Saturday Knight in Paris: Simon Porte Jacquemus Named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Simon Porte Jacquemus, 34, last night became the youngest fashion designer ever to be named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest French ministerial award for cultural achievement.

Vogue’s Anna Wintour presented Jacquemus with his freshly minted medal at a ceremony held at his new 8th arrondissement, 7,000-square meter company headquarters. Alongside the designer’s husband, family, friends, and colleagues, guests included Christian Dior’s CEO Delphine Arnault and actress Laetitia Casta.

In her speech to that audience Wintour praised Jacquemus’s dynamic entrepreneurialism, recalling how in 2011 he arranged a guerrilla “Jacquemus on Strike” fashion presentation opposite Christian Dior’s Avenue Montaigne HQ. “Although I know he wouldn’t dare do that now that you’re there,” Wintour added to Arnault to a roomful of laughs.

Paying tribute to his knack for designing virally desirable accessories, from outsized summer hats to the minuscule Mini Chiquito bag, Wintour said, “if any of us wondered why he designed such a tiny, tiny accessory, we now have our answer: in order to put his medal in.” She characterized the Jacquemus aesthetic as: “a dream life of cheerful, sexy self-portraiture wrapped up in a collection of useful Frenchness.” She added: “He is very much a French, not a Parisian designer. And that distinction I think is crucial.”