PARIS — In designer duo Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s Place des Vosges workplace, a brutalist wood desk is backdropped by modular USM bookshelves and a smattering of pictures pinned to the wall: their “Pantheon of heroes,” Lemaire calls it, populated by New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, thinker Man Debord, a younger Vivienne Westwood, David Bowie on set for “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and extra.
The inspirations seize a definite Nineteen Seventies vibe, when post-war financial optimism gave technique to an period of listlessness and disaffection, which manifested in vogue as a crumpled, tossed-off dandyism. In Paris, artists and intellectuals grappled with how one can navigate the banality of a society more and more transfixed by spectacle and mass consumption after idealistic Nineteen Sixties protest actions collapsed. “All that after was immediately lived has develop into mere illustration,” Debord wrote in “Society of the Spectacle.”
It’s no marvel that Lemaire would draw inspiration from this era: the designer, Paris’ champion of low-key, logo-free design, first got here onto the scene throughout vogue’s big-bang of the Nineties, when luxurious was turning into a world enterprise powered by the theatrical glamour of creators like John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Lemaire’s garments — a principally seasonless wardrobe impressed closely by archival workwear from France and Asia — have been a departure from prevailing tendencies.
“For us, actuality isn’t a unclean phrase,” Lemaire says. “We’re considering on a regular basis life, human relationships, actual tradition.”
Lemaire put his model on pause in 2001 when he went to work as inventive director at Lacoste. From 2010 to 2014, he designed womenswear for Hermès whereas concurrently relaunching his namesake model with Tran, his former romantic companion and co-creative director since 2010
Day-to-Evening Look
Tran, who got here of age in New York Metropolis and Paris’ Marais and labored in publishing earlier than transitioning to vogue, infused the model with a softer, extra sensual bent. The model constructed a cult following, however after its decade-long hiatus nonetheless discovered itself working opposite to business forces — this time the rise of influencers, logomania and graphic streetwear designs calibrated to pop on smartphone screens.
However the model’s vocabulary of outsized, on a regular basis clothes, typically rendered in rugged canvas and a muted palette of tinted neutrals — anticipated different key vogue super-cycles: the casualisation of luxurious, a concentrate on snug clothes, gender-fluid design and day-to-night dressing.
“Paris is an entire metropolis the place you need to have the ability to navigate totally different areas, be with very several types of individuals from day to nighttime. Generally you need to have the ability to mix into the gang,” Tran says.
“They created the ‘9 to 9’ look,” La Samaritaine merchandiser Florian Malfroy says. “It’s attractive, timeless—however nonetheless vogue, in a manner that’s each camouflaged and visual. Actually it’s the right Parisian wardrobe.”
Lemaire constructed a cult following from its authentic retailer on Rue de Poitou, however like many designer labels remained small and financially fragile for years. Protecting the model afloat required reinvesting cash from the design duo’s consulting gigs with Uniqlo (they design the Japanese large’s “U” sub-brand in addition to serving as inventive administrators of the model’s R&D centre in Paris).
A 2015 capital injection from France’s Bpi state funding financial institution, a 2017 distribution cope with South Korean retail behemoth Samsung Group, and a big minority funding from Uniqlo guardian firm Quick Retailing in 2018 additionally helped to help the model.
Ten-Fold Enlargement
Then got here liftoff: Lemaire’s enterprise surged following the pandemic as clients worldwide burned by financial savings on designer gadgets. Gross sales continued to speed up in 2023 and 2024 as many shoppers turned their consideration to extra discreet and accessibly-priced options to luxurious mega-brands.
Gross sales grew ten-fold from lower than €10 million in 2019 to over €100 ($103 million) in 2024, as best-sellers like twisted seam pants, bathrobe coats and matte silk blouses continued to fly off the racks, rejoined by a burgeoning leather-based items enterprise that includes supple anatomic footwear and quirky baggage formed like seashells and croissants.
A brand new chief govt, Laetitia Mergui (a former M&A lawyer employed from Chloé), got here on in 2022. Mergui labored to speed up the transition to leather-based items, which now account for greater than half of the enterprise, in addition to spearheading the model’s enlargement into retail.
A flagship retailer in Paris’ Marais, opened in 2023, has continued to boast a line of vogue pilgrims at the same time as demand sputtered throughout the broader business. Final fall, the model rolled out new flagships in Tokyo and Seoul — changing residential homes into immersive retail locations — and opened its first boutique in China, in Chengdu. Retail and direct e-commerce now make up greater than half of the label’s gross sales.
Working margins have risen to round 20 %, Mergui stated, boosted by a full-price sell-through of 80 %.
Lemaire’s success stands out in a difficult ecosystem for designer start-ups that’s seen outfits together with Y/Venture, Vampire’s Spouse and Mara Hoffman shutter over the previous 12 months. The model’s low-key strategy to design and communications — relying principally on word-of-mouth to drive gross sales — can be a transparent differentiator from the one different Paris designer model to have damaged the $100 million threshold in recent times: Jacquemus, which has been propelled by social media-savvy narration and star-studded runway spectacles.
A Vogue Philosophy
“Discussions about private type typically concentrate on being loud to be your self: excessive individualism,” Lemaire says. “The truth that individuals are returning to one thing easier doesn’t imply it isn’t private; it’s a extra delicate manner.”
For girls, that one’s energy to precise a sensual attract may be augmented somewhat than extinguished by covered-up, sartorial ensembles is a widely known trope from Shakespeare’s comedies to Marlene Dietrich. It’s a notion Lemaire, Tran and their neighborhood of customers embrace.
Somewhat than sexiness, “sensuality is fascinating to us; eroticism is necessary,” Lemaire says. “Sensuality that’s urged, that needs to be guessed at a bit is extra highly effective — it isn’t essentially about ‘boobs out’.”
“We’ve at all times had an strategy that’s about questioning our relationship with vogue a little bit. Is vogue a social shell, a disguise to exhibit social standing? We’re considering extra important issues. Comparable to the posh of being in alignment with one’s persona; of being snug in garments, of feeling assured with out having garments that take over your persona,” Lemaire says.
“What’s class, the truth is? That’s the essential query. What makes somebody have type, if you concentrate on, will not be the ‘codes’ being performed out by the style system. It’s somewhat individuals who create their very own uniform. Who’ve a singularity. Who search to grasp themselves. So it’s not such a superficial factor.”
Lemaire units itself aside from different logo-free, seasonless designers like The Row with its extra accessible pricing (hobo baggage are priced at €1,300, versus €3,200 on the Olsen twins’ luxurious idea) with a worth proposition underscored by sturdy development: €590 for a pair of denims isn’t low-cost, however the heavy-weight canvas is designed to be worn a whole bunch of instances. “Folks can inform they may be capable of put on our garments typically,” Tran says.
“Luxurious is having garments that maintain up, which can be effectively designed. Objects and equipment that age effectively, which can be thought out of their performance,” Lemaire says.
Subsequent Steps
Trying forward, Lemaire is getting ready to open a flagship in Shanghai later this 12 months, whereas exploring choices for an extra Paris location and enlargement to the US, presently the model’s largest e-commerce market.
The model is dipping its toe into promoting and movie star advertising and marketing, working focused campaigns for retailer openings and cultural occasions like sponsored artwork exhibitions and concert events.
“We’re formidable, however persevering with to be very prudent, as a result of we don’t have personal fairness as a majority shareholder or anyone else placing strain,” Mergui says. “We’d somewhat have a shortage of merchandise than wanting to achieve such large gross sales targets and having plenty of stock on the finish of the season.”
It’s a view Lemaire says he’s held since relaunching the model in 2008. Throughout his experiences at Lacoste, Hermès and Uniqlo, he realized that “to be a designer, to make good collections and a transparent imaginative and prescient of favor is nice, however there must be an organisation that’s actually coherent with that imaginative and prescient, or it received’t work.”
Lemaire’s design studio, atelier, showroom and company headquarters are all regrouped within the model’s Place des Vosges base, permitting the corporate to proceed to make selections rigorously however swiftly even because the staff has grown from 20 to 120 workers over the past 5 years.
The model is open to bringing on further funding, however “crucial factor for us is to maintain that independence,” Lemaire says. “After all we need to develop, however we don’t need to have some tremendous formidable plan as a result of what’s extra necessary to us is constructing a human platform. After getting a powerful, coherent staff, you are able to do something.”
