I’ve just finished reading Frédéric Beigbeder’s 2000 novel, 99 francs, since retitled 14.99€, £9.99 in Adriana Hunter’s English translation. The opening sentence of the second chapter reads in French
Je me prénomme Octave et m’habille chez APC. Je suis publicitaire…
My name is Octave and I’m dressed from head to foot in Tom Ford. I’m an advertising executive …
Somehow, when in London, Octave wears very different suits. Beigbeder wrote his novel between 1997 and 2000, when A.P.C was still an intimate ten-year-old Parisian brand with a minimalist urban vibe. At that time, Tom Ford was PPR’s prodigal son, his glamourous, overtly sexual aesthetics miles away from that of Jean Touitou.
Later in the novel, Beigbeder describes Octave’s wardrobe as a mixture of Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Dolce e Gabbana, Richard James, Helmut Lang, Huseyn Chalayan, Lucien Pellat-Finet, Prada, Muji, with accessories by Berluti, Gucci, Cutler and Gross, Nike and Adidas and “a closet containing ten season worth of A.P.C in full” (Folio p.117, translation my own). All this luxury, all this name dropping and not a single mention of Tom Ford, aside from the Gucci moccasin.
Beigbeder dressing Octave in A.P.C is a comment on his personality and on his view on his work environment. Octave is an ad man who sees his world with the utmost contempt and cynicism. His fashion choices reflect this dismay: in 2000, A.P.C was an insiders’ brand with no mass budget for advertising, no desire for provocation. The brand ethos reflects Octave’s conceit for the mass market, all the clueless, uncultured beings buying into his lies spread across billboards and TV spots. Octave would despise the Tom Ford customer for trying to achieve a different personality by buying a suit, just like his taglines promised.
Hunter dressing Octave in Tom Ford was more than a simple localisation of the brand to adapt the novel to the English-speaking public: it’s a radical turn on his personality and views of the world which changes the way the reader perceives the narrator and as such is a betrayal of the original prose.
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