Lejaby Lingerie: Renaissance on the Rue Royale
February 27, 2015 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
In the heart of Paris, on the rue Royale, appointments at
Maison Lejaby are hard to come by. The lingerie house is having a surprising
renaissance as a couture atelier, something that the company, which is more
than 130 years old, could barely have imagined in 2011, when it fell into
administration.
The Lejaby that failed had lost its way, a French heritage company that had
become a mid-market made-in-China department-store brand, so when current CEO
Alain Prost took over in 2012 it would take a daring move to revive interest in
the company. With his background at the luxury Italian lingerie brand La Perla,
he knew just what to do.
While the main Maison Lejaby collection remained (albeit moving upmarket and
becoming far more exclusive in its availability), the decision to create Lejaby
Couture at the tail end of a horrendous global recession took some guts — but
it worked, and visitors to the couture salon today are many and dedicated, some
spending tens of thousands of euros in a couple of hours.
To some, it may seem like madness to spend anything from €500 for a set of
lingerie to €35,000-plus for a bespoke body, encrusted with Swarovski crystals,
pearls and unimaginably delicate Leavers lace. But this is a company that
spares no effort in its drive to create couture-worthy lingerie. Having worked
with Nina Ricci and Christian Lacroix on corsetry, and now collaborating with
the same jewellers and artists as Louis Vuitton and Hermès, the couture
aesthetic is embedded in every aspect of Maison Lejaby.
The company’s creative director, Colette Candela, knows just how things have
changed at Maison Lejaby: she has been with the company for 42 years and for
her it always comes down to one thing: the product.
“The grand renouveau [the great renewal] has been very
important to me,” she says at the couture salon in Paris, where visits are
appointment-only, for anything from an hour to the whole day, and accompanied
by macarons, Champagne, lunch — whatever the client demands, of course.
“In the years before, it was decided to make it less expensive, make it in
China, and I was always cutting back on the product but creating more and more
styles,” she continues. “When Alain Prost arrived, he brought back the sense of
style, and from the start it was all about technique and aesthetics.”
For the new Maison Lejaby, there came a new motto: l’esprit couture à la Française, the spirit of French couture,
which, says Candela, is about far more than just high prices and lots of
embroidery. “It’s elegance, but at the same time audacity, because in
terms of design or fashion, Lejaby is not romantic; it’s for the woman who has
a personality, who has purpose and confidence. The designs are for a strong
personality.”
And what beautiful designs they are. Candela may reject a categorisation of
romanticism, but the lace, tulle, chiffon and satin silks are exquisitely
pretty. Certainly in strong colours, yellow or indigo, for example, as well as
the traditional oyster, black and white, but delicate, subtle and sexy at the
same time.
As befits a couture company, every piece is made in France by highly skilled
craftspeople, 30 or so working on the couture side of Lejaby. The lace is
always from Calais, often pieces plucked from long-forgotten archives, the
embroidery from Switzerland and the silk from Lyon. The only other sources are
Belgium and Italy, for fabrics that France no longer has the capacity to make.
The requirements of fine lingerie are extremely specific and, as a result,
there are few fabric mills that live up to Lejaby’s standards. “They accept that they have to come up with the quality. The quality is the
most important thing,” says Candela simply.
Even the swimwear (of which Sharon Stone is reportedly a huge fan) is
exceptional, with lace and trimmings that appear as soft and fragile as those
on the lingerie but that are resistant to salt and water, and details such as a
foulard pattern designed by an artist who works with Hermès; or a
serpent-shaped buckle that is made by one of Louis Vuitton’s regular craftspeople.
Beyond the salon’s main collection (and its upmarket department-store
collections) are the special orders, the pieces that truly deserve the
‘couture’ label. The immensely skilled made-to-measure corsetière has created,
among other projects, a light-as-air tutu with the French prima ballerina Agnès
Letestu, who danced in it at the Paris Lido in the brand’s 130th anniversary celebration.
Perhaps even more entrancing are the carefully embroidered and beaded pieces of
lace and tulle that can take upwards of 200 hours to complete. Densely
encrusted with hand-applied beading, pearls, crystals, wisps of chiffon and
lace, this is what Maison Lejaby is all about. This is, says Candela,
truly l’esprit de couture.
