Through the Eyes of Jeanne Friot

By Laurence Benaïm

TO SEE RED

“My father is a visual artist and my mother a music producer, so I grew up immersed in exhibitions and concerts, which allowed me to develop my sense of colour and shape. If I chose fashion, it was to bring together every art form, painting, sculpture, music, literature and cinema, in clothing,” says Jeanne Friot, who trained in the studios of Wanda Nylon and Balenciaga before launching her own label in 2020. In her previous collection, blue jeans with feathers and acid yellow tops made from recycled materials expressed the newfound energy of the post-Covid era. The Winter collection revolves around red under the fire of anger. Red “the colour of blood, the colour of fire, of the forbidden, of passion,” she says.

The repeal of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court and the abolition of the federal right to abortion, as well as “what is happening with women in Iran” served as catalysts. “I was inspired by reading Monique Wittig’s Les Guerillères, a novel about patriarchy’s history – a fantasy world where women would rebuild a new world and create a non-gendered system.” This manifesto, published by Éditions de Minuit, states that “what designates them as the eye of the cyclops, their only name…” The ideal of happiness on earth according to Jeanne? “A universe without gender boundaries, just humans. My approach is not about proving that one thing is better than another, but rather about questioning what I have been taught, and challenging the certainties.”