Jeanne Damas’s Rouje: A New Standard-Bearer for French-Girl Style

Sitting exterior at Gemma, the restaurant on the Bowery Lodge in Decrease Manhattan, Jeanne Damas provided a textbook instance of what many would possibly name French-girl fashion.

She was sporting a camel trench coat over denims, and her brown hair and bangs seemed naturally tousled, as if she had woken up that means. Her seen make-up consisted largely of purple lipstick, which had light right into a extra natural-looking tint. On cue, a waiter approached to ship her a black espresso and a croissant.

It was a Wednesday morning in September, and the final day of New York Style Week. Ms. Damas, 31, had arrived from Paris the day earlier than.

Later that night, she could be opening a brand new retailer in Manhattan for Rouje, the style model she based in 2016, which has change into recognized for feminine basics with a Parisian sensibility. Not lengthy after she began the model, GQ called Ms. Damas “the best, most lovely French woman in France proper now.” French Vogue has described her as “the Paris woman personified.”

Rouje, which began as an e-commerce enterprise, has expanded steadily into brick-and-mortar retail. The New York retailer, on Broome Road in SoHo, is its first in the US; seven others have opened in Britain and France, together with in London, Paris and Bordeaux.

As Rouje has grown, Ms. Damas stated, she has made few modifications to its aesthetic, which has at all times been rooted in her personal wardrobe. “I by no means actually modified my fashion since my teenage years: a pair of denims, an outsized jacket, ankle boots and a wrap costume,” she stated.

She first turned acknowledged for her fashion by running a blog about it. (One in all her earliest followers was the French dressmaker Simon Porte Jacquemus, who, after connecting with Ms. Damas on-line, had her model for his brand.) On Tumblr and in a while Instagram, she’d submit pictures of herself on Paris’s cobblestone streets and in outfits that had been usually accessorized with a glass of purple wine or a swipe of purple lipstick. Her fondness for purple lipstick, she stated, impressed her to call her model Rouje.

Although Rouje has been knowledgeable by Ms. Damas’s private style, it’s onerous to not see similarities between her sensibility and that of the singer and actress Jane Birkin, who died in July. Ms. Birkin was British, however for a lot of got here to epitomize an effortlessly elegant and significantly French fashion. With Rouje, Ms. Damas, a local Frenchwoman, has commoditized her model of that fashion — and has positioned herself and her model to change into new standard-bearers of the French-girl look.

Ms. Damas was just lately forged to painting one other French-born trend muse — the jewellery designer Paloma Picasso — in “Kaiser Karl,” a forthcoming Disney+ TV series about the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. Jérôme Salle, the director of the collection, stated Ms. Damas has “a French fashion however with a contemporary class.” She was a pure match, he added, to play a lady whom Mr. Salle, 52, described as a former “it woman” in France.

Delphine Courteille, 48, a hairstylist in Paris who has labored with Ms. Damas, stated different purchasers have cited her as an aesthetic inspiration; particularly her coiffure, which Ms. Courteille described as “very Parisian” and at all times with “Jane Birkin-style” bangs.

“There’s plenty of femininity and lightness that makes girls wish to be like her,” Ms. Courteille stated of Ms. Damas.

Dhani Mau, 34, the editor in chief of the web site Fashionista, stated Ms. Damas’s digital presence (she has 1.5 million followers on Instagram) has helped to deliver French-girl fashion, and the references that encourage it, to a wider viewers. “Earlier than you needed to watch French movies, discover images or go to France,” Ms. Mau stated. The truth that Ms. Damas is commonly seen sporting Rouje garments on social media, Ms. Mau added, has helped affiliate the model with the French-girl look.

Additionally useful in advancing that affiliation had been pictures of the French actress Léa Seydoux wearing a red, printed Rouje wrap dress on the set of the James Bond movie “No Time to Die.” “She had our purple costume and we didn’t know,” Ms. Damas stated, including that after these pictures circulated, she began to see Rouje on “numerous actresses, particularly in France.”

Along with dresses (beginning at $220), Rouje sells tank tops ($60), T-shirts ($70) and jeans ($185), the varieties of simple fundamentals favored by Ms. Birkin. Camille Charrière, an influencer in London who’s half French, described such gadgets as an indicator of French-girl fashion.

“The French love their fundamentals,” stated Ms. Charrière, 36, who’s a contributing editor at Elle UK. “The entire level of French fashion is that it’s one thing sluggish that you simply construct over time.”

Isabelle Chaput, 33, a French trend photographer and content creator who lives in Manhattan, stated that the desire for fundamentals stemmed partly from a resistance to maintaining with traits. “Parisians don’t wish to appear to be they’re attempting too onerous,” she stated.

Ms. Damas used the phrase “simplicity” to explain the attraction of French-girl fashion. “Typically,” she stated, “it’s boring.”

She stated that whereas Ms. Birkin has had an affect on her and on Rouje, “the fashion will not be about copying.” She described her strategy as much less about replicating a selected wardrobe than making garments that evoke a sure way of life. “It’s not the costume itself, however the life you may have within the costume,” Ms. Damas stated.

Her tackle the look has been influenced by fashion exterior of France, she added. Some slip dresses she has made for Rouje, she stated, had been impressed by clothes she noticed girls sporting when she visited New York years in the past.

“It’s humorous as a result of me and my inventive group are usually not actually impressed in France, then we come right here and we’re impressed by all the things,” Ms. Damas stated.

“Girls in New York are extra audacious with their seems to be which, in my view, is liberating,” she stated.