“Style and line aren’t everything”: the secrets of the French suit

French tailors are intellectuals. "A suit is an idea that floats around a man's body," Chevreuil already stated around 1850. Since then, the Parisian school has continued to advocate freedom, plurality, and inventiveness. Expressive, bold, even impertinent, intrinsically linked to the environment of fashion and haute couture , the French style claims to be enriched by the varied origins of the tailors, who came to try their luck in the capital and did not seek to fit into a mold, as those who settled in London or Milan often do. Creative and committed, French tailoring is imbued with the Parisian taste for multiplicity and experimentation.

In 1956, the "Group of Five," made up of tailors Bardot, Camps, Evzeline, Socrate, and Waltener, dreamed of exporting haute couture for men based on a French cut. Then the futuristic "Cardin line," reinforced by Paco Rabanne and André Courrèges, would…