When the world goes disconcertingly haywire, Marie-Christine Statz finds solace in color and working on materiality and light. “We need to find pleasure in what we’re doing every day, in the concrete world of creating clothes, but also by looking at things differently,” the designer said during a visit to her showroom, in a grand Haussmannian apartment opposite the Louvre. “Looking at color helps us express ourselves creatively. Doing an all-black collection wasn’t going to help,” she quipped.
To underscore the theme, Statz structured her space with monumental panes of tinted glass echoing a rich palette of brown, burgundy and smoky grays mingled with accents of ocher yellow or misty blue. For fall, Gauchere leaned into its signature elongated looks, taking cargos into more elevated territory as trousers or high-waisted skirts, paired variously with sleeveless salt-and-pepper cargo jackets or tailored blazers with invisible seam pockets. Statz cuts some of the sharpest, most flattering trousers in town, and here she delivered a number of covetable options, notably in chocolate leather or in khaki with deep pockets, to wear with relaxed cashmeres or tonal ribbed tops and roomy coats in mouliné wool.
The Gauchere philosophy has lately caught the attention of new collaborators near and far. The label has just unveiled a 15-style capsule with the mid-priced Chinese label Mo&Co, for one. And, having designed the costumes for Benjamin Millepied’s hit “Grace: Jeff Buckley Dances”, which premiered in Paris last November, Statz and the star choreographer will reprise their collaboration for another production, this time at the Philharmonie de Paris, later this month.
Like its color palette, this fall collection seemed to represent an evolution by degrees and quarter tones. Here were clothes that looked as reassuring as a favorite pair of jeans, for a customer who wants to look calm and polished even—and especially—when the world weighs heavy on her mind.
