She’s as loved for her chic, louche style as she is for her roles in Harry Potter and TV’s The Tunnel, making CLÉMENCE POÉSY the perfect model for SS16’s pajama-dressing trend. She tells AJESH PATALAY why her clothes are her armor.
Clémence Poésy loves clothes. She always has. She enjoys having fun with them. But she can’t fathom why people think she is so stylish when most of the time she wears the same uniform day after day: a roomy men’s sweater and jeans.
We’re sitting in a café in Clapton, near her east London home. True to form, the 33-year-old French actress has turned up on this chilly afternoon in a large maroon jumper and black jeans, with a purplish scarf and an oversized black coat. “I used to make fun of my mum for wearing this my entire childhood,” says Poésy, tugging at her knit. Does her mother wear men’s jumpers, too? “She always shops in the men’s department,” she tells me with pride.
As an actress, Poésy has carved out a reputation for playing characters as willful and virtuous in spirit as they are beautiful: Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter series, Joan of Arc in French film The Silence of Joan, Isabelle in Birdsong and Elise in TV drama The Tunnel, all to critical acclaim. But she is just as highly regarded for looking chic in clothes, and making a big impression with a minimum of fuss.
In her typically low-key way, Poésy passes this off as knowing the right people at Chloé or Chanel or whichever fashion house is kind enough to lend her a dress. But don’t be fooled: the magic touch is hers; she never uses a stylist. “I never really thought I needed one because it was so fun to do it on my own,” she says.
Her priority is always the same: “Comfort. I’m never going to wear something I don’t feel comfortable in. I’d rather be able to have a conversation and be less sexy. Actually,” she clarifies, “sexiness is never something I think about. I like not to be aggressively seductive. I think seduction comes from a bit of mystery, from poetry. I like something that takes me somewhere else, rather than gets in my face.”
She also favors spontaneity over perfection, and fears that worst-dressed lists and the possibility of being “trashed” in the media have put an end to the playfulness in red-carpet dressing. “It has killed the freedom and made everyone very aware that they have to be perfect,” she says. “I do feel we have lost something.”
Poésy’s passion for clothes started early. “I wanted to do costumes,” she says of her childhood in suburban Paris, growing up with her actor-writer father and teacher mother. “I liked how costumes could tell a story.” Now, fashion inspires her the same way: “What you choose to wear every day says something about you.” So, what do mannish jumpers and black jeans say? “Something about what you want to spend your day doing,” she replies. “How you want to be perceived. I quite like wrapping myself up; clothes can be a shield and armor.” In other words, she likes to be cautious and self-contained when off duty, and prefers to leave the self-exposure to the screen.
As it happens, Poésy spends a lot of time in ‘protective’ knits in her new film, The Ones Below. In it, she plays Kate, a pregnant woman living in a flat in Islington, London, with her husband Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore). When another expectant couple (played by David Morrissey and Laura Birn) moves into the flat below and the wife loses her baby in an accident, partly caused by Kate and Justin, the scene is set for an unnerving thriller about maternal anxiety and sinister neighbors, in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby.
Poésy was drawn to the film partly because of its queasy view of motherhood. “It was really interesting to talk about that time, which is so surreal in someone’s life, when you have created life and are responsible for someone’s life,” she says. “It can feel so big you can get completely lost in it, if you are like Kate is, which is incredibly lonely, and you expect you can’t [raise a child] because you don’t know what it’s like.”
Though not a mother herself (she never talks about her private life, but is not romantically linked to anyone currently), the film’s depiction of postpartum depression and the destabilizing effects of becoming a mother resonated with Poésy. “It touches your deepest fear,” she admits. “I think as a woman in your thirties you are very aware that all of a sudden it becomes very close and can get quite scary. Thankfully, all of these subjects are now being talked about more.”
Fans of The Tunnel, the Anglo-French remake of the Swedish TV hit The Bridge, will be thrilled to hear Poésy is also reprising her role of detective Elise Wassermann, a character who has Asperger’s Syndrome in all but name. “My grandmother told me she thought I was very unlikeable in The Tunnel,” says Poésy. “But I love everything about [Elise]. I wish I was like her. I wish I could make decisions more firmly and was more efficient. It is so rare that female characters are built like that, where she is the rational one and the male lead has all the emotional stuff to deal with.”
This feeds into a much broader point. “Why is it still rare that we get a strong female lead instead of a really strong male lead?” asks the actress, joining the ranks of so many of her female peers. “That bothers me. Also, the idea that for women of a certain age, stories about them as individuals, not wives or mothers, are rare. You see lots of stories about men in their fifties and what they go through…”
In this respect, she thinks French cinema is leading the way. “In France, we are very lucky because [the industry] allows a few chosen actresses, the ones who have built a career, to age and keep telling a story. Someone like Catherine Deneuve’s career is mind-blowing. She turns up in very unexpected films. I just saw her in a film [The Brand New Testament] where she falls in love with a gorilla.”
Alongside her sartorial flair, Poésy’s creative appetite – her imaginative, dreamer side – may be her most endearing aspect. As well as acting and directing short films, she plays the guitar, sings (she featured on the debut album of Arctic Monkeys’ collaborator Miles Kane), draws and paints – she spent this afternoon finishing a watercolor wedding invitation for friends (“I was shouting at the water for not doing what I wanted it to”).
She also adores books. “I love buying them,” she says. “It’s a disease. I’ve got piles of things toread at home.” To celebrate her 30th birthday, she arranged a sleepover in one of her favorite places: Shakespeare and Company, the English-language bookshop on the banks of the Seine. “It’s my dream house,” she says. “A group of friends and I slept there, in the piano room. We had a treasure hunt for my presents through the whole bookshop. And a very lovely ‘tumbleweed’ [the name for the store’s young lodgers] – kept bringing us cocktails that were more and more full of I don’t know what kind of spirit. Who wouldn’t hold their birthday there?”
Make no mistake – this is a woman who does things with style. The Ones Below is out March 11
I don't like the ribbon detailing on the blazer but she looks good. Her new hair colour is a nice change
US Vogue ‘Digital Cover’ October 2024 : Kamala Harris by Annie Leibovitz (6 Viewers)