A pair of boots from fall 2007
In addition to her signature collection and accessories line, Marant offers the lower-priced Etoile label as well as a children’s range. She also plans to introduce a collection of gold jewelry for fall. And while she feels the industry’s relentless pressure to grow, grow, grow, she’s not willing to compromise her principles. “When you have too many stores, everything is so important; if you have a failure somewhere, everything comes crashing down and everybody starts to freak out and calculate too much,” says Marant. “And then you start to lose your soul.” As it is, she has some regrets about going solo so early. “I’m quite sorry for not having taken more time to have experience with big designers,” she explains. “There are things that I will never learn. My dream would be to spend one year at Chanel, one year at Saint Laurent.”
Borissova, for one, applauds Marant’s tempered approach: “With all the oversaturation [of the fashion market], I think that’s one of the reasons she’s stayed cool for so long. It’s a very smart business move.”
Coolness quotient aside, as Marant says, “there are things you can do when you’re small that you cannot do when you’re big.” And she’s not just talking business. Most weekends, for instance, you can find Marant with her husband, French handbag designer Jerome Dreyfuss, and their four-year-old son, Tal, at their ultrarustic log cabin (no electricity, no running water) about 30 miles outside of Paris. There, she says, “I have a very—how do you say?—sane life.”
