From Toulouse-Lautrec’s castle to haute couture: meet one of Paris’ most stylish tastemakers
- Mélanie Huynh is a prominent freelance fashion editor and stylist who has consulted for designers like Elie Saab, Riccardo Tisci, Alber Elbaz and more
- Born to a Chinese father and French mother, Huynh and her family also own a castle in Bordeaux that produces wine and hosts art exhibitions
“Don’t mind my suitcase,” says French stylist Mélanie Huynh, arriving at her sun-filled home in the trendy 8th arrondissement of Paris. It’s a beautiful spring morning and she is looking every part the chic off-duty editor in an Isabel Marant fleeced denim jacket, a pair of ripped jeans and Altuzarra shell sandals.
She has just returned from the morning school run with her daughters, Scarlett, nine, and Kate, five.Sticky, the family’s toy poodle, suns herself in the dining room, between an artful stack of Hermès boxes and a larger-than-life collage by John Galliano, an item gifted to Huynh by her former boss Carine Roitfeld, former editor of French Vogue.
Her home office is stacked with bags and boxes – garments for shoots, press packages and a decent sampling of her personal shoe collection – and she’s on the phone to her team, located in her company’s offices down the road.
With two weeks left before the haute couture shows in Paris, Huynh is juggling clients preparing for their upcoming collections and a new art exhibition opening at Malromé, the Huynh family’s 16th-century estate in the Bordeaux region.
“Fashion is a fascinating weave of inexplicable phenomena that has evolved structurally so much in the past few years. It was a designer’s field but now it’s also a creative director’s game”, she explains.
