Paul & Joe founder says when it comes to fashion, her compatriots get cooler with age

It feels very French that one of Sophie Mechaly’s cats should wander into the frame while she is speaking to me over Zoom from her office in Paris. ‘Miaow,’ it says, demanding attention, as cats are wont to do.

‘Shoo!’ says Mechaly, for her moggy, Gipsy, is standing in front of her camera, blocking our view. When you’re the sort of cat who counts the late Karl Lagerfeld’s cat as a friend, you’re more entitled than most.

If Choupette, Lagerfeld’s white burmese, is France’s most famous feline (Instagram followers: 258k), Gipsy is a close second. 

The persian chinchilla is both a mascot and an emblem for Paul & Joe, the quintessential French fashion brand launched by Mechaly over 25 years ago. 

Gipsy’s likeness appears in prints and as a logo for the make-up range. ‘Gipsy is a symbol of the brand, and embodies its strength and originality,’ Mechaly says, clearly accustomed to her pet hogging the limelight.

Warm, upbeat and looking very French in her insouciant floral shirt, Mechaly, 56, who grew up on Paris’s Left Bank, launched Paul & Joe (named after her sons) in 1995. Fashion ran in her blood: her parents owned a shirt-making company, Le Garage, in Rouen, where she worked for seven years, learning the tools of the trade. 

But when her mother had to leave the company for health reasons, her father blocked Mechaly from climbing higher up the ranks and forced her to write a letter of resignation. 

‘I was 27, shocked, sad and desperate,’ she says. ‘Now, I am thankful. It led me to start my own business and be my own boss, which would never have happened if I’d worked with my dad.’

Mechaly’s empire rapidly expanded into menswear, homeware, accessories and beauty, with stockists all over the world, yet Mechaly Snr never told his daughter he was proud of her. 

‘He never said it directly, because that wasn’t his mentality. But I heard from other people that he was proud.’

As well he should be. The British high street might now be awash with cool French fashion brands such as Sandro, Maje, Zadig & Voltaire, Claudie Pierlot and The Kooples, but in 1998 when Paul & Joe opened its first UK store in West London’s Notting Hill, it was an outlier. 

From day one, customers adored its elegant, slightly quirky definition of French style, with the shelves frequently stripped bare as women rushed to buy its shirts and tailoring. 

High-profile fans include Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts and the Princess of Wales. Mechaly (who lives in Paris) is as succinct at defining the allure of French style as one would expect from a woman who has made it her business to bottle it. 

She attributes it to the appeal of two particular icons: Jane Birkin and Catherine Deneuve. Each woman, she explains, is very different, and each a perfect example of the two main facets of French style. 

Catherine Deneuve is seen arriving at Celine fashion show during Paris Fashion Week in 2019

‘Jane is naturally beautiful and a bit shy,’ she says. ‘She will wear a white T-shirt, denim jeans, miniskirts, flat shoes and what would be considered a very normal look. Catherine is more sophisticated. 

‘She’s always wearing Yves Saint Laurent – grand, chic, tailored, little black bag, very Belle de Jour. Catherine wears the looks from the fashion magazines. Jane is the girl next door. For British women, both are appealing.’

One of the main differences between French and British women, notes Mechaly, is the time it takes for them to get dressed. 

‘For French women, getting ready is a long process. When they wake up, they don’t just grab some clothes, they plan it: ‘I wear this with these shoes and this bag.’ British women are more spontaneous.’

As a self-confessed Anglophile, Mechaly admires British women’s sense of style. ‘I love it. Money or no money, they look the way they want to look and they don’t care. French women really do care. 

British women – and men, too – just pull on their clothes and feel comfortable, even though it might not really match. They are naturally more confident.’ She leans forward conspiratorially. ‘We look like we are confident, but we are not.’

Let’s say a British woman visiting Paris did want to blend in – what should she wear? ‘Right now, in Paris, all the cool girls, they wear pants [trousers] and a man’s shirt – it could be white or striped, but always with the sleeves rolled up. Flat shoes, beautiful pants, hand in the pocket and let’s go.’

She attributes the current trend for ‘quiet luxury’, of which trousers and men’s shirts are a part, as having sprung up in response to fashion being directionless. ‘We are in an era where people don’t know what they should wear, because there’s not really one direction – there are many. 

That’s why tailoring has come back so strongly, and we’re wearing a lot of pants and suits. When fashion goes through this sort of phase, the Parisian woman will revert to a basic uniform. 

It’s an easy way of looking good without taking risks.’ Mechaly accepts that quiet luxury means wearing designer brands whose provenance is only known by others rich enough to be able to afford them but, she says, in France, the look is often achieved by wearing less expensive basics: ‘You wear a Hanes T-shirt, with cheaper pants, or a vintage pair.’

Sophie called the late Queen a ‘style icon’ and said the colours she wore were cheerful and she was smiley

There is one item that French women rarely scrimp on – their handbag. ‘The Chanel bag is the thing that will make the difference [to their outfit]. For me, Chanel is above all the other brands,’ she says.

I tell her that I recently saw a documentary about Lagerfeld, Chanel’s fêted designer who died in 2019, and was struck by how chic his friends and former colleagues – women in their 60s, 70s and 80s – looked. 

It made me wonder whether, while French and British women are fairly equal in the style stakes throughout midlife, it’s in their later years that the French come into their own.

‘I agree with you,’ Mechaly says. ‘Older ladies in Britain are more like grannies. But older women in France want to look like a cool lady who has lived her life – not a granny.

‘At that age, they feel more confident. They want to look beautiful and desirable, not like a lady you keep in a cupboard making cakes and taking care of grandchildren.’

While older French women might revere Brigitte Bardot or Catherine Deneuve, she suggests older British women are influenced by the late Queen Elizabeth – although she’s quick to add that the Queen was a style icon. 

‘Oh my god, she was. The colours she wore – fuchsia, green, yellow – so cheerful. And she was smiley. She was the boss of Great Britain.’

Like the Queen, Mechaly had her own annus horribilis a few years ago, losing her mum, going through two divorces and streamlining her business while scaling back her staff. 

‘I had to stop doing so much, because I was going to leave my body,’ she explains. Her newest project is Boys Don’t Cry, a boutique on Paris’s Left Bank, run by her son, Adrien Albou. 

She also has plans to open a Paul & Joe pop-up in London later this year. French or British, everyone is welcome, and she relishes the differences between the two tribes. 

‘It’s very cool that we are all how we are. It would be so boring if everyone looked the same.’ As if on cue, Gipsy pads on to her desk, miaowing in agreement.