Le Chouchou for Jacquemus

“Le Chouchou” documents Martin Parr’s coverage of Jacquemus’s Fall 2023 show, staged in the grounds of the Château de Versailles, and stands as the house’s third self-published title after “Images” and “Marseille Je T’aime.” Parr brings four decades of documentary instinct to the assignment, turning his camera away from the runway as often as toward it and lingering on guests along the red carpet, catching the unguarded gesture or the slightly awkward pose that most fashion photographers would edit out.

That anthropological eye suits the setting: Versailles carries centuries of political weight and royal history, and Parr uses that grandeur as a backdrop to undercut rather than reinforce. Jacquemus’s deconstructed silhouettes, sheer fabrics, and voluminous shapes appear throughout, but the book resists the polish that usually accompanies a show of this scale.

Parr favors imperfection, chance, and a kind of joyful clumsiness over composed glamour, and the result reads less like a fashion record and more like a study of spectacle itself, the crowd, the excess, and the theater surrounding the clothes.