers or Preen to Londoners – an essential element of the city's identifying uniform.
