It's the nature of fashion that, in the words of Heidi Klum, one day you're in, and the next day you're out. So when the name Isabel Marant first popped up during Paris Fashion Week as a brand to watch two years ago, most editors dismissed it as a passing fad. What could a veteran French designer and mother of two offer us that we hadn't seen already?
Ah, how wrong we were. While Marant's name may not strike a chord with many women, her look has singlehandedly defined fashion in the past three years. You see it on the catwalks, in the pages of glossy magazines and on the streets of every fashion capital from Milan to Hong Kong.
It's difficult to describe, but if you had to sum it up in two words they would be 'quintessentially French'. You know the look - nonchalant yet put together; effortless yet chic; cool and confident matched with plenty of attitude, just like the girls who wear it (including the uber stylish French Vouge team and celebrities such as Kirsten Dunst and Rachel Bilson).
Naturally the designer herself embodies the style best. It's 2pm on a Sunday afternoon when we meet in her showroom in Paris. Marant doesn't look fresh as a daisy. Instead she looks like she has just got out of bed, with her freshly scrubbed skin and messy ponytail. Her unkempt appearance, however, only complements her worn-in red tweed jacket with rounded shoulders, skinny trousers and thigh-high suede boots.
'It's cosy, chic and elegant but also very Parisian. French girls look like they don't care about how they look but they really do, a lot,' says Marant. 'My look is quite simple, but with the right flair and presentation. It's all about an attitude.'
It's hard to imagine this down-to-earth designer ever having attitude. The daughter of a German model and Frenchman, Marant was raised in a modest Paris home and became interested in fashion as a young child. During her teens she would design and make clothes for her friends on a sewing machine bought by her father. This passion led her to give up a career in economics, opting instead to study ready-to-wear at the famed Studio Bercot in Paris.