Kingdom of Embroidery: Lesage

Elsa Schiaparelli evening jacket ca. 1933-1937 via The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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​The topicality of embroidery in fashion design has grown significantly in recent years. We can see it as a craft and high fashion alloy, and perhaps only the minimalists will choose to stay aside ... Bohemians, ethnos, flowers, birds and Yukatan dreams in the colors and ancient craft skills ... Everything is on the catwalk of embroidery & beading.  Trends of 2016, 2017 and also a little bit of 2018 take us to the magical world of embroidery. It resembles fascinating origins of embroidery .. and maybe even reminds of the triumphal times of embroidery in 19th  and the first half of the 20th century  ..

Lesage is a special name in fashion history.  

Maison Lesage is an oldest embroidery atelier in Paris. Just like a living museum of luxury. Here, craftsmanship of an old times is meeting fashion’s future through innovative design and a determination to keep a centuries-old technique relevant for today’s designers.

Imperial Russian Court Dress by Charles Frederick Worth, circa 1888. By the Indianapolis Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons.

From Michonet to Lesage...

Lesage's embroidery house, originally called Michonet, was founded in Paris in 1868. The house's earliest patrons were European royalty and aristocracy.  Michonet's firm had supplied the great names of couture of the belle epoque such as Charles Frederick Worth, Jacques Doucet, John Redfern, Callot Soeurs. Beautiful embroidery of Michonet decorated their creations.  The firm had also supplied the imperial court of Napoleon III with embroidery and had succeeded in establishing new connections with the talented generation of couturiers between World War I and World War II. 

Albert Lesage, founded the family firm in 1924 when he bought the atelier of Napoleon III’s embroiderer, Michonet, who had also worked for Charles Frederick Worth. Subsequently Albert married Marie-Louise Favot, an embroidery worker and milliner at Vionnet. Couple also had received an exclusive contract with Vionnet as a wedding gift. 
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The business came with a glittering mountain of beads, and the couple’s son, François, was born on March 31 1929, “on a heap of pearls”. As a baby he was bounced on Madeleine Vionnet’s knee and he could remember, as a child, queuing up with his father like a tradesman at the back doors of Balenciaga and Schiaparelli.
François Lesage was thus familiar from a very young age with the technical and aesthetic feats accomplished by his parents for the original collections of Madeleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiaparelli, among others.

Evening jacket by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, 1937 Embroidery: House of Lesage

François Lesage 

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François created his first embroidery in 1946 while his parents were away on holiday. At that point an important Italian client turned up demanding a dress inspired by Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. François was studying Philosophy at the Collège Saint-Jean de Béthune at the time, but whipped up a flower design based on the painting.

The following year he was sent off to Los Angeles to learn English. There he met Lauren Bacall, Claudette Colbert and Lana Turner (with whom he claimed to have had an affair). In 1948, using his father’s samples, he set up his own embroidery business on Sunset Boulevard, where he produced dresses for Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich and worked with Edith Head and other film designers. 

In 1949 his father died, and François returned to Paris to take over the family business. Robert Piguet, Jacques Griffe, and Jean Dessès. For the jolie Madame (the trade name of Pierre Balmain), full of grace and delicacy expressed in muted tones, he updated the rococo ribbon. The artificial flowers, straw spangles, and planished sequins to be found in the work of several couturiers of the time are early examples of the style of the young Lesage, a subtle mixture of tradition, novelty, and a bold approach to every challenge.
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Over the next 60 years Lesage worked with such designers as Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, Christian Dior, Cristobal Balenciaga and Karl Lagerfeld, as well as with the Americans Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and Oscar de la Renta. Lesage created over 65,000 designs to be worked into glittering perfection by his staff of highly skilled women artisans who transformed a design into a sumptuous showpiece of luxury, hand-stitching sequins, tiny beads, rhinestones, shells, ribbons and feathers to pieces of exquisite fabric. It was Lesage who produced the sparkly grape bunches on satin jackets that won Yves Saint Laurent a standing ovation at his 1988 winter couture collection. “Fabulous, like wind through the vines,” Saint Laurent told him when he saw the design. Other famous Lesage designs included “chess game” jackets for Chanel.

Among innovations of François Lesage  worth mentioning are his successful experiments with new materials, including patterns of plasticine and cellophane, bold treatments of classic materials, and uncommon arrangements that revealed a different approach to relief. Embroidery had become fabric, and fashionable dresses, cut straight and not fitted to the body, offered an ideal setting for Lesage's graphic compositions, which covered the entire surface of the design. ​

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Full size images available at:

Evening jacket by Elsa Schiaparelli, summer 1937 Embroidery: House of Lesage

​House of Lesage for Elsa Schiaparelli 

Exploring the rich heritage of the House of Lesage that has been preserved from 1930s, it must be concluded that the most productive collaboration in the context of the surrealism fashion was with Elsa Schiaparelli. 
One of the most original, of course, is an evening jacket whose decoration was created after design of Jean Cocteau (see an image above). The eye-catching embroidery is a masterpiece of surreal wit and elegance, but it would not be possible without the contribution of masters from the House of Lesage. 
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Another masterpiece is Zodiac jacket by Schiaparelli. Elsa developed a lifelong interest in the heavens from her uncle, Giovanni Schiaparelli, a prominent astronomer. Her childhood experiences became an important part as a source material for her creativity. She used celestial iconography in several collections between 1935 and 1940. In crafting this famous Zodiac jacket, a collaboration with master embroiderers Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage, Elsa Schiaparelli designed her ultimate personal and artistic expression of the theme. Surrounded by a midnight blue galaxy sprinkled with beadwork stardust, silver and gold planets, rhinestone crescent moons, swirling comets, and shooting stars, twelve glyphs representing the signs of the zodiac are embroidered in gold at center front. Ursa Major, the constellation known as the Great Bear, or Big Dipper, which Schiaparelli adopted as her personal emblem in childhood, illuminates the left shoulder. 

As it often happens, old fashion ideas are back and sometimes reproduced. This happened just so recently, in 2016, when Zodiac jacket experienced its revival. Bertrand Guyon, design director of the Place Vendôme couture house, has created a contemporary version of the jacket, part of the founder’s Astrological collection for fall 1938 and inspired by astronomy, constellations and the Sun King.
While the fit was updated, Guyon enlisted embroidery house Lesage to duplicate the original astrological motif. The sun, moon, stars and Ursa Major align with the 12 glyphs of the zodiac on the midnight blue jacket, rendered with crystals, caviar beads, golden metal plates and silver thread. 

As it often happens, old fashion ideas are back and sometimes reproduced. This happened just so recently, in 2016, when Zodiac jacket experienced its revival. Bertrand Guyon, design director of the Place Vendôme couture house, has created a contemporary version of the jacket, part of the founder’s Astrological collection for fall 1938 and inspired by astronomy, constellations and the Sun King.
While the fit was updated, Guyon enlisted embroidery house Lesage to duplicate the original astrological motif. The sun, moon, stars and Ursa Major align with the 12 glyphs of the zodiac on the midnight blue jacket, rendered with crystals, caviar beads, golden metal plates and silver thread. ​

Current boom of embroidery is proving once again - the most outstanding examples of fashionable, contemporary outfits are able to show of how art can treat ordinary things and turn them into masterpieces. 

References & Further Reading: 

1. fashionsizzle.com/2014/01/02/elsa-schiaparelli/
2. wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/schiaparelli-guyon-paris-zodiac-jacket-10728160/
3. www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/156060
4. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8932330/Francois-Lesage.html
5.www.encyclopedia.com/fashion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/lesage-francois
6. www.seamwork.com/issues/2016/03/maison-lesage

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