Cacharel is the perky mademoiselle of French fashion, with roots in the Seventies ready-to-wear revolution that made snappy style affordable and available for the fillies in the street. Suzanne Clements and Inacio Ribeiro, enthusiastic believers in upholding Cacharel's value-for-money tradition, are happy to play with the pretty prints and neat separates that made the house's reputation.
For fall, they called on Celia Birtwell, the printmaker who worked with (and was married to) designer Ossie Clark in the Seventies, to create some designs for Cacharel. And from her front-row seat at the show, Birtwell watched her handiwork go by: hand-drawn leaves, flowers and cameo doodles ornamented high-waisted Ossie-like fluted dresses, silky skirts, trenches and blouses. Those were interspersed with jeans, glazed cotton bombers and little sixties-style velvet double-breasted suits trimmed with denim. Afterward, Birtwell said she thought the prints "looked rather good." Clements, for her part, said working in an Ossie Clark aesthetic was a dream come true. "When I was seven, I saw Ossie in Camden market and asked him for a job," she said. "He was wearing a yellow cape covered in bells and carrying a King Charles spaniel. If I'd been old enough, I'd have been a total Ossie girl."
