Fashion Garments

I don’t like things that are too perfect,” says designer Isabel Marant. On this sunny weekday morning, the high priestess of French indie fashion is inspecting the window displays of her first U.S. boutique, a 2,500-square-foot showplace on the corner of Broome and Greene streets in New York City’s SoHo. Standing with her arms crossed and her head cocked to one side, her hair mussed up into this season’s topknot, Marant is sporting a studded denim shirt under a nubby tweed jacket; a flippant, pleated miniskirt made from what looks like it could be a very expensive dish towel; and a pair of shit-kicker work boots. A variation on the laid-back glamour she perfected years ago, it’s a look that fashion insiders can’t get enough of for fall. Nor can older gentlemen, evidently. When one passes by and openly admires the coltish legs displayed beneath her barely there hemline, Marant shrugs, unfazed. “I’m lucky,” she says. “I have great legs.”

But her sulky French pout dissolves into a disarming grin when conversation turns to her recent leap in popularity. “I’ve been doing what I do for 20 years,” she says, with another of those shrugs. “When Tom Ford was doing very sexy, I was doing the opposite. I never follow trends.” Marant’s genius lies in the artful mismatch of her ethnic-inspired wovens and oft-borrowed utilitarian items—mechanics’ suits, sweatshirts—to achieve a look that’s more playful than pulled together: python-print pants, say, with an oversize herringbone jacket, a slightly garish print blouse, and a pair of studded ankle boots. “I always liked classic,” the 40-year-old says. “But when you are too dressed, it’s too conservative.” It’s a uniform that is just polished enough for the office but never looks contrived. Perfect for the sort of girl who works a high-power job but spends her weekends in a cabin in the woods without electricity or water, as Marant does in Fountainebleau, France, with her husband, accessories designer Jerome Dreyfuss, and their seven-year-old son, Tal.

The daughter of a German model and a French businessman, Marant grew up in Paris and by her teens was making clothes for herself and her friends on a sewing machine that was a gift from her father. After graduating from Paris’ Studio Berçot in 1987, she collaborated with Michel Klein, worked with Yohji Yamamoto and Chloé, and launched a jewelry line in 1989; by 20, she had also started a knitwear company with her mother. Three years later, in 1994, that line evolved into the Isabel Marant label, an expression of both her eclectic nature and eternal wanderlust. “At 16, my dream was to travel the world,” she says. “My first trip, I went to Ghana for three months, but I told my dad I went to England.”

She tries on everything herself before deciding whether or not to send it down the runway. “My customer is looking for something that is comfortable, easy to wear, but slightly different. It’s myself, really,” says the designer, who has the real-world beauty of Jane Birkin or Isabelle Huppert and the sprightliness of a prepubescent minx (hence the miniskirt). Marant shares her appeal with the ultracool beauties who wear her clothes—women who prefer a not-so-obvious glamour, such as Miranda Kerr and early adopter Kirsten Dunst. Marant’s fans range in age from 16 to 70 and include the former first lady of France Bernadette Chirac, who adores her blouses. “Older customers wear the same jacket, but with a more refined skirt,” the designer says. “I put it together, but I like that women take it apart.”

For fall, Marant, too, is striving for something a little more grown up. “At 20, style comes first,” she says. “At 40, you are much more interested in good fabric and precise tailoring.” This season, her clothes are simpler and cleaner, a little less boho, but with that slightly haughty flirtatiousness still intact. They’re inspired by “the way intellectuals dressed in St. Germain in Paris from the end of the ’50s until 1968,” she says. “Beauvoir, Sagan. They all wore the same thing every day. Supersimple but always precise—the right trouser, the right shoe, the well-cut coat.” Fall’s easy high-waisted pleated pants and prep-school blazers also prove to be perfect transition foils for her spring/summer collection of Gustav Klimt–inspired prints. “Everything goes with everything,” says Marant, who has always valued that carefree continuity; if you’ve collected her clothes for years, you should find yourself with a wardrobe full of seasonless interchangeable pieces.

Marant mostly uses fabrics woven exclusively for her label, which lends her clothes their one-of-a-kind appeal and makes them worth the sometimes hefty price tag ($200 to $6,500). And her 10-year-old lower-priced line, Etoile ($150 to $600), has allowed a younger audience to buy into her gestalt. Until now, the missing piece in the puzzle has been a dreamed-of New York City boutique. Last year, with rents low and the euro strong, she decided to take the plunge—not with a tiny boutique, but with a proper U.S. flagship. “I’m not a small designer anymore,” she says.

That is clear from the moment you enter her store, which opened in April. (Dreyfuss, whose cultish handbags were best-sellers at Barneys, opened his own store in the same building in March.) The building’s original features—Corinthian columns, decorative cornices and balustrades, high ceilings, and lots of windows—stand unadulterated, with clothes hanging from industrial racks and, in the center, a Donald Judd–like wooden box with a hidden door leading to jewelry and evening bags. The luxury is in its spaciousness; everything else here seems wittily humble, including one of Marant’s favorite items, a fur-lined vest covered in fabric woven in Delhi. “The treat of fur is to have it on your skin,” she says. “So I turned it inside out.”