“C’est le sud, bébé,” said Christelle Kocher with a degree of French swagger that, alas, doesn’t quite translate when saying, “It’s the south, baby.” Tonight, as the sun approached magic hour on the Mediterranean horizon, the designer had every reason to feel buoyant. She successfully transported her collection from Paris to Marseille, where the upper deck of a hulking ferry became a runway for street-cast locals, non-model collaborators, and friends. Let Chanel go overboard with its ship simulacrum in the Grand Palais; here, hundreds of guests boarded the operational Corsica Linea ship that had unloaded passengers from Tunisia just hours earlier. Its name, Danielle Casanova, honors a French Communist resistance fighter who died at Auschwitz. What the venue lacked in luxe, it delivered in absolute authenticity, and anyone who follows Koché knows that this has been the brand’s raison d’être since the start.
Indeed, four years ago, Kocher’s first show played out like a fashion flash mob within the subterranean atrium of the formerly neglected (now newly renovated!) Les Halles shopping center. The spontaneity was thrilling, especially since her streetwear vibe was enhanced with couture-level surface detail. Ever since, she has advanced impressively in achievements and visibility, recently presiding over the accessories jury at the Festival d’Hyères, followed up by this carte blanche invitation from La Maison Mode Méditerranée and its corresponding OpenMyMed initiative, which provided support for both the show and corresponding art installations that Kocher organized with curator Anissa Touati. Editors took an early tour of the programming, which is spread out across several venues in the old port part of town and features a roster of international artists. Independent of the collection, it showed another dimension to her approach—think: ready-to-wear meets ready-made.
And much the same way Kocher has merged the inescapable chic of Paris with its diversity and subcultures, she clearly considered Marseille’s old romanticism and ongoing melting-pot grit when tackling the clothes: traces of Delacroix and Rimbaud overlaid with what she likened to a Miami–meets–New Orleans vibe. “There are all these references to other cultures, but it’s not referential,” she explained. Accordingly, the show opened with a black jacket featuring lace trim that nodded to traditional southern French attire, giving way to a perforated jersey djellaba, a color-blocked K-Way dress, tattoo-like Swarovski motifs on second-skin bodysuits, and Arte Povera–style patchwork wool sweaters (Koché also receives support from the Woolmark Company). In subtle and glaringly vibrant ways, she was recontextualizing the artisanal aspects of her otherwise accessible clothes. Aided by reggaeton and Afrobeat, the energy was great.
And then a ship staffer emerged alongside a non-model who carried a single look on a hanger. Similar duos followed. On the hangers were pieces from previous Koché collections (the non-models’ T-shirts indicated which season). Amid this mini retrospective occurred a thought: Quite possibly, the brand is filling the void left by Riccardo Tisci’s Givenchy aesthetic—granted, he dealt in dark whereas Kocher described her postshow emotions as “joyous.” But the Naples native was constantly mining his own sud. It must be something about the mixité, as the French say. Like Marseille itself, these clothes embodied that description with gusto.
