Hands Up: Marie Christine Statz (Gauchère)

She has long lamented that computer mice, scissors and other everyday items were only reserved for right-handed people. “Gauchère” (French for left-handed) was what her model-making teacher called her at the Chambre Syndicale. One pin in the right place, another upside down. One day, in 2013, the nickname became the name of her label. And it is one that Marie Christine Statz manages with a masterful hand. As artistic director and founder of this house which defends an “intuitive design” – a way of emphasizing the individuality. “At the heart of Gauchère is the art of tailoring, the appreciation of materials in their raw state,” she said. Born in Germany, Statz was destined for economics, but branched out – which not unlike her shirt buttonholes with straight silhouette jackets that hide an asymmetry: a way of playing with conventional codes to divert them. Rigour on the skin, that his hands trace with a ballpoint pen and a Promarker Brush Almond number 0819: “The flesh of the shadows, to create a slight relief”. With her fingers at work – she reserves her rings for the night – the silhouettes are made and undone, like so many sketches on the move. “These are notes,” she said. Indeed, so much complexity arises from an interior drape, from a shoulder that is both held and supple: “With the model maker, I speak with my hands. I specify the attitude. She sees what I’m looking for”. Small sides, clips, volumes, everything is a story of fittings, of moving lines. The hands in the head, the head in the hands, “so that it is always alive, in connection with the body”. Its well-padded pillows pumps, which will soon be sold to the La Samaritaine, exalt this post-confinement comfort. This desire to find the street and outdoors as if we were still at home. This joy that still radiates softly – in these nude dresses, this long sequined skirt. A game between seduction and austerity that looks like a caress. @laurence-benaim