Fashion's obsession with the Nineties endures: the spectres of early Prada, Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela cast long shadows. Less well known and, certainly, written about, though familiar to any self-respecting designer or stylist, is Martine Sitbon. Working under her own name from 1986 to 2004, and then the creative force behind the label Rue du Mail (2006 to 2013), Sitbon was also the designer of Chloé for four and a half years from 1988, following Karl Lagerfeld's famous tenure there. He would pick up the reins again for a short time after her departure, and before Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo arrived on the scene. With typical grandeur, Lagerfeld himself named Sitbon “the only living French designer”. “Yes, I remember, that was nice of him,” Sitbon says now. Her work is some of the most referenced of the age. As are the accompanying catalogues, art directed by her partner in life, Marc Ascoli and then M/M Paris, shot by Nick Knight, David Sims and Craig McDean on Stella Tennant, Kirsten Owen, Shalom Harlow, Helena Christensen, Kate Moss, Guinevere van Seenus, Kristen McMenamy, Amber Valletta, Karen Elson and, for Chloé, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer.
It's a decade since Sitbon last graced the Paris schedule. The word is used advisedly. She is gracious, graceful, cultured and sophisticated, a much-loved fixture in Paris fashion circles. She shuttered her eponymous label in 2004 due to financial difficulties and, around the same time, lost commercial use of her name. Somewhere across the globe, even now, there are trainers branded with it. But it's clear from the tilt of her small and perfectly formed nose that she's none too enamoured of them. Martine Sitbon doesn't do trainers.
Sitbon's second fashion incarnation, launched in 2006, was called Rue du Mail, after its headquarters in Paris's second arrondissement. The name may have changed, but Sitbon's signature
