Let Them Have Fashion

On the anniversary of the most famous prison break in western history, I thought it would be appropriate to pay homage to some of France’s best exports.
	In 1981, Robert Clergerie set up shop in the small French town of Romans. Approaching shoe design as he would sculpture, he created his famous women’s oxford and a parallelogram heel now known as the “Clergerie heel.”
	Sophie Albou honed her design skills at Azzedine Alaia and headed the family fashion business, La Garage, in Paris, before giving birth to two sons, Paul and Joe. In 1995, Albou launched Paul & Joe, an irreverent, colorful take on Parisian chic.
	Born in Grenoble, France, Catherine Malandrino strives to blur the line between dreams and waking life; to “enhance a woman’s femininity while cultivating an edge.” She says, “I want to design irresistible clothes that make a woman desirable, clothes that a man just wants to discreetly take off, clothes to keep as a secret, clothes that stay darling to you forever.”
	In 1927, Hubert de Givenchy was born in Beauvais, France, and by age 17 had arrived in Paris, ready to begin his career in fashion. Decades later, the Givenchy name is legendary and conjures images of sophistication à la Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall and, of course, Audrey Hepburn.
Find your mode à la française, at shopbop.