Christian L’enfant Roi’s Boyish French Fall Line

January 30, 2012


The French have always appreciated that beauty shines brighter if it's beside decay—one of literature's most famous poems is Charles Baudelaire's "Le Cygne," which is about a white swan amidst the rubble of impoverished, dying Victorian Paris. And although Montreal designer Christian L'enfant Roi is French-Canadian and not from the continent, his fall lookbook, collaged on top of Baudelairean decaying stone castles and banlieue-like housing projects, seems to strive for the same kind of contrast. L'enfant Roi designer Christian Deslauriers creates a look that is boyish and romantic, with barefoot, pouty models that seem lost and cold and straight out of a Jean Genet novel, but always, as Genet would most certainly appreciate, impeccably dressed in grey and black bohemian splendor. We'd like to think that if we were destitute, we'd still wear a killer Charles de Gaulle top hat with pride, just like one of these guys.

Christian L’enfant Roi’s Boyish French Fall Line