FRANÇOISE

FRANÇOISE

Francoise is Johanna Senyk's most personal project after years spent working for other people's houses. The self-taught Paris designer, previously behind the cult label Wanda Nylon, has collaborated with Alexander McQueen, JW Anderson and The Row and dressed Beyonce, Rihanna and Taylor Swift. Her own label is made in Paris from couture deadstock and vintage fabric, which means most of what you see here effectively cannot be reordered. It's a personal favorite and items you pass down as heirlooms

The muse is a fiction, the fabric is not

Senyk built the brand around an imagined woman called Francoise who lives with her contradictions. The material story is much more literal: bolts left over from nearby couture houses, rare vintage textiles and old trimmings, cut and finished in Paris.

Shirting from another decade

The tops lean on French wardrobe archetypes, the kind of thing a grandmother owned and a granddaughter stole. Because the fabrics are found rather than ordered, each style exists in whatever quantity the roll allowed.

Trousers with vintage patterning

Senyk is technically fluent from her years in other people's ateliers, and the bottoms show it. Classic shapes, slightly reproportioned, nothing that needs explaining.

Dresses, upcycled

Deadstock is now a marketing word attached to a great deal of new fabric. Here it is the actual constraint the collection is designed around, which is why the dresses read as one-offs.

Jackets cut in Paris

Everything is made locally, which is the other half of the brand's argument. Craft and proximity, rather than scale.

Skirts and the long game

Senyk describes the label as pieces that move at their own pace, which is a polite way of saying she is not chasing the calendar.

Our honest take

Upcycling usually costs you either quality or design. Senyk has enough couture experience to avoid both, and that is rarer than the sustainability language suggests.