Lesage

Founded in 1924, Maison Lesage creates highly intricate embroidery and tweed weaves for Haute Couture, Ready-to-Wear, and fashion accessories, requiring hundreds of hours of work and exceptional craftsmanship.

With over 75,000 embroidery samples, Lesage’s creative heritage now represents the world’s largest collection of couture embroidery and a never-ending source of inspiration. Under the artistic direction of Hubert Barrère since 2011, Lesage’s embroiderers enrich this collection of exceptional samples each day for leading fashion houses and emerging talents in Haute Couture and luxury Ready-to-Wear.

The savoir-faire of Lesage

Embroidery

Choosing between a flat sequin and a cup sequin, between silk or metallic thread, can be a real dilemma. Above all, these choices are precise, driven by an understanding of the properties of light, its diffraction, the laws of optics, and the simultaneous contrasts of colours. An embroidery workshop such as Lesage, with its century-long history, has a vast array of tools and supplies at its disposal: selecting from these thousands of possibilities, combining the right beads and threads, means considering how they shine or fade, creating accents, sparkles, and contrasts.

In the French tradition, embroidery is carried out on a frame: four wooden stretcher bars over which the fabric to be decorated is stretched. The process is thus fragmentary by definition: one creates a collar, half a front panel, or a yoke for the bottom of a dress.

LESAGE BRODERIE (C) Alix Marnat (1) — © le19M x Alix Marnat

In the Lesage workshops, the silhouettes remain flat, and the puzzle only comes together in three dimensions once it reaches the fashion house—save for the paper scale models which help to visualise the whole.
But first, it is up to the embroiderer to choose the right tool: the Lunéville hook allows beads and sequins to be applied using a chain stitch to the reverse side of the fabric. The needles allow for endless variations of Venetian or Boulogne stitches, running stitches, or cross stitches. As the hours pass, the design comes to life.

Tweed

LESAGE TEXTILE (C) Alix Marnat (3) — © le19M x Alix Marnat

Lesage tweed is recognisable by its interweaving of fancy threads, beads, and sequins, as well as ribbons of organza, lace, chiffon, and even denim. The materials used stand out for their richness, their diversity of appearance, and the variety of their composition. At Lesage, these threads number in the thousands. In recent years, the Maison has also made it a point of honour to work with environmentally-friendly threads and has earned Ecocert certification. In the light-filled workshops of le19M, a team of four textile designers imagines new fabrics.

For each new collection, they produce the samples of the future tweeds entirely by hand on their looms. The Lesage studios convey their ideas in the form of mood boards combining words and images.

The task is then to interpret these into textile materials without ever ruling anything out, for whatever material is chosen can be woven. At Lesage, everything, from the design of the yarn to the industrial production of the tweed, is done in the service of creativity.
The ACT3 weaving workshop (which has been part of Lesage since 2014), located near Pau, is responsible for producing the fabric in accordance with the sample designed at Lesage. The expertise developed between Lesage and ACT3 over two decades of collaboration enables the creation of tweeds that are highly complex both technically and in terms of the materials used.
Founded in 1993, Lesage Intérieurs designs and hand-produces embroidery for furnishings and interior decoration.

LESAGE TEXTILE (C) Alix Marnat (1) — © le19M x Alix Marnat

LESAGE TEXTILE (C) Alix Marnat (2) — © le19M x Alix Marnat

Founded in 1993, Lesage Intérieurs designs and hand-produces embroidery for furnishings and interior decoration.

The history of the Maison

As early as 1858, the embroiderer Michonet supplied the first great names in the history of Haute Couture, such as Charles Frederick Worth, Paquin, and Madeleine Vionnet, whose assistant in charge of embroidery was none other than Marie-Louise Lesage. In 1924, Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage took over the Michonet workshop, which became Lesage et Cie.

As the inventor of new techniques (straight vermicelli stitch or the ombré system, which produces blended shades), the Maison Lesage quickly gained a reputation for its avant-garde embroidery for Elsa Schiaparelli, Paul Poiret, and Jeanne Lanvin.

Following the death of his father Albert in 1949, François Lesage took over the helm of the company at the age of 20. From then on, fashion designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, and Yves Saint Laurent helped to build its reputation.

LESAGE BRODERIE (C) Alix Marnat (8) — © le19M x Alix Marnat

In1983, Karl Lagerfeld’s arrival at CHANEL marked the start of the collaboration with Maison Lesage. Season after season, the workshops brought his vision to life. Heirs to a unique savoir-faire, the skilled and inventive embroiderers adorned garments and accessories with sumptuous embroidery.
Driven by a desire to diversify his Maison’s activities, François Lesage established a textile workshop in 1996. Two years later, he began supplying CHANEL with tweeds for its Ready-to-Wear collections, and since 2008, Maison Lesage has also designed tweeds for Haute Couture. Sophisticated combinations of threads sourced from the most diverse materials, they reflect a unique expertise.

In 2002, Lesage joined CHANEL’s Métiers d’art ecosystem. Since 2021, Lesage has been a resident at le19M.

The savoir-faire of Lesage

Embroidery

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Tweed

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The history of the Maison

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Video

Behind the scenes ofBeyond our Horizons: from Tokyo to Pariswith Lesage, Lesage Intérieurs, Atelier Montex, and Studio MTX

Lesage's collaborationswith the artists from Trouver son monde

Episode #3 - Lesage, embroiderer of the future

Lesage Intérieurs

Behind the scenes of
Beyond our Horizons: from Tokyo to Paris
with Lesage, Lesage Intérieurs, Atelier Montex, and Studio MTX

Lesage's collaborations
with the artists from Trouver son monde