Office wear. Skiwear. Guillaume Henry threaded the two together. He had the idea that for the workers headed to La Défense, Paris' office-towered business district, the winter-morning commute wasn't so different from heading up the mountain. What's the Métro but a kind of underground chairlift, delivering the frigid multitude to the day's precipitous drop?
The Carven guy, long a little-brother type, is growing up, going to work. Carven is growing, too: The Saint-Germain-des-Prés space where Henry staged his first Paris runway show is the label's new office, no doubt part of the reason Henry had work spaces on the brain, and kitted out his runway with a retro fifties office set.
There was cause to wonder, though, if the Carven guy is growing faster than his clothes. His suit pants tended to end just below the knee, in a length you could only call capri. Henry explained that this was a traditional ski-pant length in the fifties—they'd be worn with high, woolen socks—which itself made a kind of cosmic sense, as Carven's first heyday was in that decade. That's a long story for a short pant, which felt a bit excruciatingly cute. Jackets, in contrast, were given a more mature shape than they've had in seasons past. They remain affordable and easily wearable, which is to say, safely in the Carven sweet spot. Joining them there were ski-slope Fair Isle sweaters, fuzzy and fizzy with the addition of mohair.
