Carmen de Tommaso was in her thirties when she founded her label Carven in 1945, and it’s that fact current designer Guillaume Henry tries to keep in mind when creating clothes for her modern-day peers.

‘I did look at the archive, but I didn’t want to replicate anything,’ he explains. ‘I found Jacques Henri l’Artigue pictures of her at that time really inspiring. Really healthy, sporty and fresh. She’d wear a white shirt, she’d be lying on the grass. Still chic, but in a natural way.’

‘Also,’ he adds, sipping his coffee, ‘women don’t have the life that women had in the 50s. They have to cross day to night in the same dress. When Carven started, women had to wear five different dresses a day – one in the morning, one for a picnic, hats, gloves. You know.’

If most designers think of that time as a golden age of their métier, Henry doesn’t seem nostalgic for it. His aims with Carven are to supply an up-to-date version of elegance that sits within the boundaries of real life and enhances it.

Known for his tailoring, Henry creates statement pieces in skirt suits and coats, often rendered in unexpected colours. This season, it was baby blue and bubblegum pink oversized outerwear made from a teddy bear fur material, which models clutched around themselves and nestled into.

 ‘I had in mind Beatrice Dahl in the 80s and 90s, Luc Besson’s Nikita. A very strong woman but still vulnerable, in a huge coat that was graphic but as soft as the cotton wool you use to take your make-up off.’

Guillaume Henry’s clothes are shot through with this sort of smile-raising juxtaposition, One season it was medieval illuminations printed across T-shirts and skirts, worked as a jacquard on blazers. For summer 2013, he created a toile do jouy of safari scenes, complete with Jeeps and binocular-wielding tourists, parlayed into simple day-dresses with cut-out detailing. Emma Watson wore one only last week.

'In general, we’re really into dresses. Carven is about freshness and spontaneity, it’s feminine but it isn’t girly. With one dress you can be ready for the entire day; there is nothing like that for men. I like the idea of something being super-simple but also super-original.’

In many ways, Henry is a classically French fashion designer: he grew up far from Paris, watching Lacroix  and YSL couture shows on the news and he knew – ‘I said to my parents, ‘that’s what I want to do; that is my life’ – that he the same thing. But there is a pragmatism and consideration, a lack of froideur and flamboyance, that belies that atelier archetype, and which sits so perfectly with his current position.

Carven as a couture house did a roaring trade throughout that period when women bought haute and bespoke in great numbers. Carmen de Tommaso, a petite woman at barely five foot, started her business because she was unable to find clothes that fit her properly; she became known as an expert in clothing the topographies of the female body in a way that was flattering, fashionable and functional, garnering clients such as Edith Piaf and the wife of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, whose wedding dress she created.

But with the rise of ready-to-wear (which de Tommaso was one of the first to try, according to head of the Chambre Syndical Didier Grumbach) and the franchising spree in the Sixties, whereby rarefied labels seeded out their names as fragrance and make-up, bad decisions were made, which weakened the brand. Although famous still, couture remained only to prop up the perfume market.

‘For many years, Carven was a sleeping beauty,’ Guillaume Henry agrees, ‘the brand wasn’t pure, it was a bit damaged. Nobody was waiting for Carven to come back.’

So when it was resurrected in 2010 by CEO Henri Sebaoun, the industry was unsure what to make of it. But, given the chance to tighten the brand’s focus and re-position it entirely, Henry’s practical outlook has shone through: the label is aimed at young, professional women (Henry refers constantly to the female friends who inspire him); it offers pieces that can be interchanged as any number of outfit variations; it’s wearable, desirable and, in terms of prices, positioned at the more reasonable end of the designer market.

When Henry launched his first collection, the reception was immediately positive. The coats! The tailoring! Nipped-in camel Crombies, gently flared and with a higher waist than usual that made them feel unusual and modern. Similar silhouettes on blazers paired with flaring skater skirts in stiff and starchy wool.

Henry was feted as Paris’s latest whizzkid, a relative unknown who had worked at Givenchy with Riccardo Tisci and then at Paule Ka. And who now, still in his thirties himself, is in charge of a storied French label.

‘I launched my own label when I was 20,’ he admits, laughing. ‘It ran for three seasons.’

‘It wasn’t brave,’ he says when I put that to him, ‘it was completely irresponsible! I wasn’t ready at all. I was like ‘okay, so do I just make up a price for this now?’’ He laughs.

Now he is more settled, and has that specific Carven demographic to appeal to. If women like his clothes, then they would like him too: the eclecticism and wit of his collections is deep rooted in his personality. He talks about trying to escape fashion on holiday and accidentally booking himself into an island crawling with industry types (Fuerteventura); he laughs about spotting Juliette Greco in a Parisian café and being so starstruck that he and his friend had to go and speak to her.

After our interview, he is heading to Beyond Retro on a research trip. He likes to see things that are vintage but not high-end, the clothes that real people wore, rather than the pieces that end up in glass cases.

‘I know it sounds pretentious,’ he shrugs (and it doesn’t at all, actually), ‘but it’s like being a director, like creating a portrait: who’s the man, who’s the woman, what would she wear. It’s only when you’re fed up with your job that ideas don’t come.'

‘Suddenly during a fitting, she’ll come to life – you think ‘oh, that’s her!’

He smiles and it’s easy to see why the label is doing so well right now: because 'she' is us, and Guillaume Henry gets that.