Mr. Frenchman

While ideas swirl between two puffs of a cigarette, while the smoky air is further clouded by the appearance of feline silhouettes, a glass of Sancerre supposed to irrigate the imagination exhales, and a sheet of paper stands ready to receive the frank outline of Monsieur le Fran√ßais. Dispensing with criteria as with decorum, his criterion here constructs a garter belt grabbing the battling desires, here sketches a lace strap taking its attachments from the nape of the neck to the waist: " Every time I draw, it is without worrying about the frame, without any concern. We then work to know if it is technically feasible. It is sometimes difficult to grasp, but no matter the risk or the counterpart, I have always chosen to do what I wanted. ¬ª Whether he emphasizes the small of the back or highlights the mound of the breasts, whether he catches hearts with a catsuit that lets fantasies run wild or brings bodies together with fanciful handcuffs, Monsieur le Fran√ßais delivers his creations with the hope of exalting sight and touch.

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Even if this open invitation to frolic and jubilation is for some where the shoe pinches, its sketches will always go beyond the simple aim of debauchery. Son of a protester, Monsieur le Fran√ßais has less intention of summarizing femininities by their power of seduction than of allowing them to assume themselves with the incandescence of the claim: "I want my clothes to have an emotional impact. They are made for women who do not fit the Barbie doll model, who are free, autonomous, women who are not constrained. They are an armor that allows one to assert oneself, and serve the art of living one's femininity. Each model carries within it a state of mind: it is difficult, moreover, to choose a Maison Close piece at random."

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Monsieur le Fran√ßais imprints on lingerie a nostalgia for an era that will remain forever unknown to him. The twenties and their sulphurous madness, this old-fashioned signature and its strippers, the roguish charm and the paname of the brothels, their worldly artists from Cocteau to Bernhardt, and so many women portrayed as icons adorned by Alfons Mucha's posters. The geometry and precision of Art Deco become the framework of an old school structure, a design that ignores approximation and excess, as Maison Close consorts with underwear that has a prominent, clean and clear cutout as its base.

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But it was in a more recent era that Monsieur le Fran√ßais went to find his devastating muse. With his deep voice, his Mugler and Saint-Laurent suits, his instinct for beauty and elegance, his aunt marked in him some explosive canons; a gift of the gab that he immortalizes today in a black and white as elegiac as it is captivating: "Photography is like a window in a wall, it makes you dream of a slightly distorted reality. It is this phantasmagorical writing that I pursue with my collections." A freedom in gesture as in speech that the founder decides to melt into a motto, he who never ceases to thwart propriety and to follow ways that are often criticized: too dissipated, not square enough.

And if he has rectified this last point to the point of abstaining from diplomatic roundness, if he is sparing with words when the time comes to expand in society on the activity of the one he created ‚Äì "I don't like to repeat myself, I sometimes want people to understand me without me having to speak" ‚Äì, he will always favor the material of the dreamer over revered careers. Thus the kid in the moon, who never knew how to learn by heart, will prefer to work with it, to become this craftsman of the senses who teases decency: "I like to play with surprise and transparency, I like to show what we used to hide, to create erotic lingerie linked to a playful and jovial sexuality. Maison Close embodies this France inseparable from sensory pleasure." An appreciation of a bon vivant typical of his homeland that invariably brings him back to a few organoleptic challenges.

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So the gentleman does not sulk at these clich√©s that make him the perfect Frenchman. Of those who drown time in a cup of coffee on a terrace, of those who feed themselves, enjoy and cultivate the joy of complicating everything - "that makes us fascinating, and quite detestable, too." The gentleman Frenchman certainly boasts of this trait of arrogance that founds the perimeter of the Hexagon, his adventurous childhood also finds an echo in his international activities; it has breathed into him models of reflection that go beyond his C√¥te d'Azur anchorage by means of other parallels and meridians.

Starting with this journey, the first of a long series, which took him across Eastern Europe to the far reaches of Bulgaria ‚Äì ‚Äúmy parents were hippies who raised us the hard way. We would go out in cars and camp wherever we could. By the time I was fourteen, I had seen twenty-six countries. And I‚Äôm adding them to the ones I regularly visit today.‚Äù First there were the shop windows displaying Maison Close right in the middle of London, and this boutique stuck in New York, on one of the corners of SoHo ‚Äì where the crowds abound. Then there is this developed weakness for cosmopolitan Hong Kong, and the certainty that Monsieur le Fran√ßais never establishes himself better than by mopping up all the inclinations of this world.

And as proof, the craftsman-entrepreneur is the fruit of an emigrant ancestry from Poland and Italy. If the details of this heritage built in the din of History have been hidden in the folds of memory, he knows that he owes the origin of his nickname to his grandmothers, who came from other lands ‚Äì ‚Äúit was a particular challenge for them to have to integrate, for their children to fully integrate into French culture. They always refused to talk about their past and their own culture; it is something hard that I know nothing about, but that I feel is present. It is this lack of foundation that gives me the desire to build.‚Äù

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Before setting himself up as a shadowy host, before Maison Close tamed his thoughts like a newly hatched affair ‚Äì "this activity is my dancer!" ‚Äì the aesthete had to be resourceful in order to finally exercise this love of art. Because since that head-in-the-mud stumble that only drew from his father an injunction to get back on his feet, the lesson was quickly learned: "You fall, you get back up." To the incessant moves, the prohibitions of a boarding school nestled in the C√©vennes, the student hassles and the omens of a future in trouble, he responded with emotion and inventiveness. Whether it was boats, soapboxes or other bicycle springboards, the great escape and the loopholes had the gift of preceding the ardor of work and homework: "These moments were and still are a little honey-sweetened candy against a sore throat." Speed ‚Äã‚Äãin the blood and the quest for gasoline helped him to vibrate without braking, driven by this impatience now well inscribed in the genes of his eldest son: "Even if I am beginning to understand La Fontaine's turtle, to get there, I tend to want to rush."

In the rush to find his place on the market, the eternal autodidact took a training in applied arts so that his imagination would ensure that he would be employed. The odd jobs that saw summers pass by behind the cash register of a gas station, and the hours spent scratching with a razor the architect's plans that he would have liked to create himself, accompanied a very busy daily life: photography, vinyls, books and desperate loves. The great years of advertising, those of Tapie and S√©gu√©la, of rigged calls for tenders and the proper pressing of DAs, swept away all the efforts of the creative for a decade. Going from freelance to the management of his own agency, the penciler of yesterday sketched solid identities for the big companies, aware of gradually letting his own sink: "I had my brain on the stove every day. We worked twenty-four hours a day, on all subjects. It was as tiring as it was enriching. I ended up throwing everything away after understanding that networking and belonging to a school of thought often counted more than talent."

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In the wake of this surge and an Anglo-Saxon meeting, the rediscovered joy of the designer emerged, who, in a flash of lucidity, designed a first object of lubricity as soon as it was industrialized: "I was overwhelmed by an instant success, it overwhelmed me!" The arrival in this universe, whose taboo still served as a base at the beginning of the twenty-first century, did not fail to astound the idealist's entourage: "I didn't care about the reluctance! Maison Close was born by accident; basically, it was a way to have fun. I designed the first collection to accompany the accessories and I learned styling on the job. Afterwards, the specialized press got excited and I wanted to do things seriously, even if deep down it is not a serious activity, because I do not make essential products. It remains pleasure, pure pleasure! ¬ª

The creator could not conceive of an existence where emotion would only be expressed in half-tones, where he could not abandon his moods for the time of an embrace. In addition to museum and film strolls, romantic and gothic impulses, riding uniforms, military outfits, flirting with the eighties and fluorescent mood, in addition to Gainsbourg's nonchalance and sensitive texts, Monsieur le Fran√ßais finds inspiration in stories that he goes through as an unrepentant sentimentalist - "I hate not being in love." These stories have the gift of carrying him to the height of bliss as well as darkening him in the most fertile of melancholies, the very ones that promise that from a thunderbolt or a breakup new seams can emerge: "I am on a permanent drip. I gather, I gather, and then comes the moment when I press and filter everything I have seen, heard and experienced."

And despite his enchantment with the increased genre's necklines, modesty always ends up winning over the one who cannot bare himself with the same ease as his yokes come undone. A desire for exile and discretion that chips away at the label of the irreverent keeper, the licentious outrageous that a hasty judgment would willingly stick on him. Because there are hardly any muses and friends, moments with his two urchins, who could unlock this intimacy within which Monsieur le Fran√ßais blossoms under Nicolas' lines. For the moment - and only for this moment - the underside takes over, like this culture of confidentiality that sealed the doors of Maison Close, and enjoined Nicolas to fade away under the profile of Monsieur le Fran√ßais.