As this fashion declines, another imposes its own codes: cool. Can the suit adapt to this new imperative? Avoid looking outdated, appear free in both movement and thought. Gangsters, crooners and pre-war mobsters invented the gleaming blazer, the flashy pinstripe, the purple pocket square. Today, webmasters and self-employed consultants are busy imposing the unstructured jacket, the deliberately mismatched look, the studied nonchalance of jeans and sneakers. Another suit. One tyranny replaces another.

This is not a new class struggle, but yet another shifting of the lines, allowing new conquerors to slip into old preserves.

The slow disintegration of the classic suit is a generous source of inspiration. It embodies financial power at work in every corner of the world, blindly draining its last drops of blood. With no desire to change course, no awareness of danger, comfortably installed in a system of 100% cool wool, immaculate, without crease or tear.

Financiers dressed for the long headlong rush, jackets tailored for an exhausted system, silk-lined to see humanity through to its ruin.

I paint these kings at the end of their reign as furious, living contradictions.

Cécile Reyboz