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How could Simon Porte Jacquemus possibly top the internet-breaking success of the show in a lavender field in Provence he held last summer? The fame of that phenomenal event, with its incredible fuchsia runway, gathered 1.8 million followers to his Instagram—not to mention his ridiculous-cute micro-bag campaign.

It means that everyone who’s anyone of his age is flocking to his show. The sisters Hadid and a gang of today’s hottest supermodels, male and female, came to walk around the vast stadium at La Defense Porte Jacquemus had booked for his co-ed collection for fall. There’d been a crush of thousands outside, a crowd as big as the ones which used to trek to see Jean Paul Gaultier in Paris in the ’80s. The anticipation had a sense of international scale on an almost rockstar level. Inside, Porte Jacquemus was talking backstage about serving his generation.

“This is not an art show. I am selling clothes, so it was going back to things that are minimal and effortless, like a dress people can wear to a wedding and a few times afterwards,” he said. “I am happy that I got the prices down again. See this dress?”—he pointed to a bias cut linen mini-halter neck, suspended on a narrow rope—“This is 500 euros in the shop.”

There was an unexpected sexiness to it all—the body-conscious fit, cropped tops and bras, wrapped micro-skirts, thigh-high boots. Bella and Gigi Hadid vied to outdo each other in midi-sheath dresses cut to accentuate every asset. Guys followed girls in pants which appeared to have their flies open (actually a trompe l’oeil double-trousered device, but still.)

For sure, these were the kind of relatable going-out clothes girls will love—on a continuum, say, with the attraction of Virgil Abloh’s Off-White and Rihanna’s Fenty. There were oversize blazers and roomy coats as everyday, too; tailoring and practical layerings of streetwear for men.

If somehow the French flavor and quirky charm of Jacquemus’s storytelling had been lost this time, maybe that was down to the vast presentation and the anonymity of the space. Yet the backstory behind the collection was as personal and profound as it could be—and equally important in the designer’s mission to play his part as a member of his generation.

Coming off the success of his spring show made him “question myself, what am I doing in fashion? It’s incredible what happened, but still, it’s important to tell young people today: I am successful—but I still have doubts. So I decided to slow my company, to show just summer and winter. It’s also a decision to make my company feel well, you know? We sat down and said, we have to do this with more sense—do we really need a hundred fabrics, when we could use 10?”

On the creative side, it made Porte Jacquemus reflect on the first thing he’d ever made. “I was seven when I made a skirt out of a curtain for my mother, and she brought me to school wearing it.” The linen pencil skirt at the beginning of the show was a personal memento of that, and the reason the fabric was an anchor for the collection. But business-wise, Porte Jacquemus realized that he could use his buying power to change things with his fabric manufacturer. “We’ve been working with them for 10 years, but they didn’t have a sustainable fabric that we wanted. Now, they do—because of the size of the order I can make. But you know,” he said with a smile, “what I want to say is it isn’t just for ecologie, it’s also people—their rhythm of work also has to have sense. I don’t say I’m a green brand or anything like that; it’s not marketing. But I think we have to think more like my grandparents did: like, we have tomatoes in the garden, so we eat tomatoes.”

Spoken like a boy from the South. “I think we have to get back to something more pure and minimal, and I’m making clothes that will last.” Beyond the glam of the runway, that’s a part of the Jacquemus message that deserves to be heard.