When I first revisited Duane Michals’ A Letter From My Father, I was struck again by the ache of absence—not just the physical absence of a parent, but the emotional one, too. The gaps between what is said and what is withheld. In that quiet, unresolved space between father and son, I found something unexpectedly intimate: a kind of sensual masculinity, vulnerable and aware of its own silences.
At le PÈRE—which, of course, means “the father” in French—we often return to this idea. Not of fatherhood as authority, but as texture. Presence. The way a father might carry himself without needing to speak. The cut of a jacket he’s worn for twenty years, the way he folds his napkin, or smells faintly of cedar and tobacco. These small rituals become a son’s first exposure to style—not just aesthetic, but moral.
My own father had a quiet elegance about him. He wasn’t showy, but deliberate. His shirts were always pressed, his loafers worn in just right. And though we rarely talked about it, I realize now how deeply I absorbed his way of dressing, his restraint, his reverence for craft. More than that, I absorbed the emotional codes embedded in his style: how to be gentle but firm, expressive yet composed. These are qualities we try to evoke in our collections—not through nostalgia, but through a contemporary lens on what masculinity can be when it’s allowed to feel.
In Michals’ work, there is a deep yearning for connection. The kind we all feel toward the men who raised us, shaped us, even in their distance. With le PÈRE, we want to dress that space, to give form to the unsaid, the felt, the passed-down. Sensual masculinity, to us, means embracing tenderness as strength, nuance as expression. It means remembering that fashion, like fatherhood, is never just about appearance: it’s about the stories that stay with us, even when the person doesn’t.
This brand is not just a name. It’s a question. An inheritance. A promise to continue the conversation, even if our fathers never quite knew how.