American actor Jon Gries, presently playing the role of Greg on ‘The White Lotus’, has gone bananas in the new Jacquemus [IG] campaign, inspired by the color yellow. Cheekily titled ‘GOING BANANAS FOR JON’, Jacquemus is being subversive, but in the style of the kid who eats half a bowl of raw cookie dough. Minutes before he’s in obvious physical agony with a massive stomach ache, he’s insisting on his innocence when mom opens the refrigerator door.

Gries is styled by Jay Massacret for images by Andrew Jacobs [IG] and set design by Patience Harding.

The hue is a perfectly sunny shade for the new Jacquemus flagship in Los Angeles and its recent Jacquemus x Timberland ‘La Bateau’ boating shoe drop.

Located at 8804 Melrose Avenue, on the corner of Robertson Boulevard, the flagship celebrates the beloved, south-of-France-inspired Jacquemus ethos, making its West Coast debut with wit and whimsy.

In October 2024, before nailing down new financial backing from L’Oreal Group, Jacquemus opened a store in New York at Spring and Wooster.

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AOC recalls Pharrell Williams trying to park his Tesla cybertruck in front of the Louis Vuitton store in Miami in January 2024. He couldn’t do it and in retrospect, the moment was only the beginning of Tesla’s problems.

Jacquemus took a much simpler route for a grand-entrance vehicle, putting wheels on a banana. How clever is that idea for creating charm in today’s America! You can see pics of the new store in the IG embedded.

My thoughts, based on studying Jacquemus intensely for the last four months, are how the post-Alessandro Michele’s Gucci could have been transformed in a way that met a perceived need to simplify design, while keeping the great love and wit — the revitalized soul of Gucci — created by the creative director.

Luckily, this is not a Jacquemus problem, as the brand dives into America at a critical moment in our civic and business history. Simon Porte Jacquemus has a new CEO at his side, hiring executive, Sarah Benady, away from Celine.

Speaking to the press for the LA opening, After Los Angeles, there’s a Miami Design District store opening planned for 2026. That city was chosen as a gateway to wealthy shoppers from Mexico and South America, she says. There are plans to expand into Japan and China, as well as further inroads into Spain and Italy. France remains Jacquemus’s largest market. Ready-to-wear is its fastest-growing category.

The brand’s new handbag named ‘Valerie’ after the designer’s cherished mother will launch in October.

The brand will re-open its St Tropez store in a few weeks, and there are pop-ups coming to Monaco, Ibiza and Mykonos — places where the wealthy play, and which “allow us to speak to our core clients”, Benady says.

“We are really speaking to a woman with no price resistance,” she notes. That may be true, but Jacquemus is well-priced for an unknown amount of business turmoil coming our way.

Benady also stressed the preferred brand location close to Maxfield’s, as one that draws traffic from local Angelenos. She contrasts it with Rodeo Drive, which the executive says is much more driven by tourism.

You know that a brand is firing on all cylinders when you can’t wait to see what it does next. Jacquemus is one of those brands for me. ~ Anne