For Spring 2024, Jacquemus attracted the most famous smile in all of the land: Julia Roberts. The Leave The World Behind star, 56, travelled to the south of France to celebrate Simon Porte Jacquemus’ spring 2024 presentation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, a small medieval village near Nice.
With British Vogue’s editor-in-chief Edward Enninful by her side, Roberts—in a black, longline coat dress—walked to her seat, smiling for the swarm of photographers in her orbit. She completed her look with sheer black stockings, bow-adorned heels, and a large pair of black round-framed sunglasses which shaped that fringe. It was classic Roberts: casually tailored and monochrome, save for the olive green Le Petit Calino handbag from the French house.
Roberts’ relaxed presence and beautiful smile is a reprieve from the pre-practised poses that usually pack the front row of fashion week shows. But as she told British Vogue recently, there’s reasons she always looks so happy.
“Good genes, leading a life that is fulfilling, and I have said this—and I say it usually as kind of a joke—but I do believe in the love of a good man,” Roberts told the publication. “I believe that my husband loves me and cares for me in a way that makes me feel deeply, deeply happy. And anytime you see someone who’s happy, it doesn’t matter how old they are.”
So at ease with the flank of photographers she attracts, Roberts also admitted in the same interview that she almost turned down the role of Anna Scott in 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill with Hugh Grant because she was “uncomfortable” playing a movie star.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Roberts said. “It just seemed so awkward. I didn’t even know how to play that person.”
In the end, and in order to embrace the character, the then-31-year-old decided to wear her own clothes.
“My driver, lovely Tommy, I sent him back to my flat that morning,” she remembered. “I said, ‘Go into my bedroom and grab this, this and this out of my closet.’ And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan [in the iconic ‘I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy’ scene].”
As she walked through the Jacquemus show overnight, Roberts looked every bit the movie star and not one part uncomfortable.
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.