Carven’s artistic director Guilluame Henry (pictured)

Guilluame Henry is the 29 year-old Frenchman conducting the reigns of one of Paris’ former sleeping beauties that under his tenure has arisen with resolute modernity. The Maison of Madame Carmen de Tommaso arose during the height of Haute Couture in Paris of the 1950’s and lead women dressed in exquisite dress fabrics. The City of Light’s liberation of its military occupation enabled young French woman to exercise social democracy and coquettish attitudes. Madame Carven who was of diminutive nature firmly understood volume and proportion with the graceful degree of embroidery notably on the collar and bodice and baroque sequencing of velvet and lace and a pleated underskirt for eveningwear. During the 1990’s the Maison was in a milieu of different artistic directors, rising debt, buyouts and the licensing of its perfumes. Until now, it remained seemingly lost without an artistic anchor that could propel the brand back to its raison d’être and that ultimately was dressing women for everyday.

Henry with his sprightly and ravishing appearance first studied at the Institut Français de la Mode, an intensive training course that delved into major facets of creating a fashion business from clothes to accessories and the management of a fashion business in itself. From here, first as an assistant at Givenchy to Tisci’s helm would invigorate his fullest creative potential as a skilled designer. Yet the intensity of designing high-end conceptualised garments left Henry desiring the greatest desire to fulfill his skillset by designing for women in a liberal and judicious way. Where history’s most archetypal garments such a knee-length coat, chiffon skirt or wool jersey dress would be subtly twisted or augmented to reflect the Madame Carven’s enduring ethos of a working dress wardrobe.

The Maison relaunch in 2009 with the Printemps-Été 2010 collection gained high appraisal particularly from one outset supporter of Natalie Massenet of international e-commerce retailer Net-A-Porter. It’s whirlwind support from America underpinned by Barneys brought huge insight into a Parisian brand for which pieces such as a noir asymmetric dress in tussore silk, dresses in gabardine and satin and zippered cropped jackets in tweed delighted a new fashion demographic where Carven found it could easily slip into a young woman’s ensemble.

Printed postcards sent from Paris to Budapest in Hungary by Henry

But in Australia, it produced an ensuing fanfare, which first brought the Maison’s attention in Melbourne. Its first availability in the Belinda boutique electrified not only the embodiment of new prêt-a-porter by definition, shopping ingénues discovered the ingenious couture-derived fabrications which was once the hallmark of Madame Carven. The Automne-Hiver 2010 collection placed emphasis on heavy protective wools, crepe de chine embroidery notably on the white collar and draped wool jersey skirts within the foreground of deforested woodland of its accompanied campaign. This atmospheric imagery produced by Hungarian photographer Marton Perlaki is an aberration whereby these exquisite garments are enveloped and de-sensitised from their fashion environ to an undomesticated landscape. In a four series set of Budapest bound postcards, Henry hand writes, “Isn’t it super beautiful?” The hypnotising images in a while asymmetrical silk blouse and belted double breasted coats conferred in the brand’s origins with which some of the ultilised fabrics come from including viscose and more importantly Carven’s manufacturing which resides predominately in Hungary.

Entranced by the world of Ancient Greece, divination and ancient history

Carven, enligteneed by Henry deft hands appears extricably linked to history and the natural environment it is surrounded by. For the next collection, Henry followed a rich linear tapestry of literal prints on buttoned tussore silk dresses that imprinted Ancient Pompeii, bustier pieces in jacquard and poplin and a neck criss-cross cotton twill dress that brought the Carven woman under a monolithic trance. For this collection, Henry explains, “A French girl visiting the Lourve upon discovering Ancient Greece”. Touching the garments themselves feels opening a portal of a different time parallel in which the irregular surfaces of the silk fabrics Henry uses touch upon the pottery of Pompeii and transporting us back to Carven’s sporting agility of the Maison’s 20th century youth. Pelaki’s photographs again, show a young woman reaching for the stars, beaming in an upward motion, unshackled from law and gravity.

The Carven Store at 36 rue Saint Sulpice was devised by Eric Chevallier who has previously created the visual spaces of Colette in Paris

On numerous occasions, Henry defines Carven as a “very democratic” brand. Carven is scrupulously in detail but ideally places the Carven woman within a context and time. That is to say, there is a balanced and precocious attitude in how she approaches her personal and professional work, intermittently interrupted by a natural inclination towards fashion. If only to show this physically, the opening of Carven’s store in Paris in Saint Germain des Pres leads into a compact white tiled floorspace recreating the ebb and flow of a working woman’s Parisian apartment with adjacent assembles of dressed mannequins. Carven is not precious as to an installation within The Lourve. The store’s impression is the three-dimensional view of its current seasonal range, cleverly displaying how each dress or belted tunic is constructed. In one example, the Ancient Pompeii dress with an industrial golden back zip can uncoil the downfall of Pomepii and its height. And just outside the glass panels of the boutique reflect the grandiose masontry of Saint Suplice Church.

The contemporary pieces by Henry for Carven renders a modern vernacular. Creating an inconspicuous persona like female conspirators, the projected outlook for the latest Automne collection structured knee-length proportions in wool ‘biscuit’ skirts, short double-breasted jackets (one of a navy duffle coat); the tantalizing print of a pleated silk toile dress and the notion of camouflage in a series of check-plaid and gargoyle jacquard knitting re-affirmed an astute yet guileful female.

The intimate touch of a Carven garment feels close to the intangible grasp of time. However Guilluame Henry chooses to devise Carven for the foreseeable collections to come, they are beyond their origins to capture a sense of purpose, solace and the empowerment of democratic fashion.

Carven – www.carven.fr