Simon Porte Jacquemus was born on 16 January 1990 in Salon-de-Provence into a farming family and grew up in Mallemort, a small town in the south of France, raised largely by his mother. At 18 he went to Paris and studied for a few months at ESMOD before leaving for a job as an assistant at the magazine Citizen K. The sudden death of his mother prompted him to start designing.
He was 20 when he founded the label, naming it Jacquemus after his mother's maiden name. He promoted the first pieces by having friends wear them around Paris during Vogue's Fashion Night Out in 2010, and in 2012 he was invited to show at Paris Fashion Week.
The early work was deliberately simple: fabrics often sourced from a workwear supplier, clean cuts with few but original details, and prints that recalled the films of Jacques Tati or Louis Malle. He has described it as a "naïve" fashion with pops of colour and singular silhouettes. Opening Ceremony in New York, The Broken Arm in Paris and Dover Street Market in London were early stockists. He was a finalist for the LVMH Prize in 2014 and won its Special Jury Prize in 2015.
The house expanded steadily: footwear in 2017, menswear announced in 2018 and launched in 2019, handbags and hats. In 2019 he opened the restaurant Citron in the Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées and marked ten years with Le Coup de Soleil, shown in a lavender field in Provence. During the pandemic he staged Spring/Summer 2021 in a wheat field outside Paris for 100 guests, and in June 2023 he presented at the Palace of Versailles. That month Beyoncé wore Jacquemus on stage in Marseille.
Collaborations with Nike began in 2022 and continued in 2023 with the JF1 sneaker. The brand has stores on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, in SoHo and on New Bond Street. After a short-lived minority investment by Puig was bought back, L'Oréal took a minority stake in 2025 alongside a beauty partnership, and Sarah Benady, previously of Celine North America, was named chief executive.
In January 2026 he returned to the Musée Picasso, where in 2017 he had staged the only fashion show the museum had hosted, with a collection devoted to Paloma Picasso. Helmut Newton's photograph of her in a one-shouldered black dress was pinned to his moodboard. "I wanted to have this strong woman, the spirit of the '80s, the cut of the '50s, and the sensuality of the '90s," he said. Full skirts gave way to a rigorous midi tailleur with a basque at the hip, alongside clinging hourglass knits and the scoop-neck leather bombers that are bestsellers in his stores, and the finale recreated Picasso's dress, glass and all. Vogue's Nicole Phelps noted that he had built the label into "an independent powerhouse" with stores in New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris, but wished, at this stage of his career, to see him "writing his own history" rather than paying homage.
He received the Elle Style Awards' Fashion Director's Choice in 2017 and was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2024. He married Marco Maestri in 2022 in Charleval, near where he grew up; the couple had twins in 2024.