Revival of Mastery Craftsmanship

Written by Shumpei Okamoto

On Thursday, May 5^th, hosted by Academy of Art University, Laure du Pavillon, former PR director of Christian Lacroix. Before this event, I have never heard of her name, but once I know she is the lady who had been controlling the brand image and organizing the collection of Christian Lacroix for 22 years, I was ashamed the fact that I did not know her. During the symposium, she started off with the hot topic about wedding gown of Kate Middleton. When she mentioned the interesting story that French Ateliers did not know that Kate Middleton would wear their lace until the day of the wedding, the hall was filled with relaxed “French” atmosphere.
Following the story of craftsmanship of the atelier, she lectured us the history of haute couture which started by Charles Frederick Worth and later Paul Poiret, Paco Robanne, Jean Patou and so on. When she compared Haute Couture with recent fashion,which weights more on advertising and also only heads forward too fast, I felt the sympathy of her idea. I agree that fashion should move forward but at the same time I think fashion is about both the history and the engagement to the present time. Without reference to the history, We would never see the designers such as Rei Kawakubo, Martin Margiela and Hussein Chalayan. Then she moved on to the next topic, which was different kind of craftsmanship such as feather maker, milliners, shoe maker, glove maker and embroiderer (House of Lesage) at last. Embroidery is the marriage between the fabric and the embellishments, but it is never extravagant but luxury. Among the all of the embroiderers, Francois Lesage has been on the top of the industry. Over 60s years of training since the age of 20, he has mastered to blend precise craftsmanship with the needs of innovative brand such as Givenchy, YSL, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix. Sadly, in the industry, which almost has been swallowed by fast fashion, there are few people who invest their money to the real craftsmanship. A lot of houses are now facing serious economical issue and also problem of lack of successors. Fortunately, Chanel bought the house of Lesage in 2002 to save it from extinction and the history of embroidery. Now they also hold a school, Ecole Lesage, which teaches the art of embroidery. Tradition will never stay in the history but marry itself with the present time.