‘Most of the teachers had worked at the traditional couture houses like Givenchy and Balenciaga, so they were very skilled and extremely strict,’ he recalls. ‘We learned how to do everything by hand. In fact, there were only about three sewing machines in the entire place. Your seams, hand sewn, had to be perfectly straight. And if the garment was not perfect, you were obliged to take it apart and start again.’
This is the sort of savoir faire that will be lost if haute couture dies, he argues. The school is more modern now, but Mabille admits that he’s glad he learned the old-fashioned way. ‘As a result I’m very demanding when it comes to my prêt-à-porter collections. In fact there are certain problems that can only be resolved by hand.’
He got bitten by the couture bug early, making outfits for theatre productions and friends while growing up in his native Lyon. When he came to Paris he made ends meet by designing wedding dresses. After leaving fashion school, he did short apprenticeships with Ungaro and Nina Ricci before joining the design team at Christian Dior, where he stayed for nine years. Originally he worked in the licensing department – and this was before the brand had become more exigent about the quality of the products that bore its name. ‘It was pretty depressing,’ he says. ‘I won’t even describe some of the horrors they came up with.’
Under Mabille’s influence the range of licensed goods improved, edging closer to the vision of Dior’s new designer, John Galliano. When Galliano asked who was behind the change, he was introduced to Alexis Mabille. The young apprentice soon found himself working directly with the boss, notably designing a line of jewellery. This, eventually, gave him the confidence to launch his own fashion house. ‘It’s very familial,’ he says. ‘I founded the business with my mother and my brother. The press seemed to find that quite intriguing, along with the fact that my collections are fairly accessible.’
He dismisses any suggestion that he has a flair for marketing – though he’s clearly a favourite of the French media – but he has a talent for devising simple yet amusing concepts. One of his collections featured variations on the bow tie in unusual fabrics, at a time when it was possibly the most outmoded accessory imaginable. Mabille commissioned a series of photographs and sent them off to 40 or so fashion journalists. The images were subsequently reproduced everywhere, to the extent that the bow tie sneaked back into some masculine wardrobes. Mabille has since adopted it as a motif. He also likes to blur the boundary between masculine and feminine dress, although he flinches at the word ‘androgynous’. ‘I simply believe that both sexes should have access to the same variety of colours, materials and forms. Men should be able to wear a grey suit one minute and a sequinned pink tank top the next – and women too.’
Here we get to the nub of Mabille’s prescription for haute couture. ‘It’s all about erasing the silos,’ he says. ‘It’s ridiculous to assume today that a woman who can afford a €30,000 haute couture dress from Dior is not also going to buy a simple pair of jeans from time to time. So when I was invited to show haute couture as a guest, I happily mixed it with prêt-à-porter. I even went a step further and mixed spring–summer with autumn–winter. I called the collection “No season, no reason”. The press loved it.’
But to his dismay, Mabille has watched the silos multiply. ‘As well as seasonal collections for men and women, there are pre-collections and cruise collections. The workload for designers is crushing.’
This trend is driven by the battle for profits. The fashion journalist Suzy Menkes has suggested that the industry is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. ‘These companies are so huge that they can’t ever say that they’ve lost it, that they’ve lost the plot, that they don’t know what zillions they’re doing. So they just cast around desperately, they pay all these to stylists or pop stars, for people to come and sit in the front row. Anything, really, to try and keep in the swim’ (‘Suzy Menkes & Stefano Tonchi’, Self Service magazine, fall–winter 2008).
With so much at stake, the prêt-à-porter shows have become blatantly commercial. So Paris haute couture season is evolving into the last pole of experimentation: for the big fashion brands, certainly, but also for younger designers with fresh ideas. Their clothes are not necessarily hand-sewn in traditional ateliers, but they are unique in a different way. They have an artisanal, spontaneous feel about them. Their collections combine imagination, innovation and pure craft. Mixing and matching has breathed life back into haute couture.
NOTE
1. For more on Charles Frederick Worth, see Fashion Brands: Branding style from Armani to Zara (2nd edition, Kogan Page, 2008).
2
The last artisans
* * *
‘If I wanted to get rich, I would do something else.’
Any sentence containing the word ‘luxury’ often features the word ‘authenticity’ not far behind. There’s a strong chance that the word ‘craftsmanship’ will crop up as well. In today’s wired world, when the human hand is more likely to be poised over a computer keyboard than grasping a tool, the ancient figure of the artisan has taken on a nostalgic glow. The luxury goods business, like almost every other, has become commoditized. So it’s only natural that an object created in a cramped atelier by the sure and nimble fingers of a skilled craftsman should be prized for its purity.
Marketers, of course, are aware of the enhanced importance of authenticity. At the end of 2007, Harvard Business School Press published a book called Authenticity: What consumers really want, by James H Gilmore and B Joseph Pine II. Summarizing their work for the magazine Advertising Age, the pair started out on the right foot. ‘Amid all the other issues advertising faces,’ they wrote, ‘there’s a fundamental problem that has received too little attention: marketers’ phoniness. Marketers and their complicit agencies can’t help but exaggerate the fineness of every commodity, the greatness of every good, the superiority of every service and the memorability of every experience. Such phoniness has to stop.’
The authors went on to point out that ‘in today’s experience economy – where people increasingly bypass commoditized goods and services to spend time with companies that stage engaging experiences – authenticity is becoming the new consumer sensibility… People want real offerings from genuinely transparent sources.’
Suddenly, though, the article seemed to change tack, as the authors offered what appeared to be a series of tips that would enable brand owners to create an impression of authenticity.
Many meaningful names readily connote authenticity. Top on the list are companies named after their founders, such as… Harley-Davidson and Levi Strauss & Co… Names also help render authenticity when they refer back to times when life was simpler, slower-paced and seemingly more authentic. Many firms, for example, have ‘Main Street’ in their names for this reason. Others employ words that evoke previous economic eras, including ‘craft’ (suggesting agrarian hands) or ‘works’ (suggesting industrial labour), as if every offering were hand-made by a skilled craftsman in a workshop or small factory. (‘Stop dishing out the phoniness, marketers’, Advertising Age, 10 December 2007.)
For me, the implications of the article were depressingly clear: just like ‘luxury’ itself, the notion of authenticity was being hijacked by brands that were anything but.
THE OTHER SIDE OF FLORENCE
I’m not entirely sure why, but for me the word ‘handmade’ always conjures up an image of leather goods. Perhaps it’s a masculine yearning for a pair of bespoke brogues or the perfectly proportioned piece of luggage. Resilient yet pliant, the latter item would slide effortlessly into an overhead locker while containing at least a week’s worth of clothing. It would improve with age and attract envious glances from fellow passengers. I’ve been searching for that bag for so long now that I am almost certain it does not exist.
Florence seemed an ideal place to continue the quest. Everyone knows that the beautiful Italian city is the capital of fine leather goods. ‘One of the world’s foremost handcraft centres,
’ wrote Paul Hofmann, a former New York Times correspondent living in Italy, back in 1981. Hofmann’s article evoked a half-vanished world of skill, pride and, naturally, authenticity.
Long before the celebrated art treasures of the Renaissance were created, the Florentine craftsmen of the late Middle Ages were famed for their skills and their products were in demand all over Europe. The wool and silk guilds, the goldsmiths and, yes, the tanners and leather cutters amassed the wealth that led to the emergence of a well-to-do craftsmen’s class in Florence and, in turn, awakened interest for learning and art… The rich and powerful guilds belong to distant history, but the Florentine handcraft tradition lives on. (‘The fine Italian hands of Florence’, The New York Times, 8 November 1981.)
I read, too, of the existence of the Scuola de Cuoio, a Florentine school for artisanal leather workers. To me, the notion sounded almost as thrillingly medieval as that of the guilds. But the elegant streets of Florence also glint with the names of modern Italian luxury brands: Prada, Fendi, Gucci… These luxury titans benefit from their association with the artisanal heritage of the Italian leather goods industry. And the idea is so attractive that many of us are willing to be seduced.
‘Diane Becker will never forget her visit to the Gucci prototype laboratory in Florence. Nearly all the pattern makers, marketing directors and research heads were elegant, stylishly coiffed men in their thirties, wearing charcoal suits. The one exception was a simply dressed man of around 70, a master craftsman who had learned artisanal leatherworking as a boy’ (‘Why it’s worth spending US $2,000 on a bag’, Bene magazine, summer 2006 issue). However, even the most romantically inclined writers are forced to admit that things are changing. From the same article: ‘Most producers use synthetic thread today because it’s stronger than traditional cotton… Although machines do most of the work these days, some luxury bags are still stitched entirely by hand.’ A little further down the column, Patrizia Gatti, an editor at Vogue Italia, offered a few words of reassurance. ‘The most notable names have the longest experience and use the best materials… You see it in the details, in the precision – they stay true to their traditions.’
One yearns to believe this. And yet, inevitably, there is another side to Florence. Dana Thomas revealed it in her 2007 book Deluxe, when she explained that most Italian luxury companies had swapped artisanal methods for factory production lines, which had dramatically improved productivity and thus boosted profits. ‘Since 1995, all Gucci leather goods have been designed on computers,’ she added, as if to banish from our minds the image of the old-fashioned atelier, with dust-motes suspended in shafts of light slanting from high windows.
Even consumers who missed Thomas’s exposé must by now be aware that all is not what it seems in Italy. Down-to-earth British tabloid the Sunday Mirror got in on the act. ‘Designer labels’ sweatshop scandal!’ a headline blared (on 2 December 2007). ‘For generations,’ read the accompanying article, ‘Made in Italy meant just that – the chicest handbags from Milan, heels from Rome and gowns from Florence, handcrafted by Italian craftsmen. Not any more… Italy’s finest fashion houses are leaning increasingly on an army of cheap Chinese immigrants who have turned Tuscany’s textile powerhouse into Little China.’
The article took us to the Tuscan city of Prato, ‘Italy’s luxury goods capital’. The picture it painted did not resemble the Tuscany I knew. ‘The air here is thick with the reek of dim sum and Chinese tobacco. Workers stand in the street to smoke, hawk and spit amid the bustle of what feels like downtown Beijing.’
The report claimed that Italian shoes selling for £900 in the United Kingdom were ‘probably made by Chinese immigrants working 12 hours days for just three euros an hour’. It added that the city of 4,000 textile factories was home to ‘an army of 25,000 low-wage workers’, many of whom did not officially exist.
Readers of British tabloids have learned to take the articles in them with a pinch of salt, but this stark portrait sounded worryingly realistic. A few weeks later, back in Paris, I had coffee with a friend who works for an Italian fashion brand. ‘Have you heard about the documentary they showed on RAI?’ she asked me. ‘Most embarrassing!’
The programme aired by Italy’s state TV channel had shown Chinese workers stitching together handbags for leading Italian fashion brands in ‘clandestine workshops’ in Prato and Naples. It claimed bags that cost only about 20 euros to produce would be sold for more than 400 euros in stores. Gucci immediately refuted the report, saying in a statement: ‘Whenever Gucci finds a situation that is not consistent with the internal policy and [independent watchdog] Bureau Veritas’s standards, the non-compliant suppliers are immediately suspended.’ But Luca Marco Rinfreschi, a member of the Prato chamber of commerce, said: ‘You can’t deny that this kind of situation exists… Globalization has affected Italy like the rest of the world’ (‘Made in Italy… by undocumented workers’, AFP, 24 December 2007).
There is a hint of prejudice about these stories. Beyond the issue of whether the Chinese workers are officially documented and properly paid lies a more shadowy insinuation, concerning their skill. There is no reason why a Chinese immigrant shouldn’t learn how to make Italian leather goods. For that matter, even goods that are ‘Made in China’ need not be of low quality. What has irked the media is the realization that they, along with consumers, have been duped. They bought into an image of skilled craftsmen in dusty Florentine workshops, only to be confronted by the 21st-century reality of computer-aided design, factory production lines and crews of Asian workers. Where was the ‘authenticity’?
Where indeed? While I was forced to accept that most luxury companies had bowed to pressure from shareholders and stepped up the production of their goods – with the subsequent loss of time and care lavished on each item – I refused to believe that artisans had vanished from the face of the earth. Somewhere, I thought, there must be a dedicated group of people making genuine luxury goods with their dextrous hands. The answer came along by accident, when I asked a friend where he had bought his splendid pair of shoes. He told me they had been hand made by Pierre Corthay, in a tiny workshop not far from the Opéra Garnier in Paris.
THE SHOEMAKER’S APPRENTICE
It was from Pierre Corthay that I learned that guilds still exist. Corthay himself apprenticed with one: the Compagnons du Devoir. This 900-year-old organization is committed to ensuring that artisans from a wide range of traditional métiers – including carpenters, bakers, stonemasons, metal workers, saddlers and shoemakers – pass on their skills to the next generation. Young people who join the guild are taught different facets of their chosen craft during a series of work placements around France. It’s a win–win situation for everyone involved: established craftspeople get motivated, enthusiastic assistants, while the youngsters, many of whom have few qualifications, learn a trade.
Corthay, whose parents were actors, showed early evidence of a creative streak, nimble fingers and a sense of style. As a boy, he would make himself bracelets out of twists of leather discarded by an aunt, who used the material for sculptures. Soon he moved on to wallets. ‘At first it was just a game, in the same way you might play with building blocks or modelling clay. But as the objects got more complicated it became a real passion and I realized that I wanted to make it my job.’
His apprenticeship began in 1979, when he was just 16 years old. He moved to a new town roughly once a year for six years. ‘It’s enormously enriching, because you learn a different technical vocabulary from each teacher. And the approach to the work is not the same in Paris, Toulouse, Lyon or Strasbourg.’
In 1984 he entered the luxury footwear sector, with a post at the atelier of John Lobb in Paris. Two years later, he was asked to run the atelier of another prestigious name, Berluti. The first year was a handover period during which the departing chef d’atelier, Monsieur Jean, passed on his knowledge. And the subsequent four years were spent getting to grips with the demands and eccentricities of customers who were, quite
simply, passionate about shoes.
One day Corthay got a call from the owner of a small workshop in central Paris. The man was considering retirement – would Pierre be interested in taking over the business? And so, in 1990, Corthay founded his own highly niche brand. His younger brother Christophe, who had also done an apprenticeship with the Compagnons, joined him five years later. The business now employs 15 people, divided between the tiny bespoke operation in Paris and a larger atelier in the suburb of Neuilly Plaisance. The latter produces 2,500 pairs of ready-to-wear shoes each year. The scale is almost industrial compared to the 130 bespoke pairs created at the Paris workshop.
Corthay takes me on a brief tour of the Paris operation. There’s a small boutique with a window facing the street, where customers can buy ready-to-wear models or come for the latest fitting of their bespoke works-in-progress. Behind the shop is just the kind of atelier I’ve been fantasizing about, with workbenches in a narrow leather-scented space. The workshops continue in the cellar. The smooth wooden forms of clients’ feet, lined up on shelves, look faintly macabre in the jaundiced light. Corthay shows me a three-dimensional cardboard pattern that will eventually be transformed into a leather prototype. There will be at least one fitting before work on the actual shoes begins. Pierre tells me that it takes five months or between 50 and 60 working hours to complete a pair of bespoke shoes, depending on the model and the client.
‘Clients tell me that the anticipation is part of the pleasure. The internet is a wonderful tool, but some things in life shouldn’t be bought with two clicks of a mouse. Planning, discussion, coming back and forth for fittings – these are all elements of the experience that, in the end, magnify its pleasure.’
Luxury World: The Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands Page 4
