Maison Lesage

Maison Lesage, or Lesage et Cie, is a French embroidery house that specialises in embroidery and working with sequins. The Lesage family has been running an embroidery atelier (Maison) in Paris since 1860. In 1924 its director, Albert Lesage, bought another embroidery atelier, that of Albert Michonet in Paris, both of which he then built up, under the name Maison Lesage, to cater for French haute couture designers.

In 1949, François Lesage, the son of Albert Lesage, inherited the Lesage atelier. He was about twenty years old at the time. In 1992, in order to pass down the craft of embroidery, Lesage opened the École Lesage.

François Lesage continued to run the atelier until 1997. In the late 1990's the French fashion house Chanel started to buy small ateliers that were suffering due to changes in fashion and the current economic situation. These were grouped in a subsidiary firm of Chanel's, called Paraffection, which from 2002 also includes the Maison Lesage. The craftsmanship of the Paraffection firms is included in the Métiers d'Art show, which travels outside of Paris and shows the world the art of the couture masters.

When François Lesage died in 2011, Chanel appointed Hubert Barrère as the new artistic director of Maison Lesage. In the meantime, Jean-François Lesage, the son of François, had opened his own atelier in India, called Lesage Intérieurs.

See also: embroidered evening dress by Antonio del Castillo; heavenly evening jacket by Elsa Schiaparelli

Digital source (retrieved 19th April 2016).

GVE

Last modified on Thursday, 25 May 2017 18:53
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