Lesage

Albert (1888-1947). Founder of the famous Lesage embroidery maison established in 1924. But its story began earlier, when at the end of World War I, Albert, freed following four years of imprisonment in Germany, emigrated to the United States and found a job in Marshall Field’s department store. At the time this was an important “practice ground” for him in learning how to cut made-to-measure clothes. Nostalgic for France, he returned to Paris in 1922, and set up in partnership with the embroiderer Michonnet who, since 1858, had been working for the great tailors, and two years later, took over the Marie-Louise Favot company and changed its name to his own. Besides becoming his wife, Mademoiselle Favot was of major importance to the new company because she worked as a designer at Vionnet and opened this door to Lesage. He wanted to earn the dressmaker’s esteem, therefore he invented shadowed embroidery and embroidery techniques suitable for oblique cutting. He became the favorite embroiderer of Maison Worth, Paquin, Lelong, and Molyneux, and, from 1934, of Elsa Schiaparelli, whom he assisted in conceiving and manufacturing highly decorated clothes based on sketches by Cocteau and other artists. After World War II, while his son Franµois (born 1929) opens a branch office in Los Angeles, he created a Silk Department with Jean Barrioz. The following year, in 1947, Albert died. His son successfully took over the business, testing new materials and creating new professional alliances with Dior, Balmain, Balenciaga and, later, Givenchy, Saint-Laurent and the up-and-coming designers of the 1980s, such as Lagerfeld, Calvin Klein, Blass, and Hanae Mori. For every haute couture collection, Lesage offers couturiers from 100 to 120 embroidery samples: each sample requires between 20 and 30 hours of work. The maison’s archives contain 60,000 samples. The chasuble and mitre worn by John Paul II on World Youth Day in 1997 were embroidered by Lesage. The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the Galliera Museum in Paris, the Fashion Foundation in Tokyo and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have dedicated several exhibitions to the company’s work. In 1987 the maison launched an accessory line, especially bags, designed by Gérard Trémolet.