Guillaume Henry has always occupied an unusual position at Patou — tasked with keeping the spirit of a midcentury couture house alive while making the clothes genuinely accessible in price and sensibility for young women today. It’s a tricky balance at the best of times, and with styles having drifted steadily more casual since the pandemic, the gap between those two poles has only widened.

This season, Henry seemed to lean deliberately toward the accessible end. The opening look was a pair of roomy dark denim jeans worn with a colour-block top with allover ruching — a pragmatic statement of intent. Henry noted backstage that he has always included denim at Patou but had never put it on the runway before. Low-profile slim sneakers, the kind trending widely right now, appeared with dresses in guipure lace and Gobelins tapestry fabric embroidered with colourful beads — silhouettes that were short and sculptural but kept deliberately simple. “I wanted dresses that you can almost wear like sweatshirts,” he said.

The references, perhaps surprisingly, were medieval. Henry laughed when asked to explain why. “Maybe because of the state of the world.” With Baz Luhrmann’s Joan of Arc film expected in 2027, the allusion may prove well-timed — but Henry wore his influences lightly enough that they remained mostly subterranean. The pointed, flaring hems of certain dresses and coats and the capelet silhouette of a dress worn over a blouse printed with motifs from the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts were among the clearer traces. An amber-coloured dress reproducing that marginalia pattern in stretch-cut velvet landed precisely on the casual-couturish note Henry identified as the Patou sweet spot when he started here back in 2019 — and has been working to maintain, with varying degrees of success, ever since.