In 1998, while in residency at the Villa Medici in the stage design section, Stéphane Marcault doesn't fit the role of couturier and yet he presents a succession of garments suspended on standard clothes hangers.
 Very  simple forms, as if the issue of a collective wardrobe, where the apron, the high-waisted dress and kimono are found hanging side by side.This exhibited typology has nothing to envy from the luxurious boutiques located a short distance away.
But the similarity is only apparent, because the repetitive motif, worthy of an industrial printer is in fact the accumulation of tissue wrapping paper of an outdated and/or complex graphism used to envelope fruits, especialy oranges.
Accompanying him from residency to residency, Stéphane Marcault has amassed a multitude of these papers, lighter than a feather as prone to wrinkles as chiffon.
At each new stopover, the stock of popular images of joyous iconography is enriched.
Selected by theme, by country of origin, the needle-less couturier appreciates them for their appurtenance to a collective ownership.Object of popular culture, they belong to everyone.
Once their primary function has been trascended, they become more evocative and eloquent..
After a collection of evanescent dresses that certain Japanese clients acquired, surely to wear this fashion for a day, Stéphane Marcault has added a collection of bags.

Using the same procedure, they are covered with multi-colored papers, rendered impermeable by transparent coat of glue. The few fashion professional who could have questioned the perishable nature of the dresses and costumes will be conviced by these newly transformed bags.
The boutique "language" in New york organized an exhibited-sale of forty pieces, followed by the professional show" Who's Next" in France, where a large display area  was offered to the artist.
The  Palais Galliera, the museum of clothing and costume, always attentive to new vocations, decided to acquire several accessories, thus making  them part of France's inalienable patrimony. Shortly after, the gallery of the France syndicate of fruits and vegetables, better  work placed than anyone to promote this recognized characterized by the  recurrent use of the bridghty colored citrus fruit papers exhibits Marcault's works.
It is time to extend the range of the œuvre.
In fact, the adaptations are numerous. The exhibition included an accumulation of  clothing and accessories, suspended like Chinese lanterns in human forms; others papers seem to have floated off and landed on new material, evoking yet again the sensation of protection.
From clothing  to dwelling place, Stéphane Marcault extends the bodily limits of appearance and takes a fancy to a parasol, a tent,  then a turning mobile with large hanging leaves, recently seen in Italy, at a leading manufacturer's.
His installations become larger and move towards abstraction, far from the vespa or the car covered with the papers at the time of his Villa Medici's residency.
What remains is the permanent sensation of maximum contamination, by motif, by repetition, by the succession of all that can bring Stéphane Marcault to become an artisan of the ephemeral, who has chosen appearance as his vector of expression.
However transient it may be, this work, apparently a statement of vitality, also speaks of the feelings of loss and disappearance, an idea demonstrated simply by the volatile nature of his collected papers.
Stéphane Marcault is neither couturier nor fashion designer. He is an artist of    appearance,ever attentive to the winds, be they impercible or troubled, that he fixes in place in resin, the better to retain the memory.
His clothes are dreams that only the north wind would dare disturb.

Olivier Saillard
Exhibition Program Director- Museum of Fashion and Textile- Paris