The Van Goghs of the embroidery world

“Embroidery is to haute couture what fireworks are to Bastille Day,” François Lesage said — and since 1924, when his parents, Albert and Marie-Louise, took over the embroidery workshop of Michonet, Lesage and fashion have been inextricably entwined. In the 1930s the maison worked with Schiaparelli; in the 1950s Balmain and Balenciaga; from the 1970s Yves Saint Laurent; and from the 1980s Chanel — inventing new techniques and embellishing designs with traditional, innovative and increasingly sustainable materials. In the 1990s, François Lesage set up a textile department, which went on to design tweeds for Chanel’s ready-to-wear and haute couture collections, then an embroidery school. In 1993, his son, Jean-François, founded Lesage Intérieurs.

Negotiating the economic impact of global events wasn’t always straightforward, however. In 2002 Lesage joined the dozen specialist Métiers d’art workshops working under the Chanel umbrella at Le19M, housed since 2021 in a striking new building by Rudy Ricciotti in the northern Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers. As the company celebrates its centenary with an exhibition at the 19M gallery, it continues to push boundaries: as well as some of the 80,000 embroidery samples from its archives, scanned in 3D, the exhibition showcases recent collaborations between Hubert Barrère, Lesage’s artistic director since 2011, and contemporary designers and artists. Free workshops in embroidery and weaving techniques are also offered every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.Lesage, 100 Years of Fashion and Decoration is at Le19M Paris until January 5 (lesage-paris.com, le19M.com)

In the 19th century workers in Lunéville sped up the art of embroidery by pre-loading their threads with beads and attaching them using a tambour hook. The technique proved perfect for the bias-cut gowns of Madeleine Vionnet, with their hundreds of tiny beads shimmering on delicate chiffon and crêpe de Chine. Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage continued to work with the designer into the 1930s, when she designed a Carnival dress with an embroidered tulle overskirt that referenced the Victorian crinoline.

Rome-born Elsa Schiaparelli epitomised the glamour of the art deco era with her theatrical style and love of trompe l’oeil. Her collaboration with Lesage reached its peak in 1938 in her striking Circus, Pagan, Commedia dell’arte and Zodiac collections, the last of which featured a radiant sun on a pink woollen cape. The exhibition includes a wool dress from 1943 adorned with Lesage embroidery, silk cordonnets, faceted glass beads and glass cabochons.

The 1950s were a good time for couture. Lesage started working with Balenciaga immediately after the war and continued when François took over after Albert’s death in 1949 (on a state visit to France in 1959 with Prince Rainier III, Grace Kelly wore a Balenciaga gown embellished by Lesage). The relationship has endured: at the height of the pandemic in December 2020, Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna Gvasalia, presented his Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow collection: a video game populated by avatars dressed in clothes so loved they are falling apart, including a fringed tulle dress studded with sequins and rhinestones courtesy of Lesage.

As Patrick Mauriès points out in his book Maison Lesage: Haute Couture Embroidery, Saint Laurent approached Francois Lesage because he had worked with Schiaparelli, and from 1976 the two collaborated on a series of fabled shows inspired by artists and poets of the early-20th-century avant-garde. The highlight was the S/S 1988 haute couture Homage to Artists show, featuring jackets embroidered with Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Irises, that had taken a reported 600 hours to make.

Twelve years after Coco Chanel’s death, Karl Lagerfeld made his debut as artistic director with a black dress embroidered with trompe l’oeil baubles, an ingenious reference to Chanel’s love of costume jewellery. Later collaborations with Lesage similarly paid homage to her style: a coat for Chanel’s A/W 1996-97 haute couture collection was a dazzle of black, gold, grey, red and green sequins, gold mesh and honey-coloured, black and gold cylindrical beads, also showcasing hologram appliqués alluding to the lacquered Chinese coromandel screens in Chanel’s Paris apartment.

For Chanel’s A/W 2015-16 haute couture collection, Lagerfeld thrilled the fashion pack again with a show populated by creepy-looking androids that circled the room in 3D-printed boxy jacket suits, while Lagerfeld’s muses, from Kristen Stewart to Julianne Moore, gambled in a casino. The crystals and sequins between and under the 3D-printed components were embroidered by Lesage — by hand.

Lesage Intérieurs, founded in 1993, is based at the Vastrakala “atelier of excellence” on the outskirts of Chennai. To create The Veil, a collaboration with the Bourroullec brothers, 20 expert artisans spent a thousand hours hand-stitching 7,200 oversized PVC paillettes onto a large (6x3m) piece of Kvadrat two-tone fabric in a work that likens stitches to early pixels.

The tweed suit is a Chanel staple — originally inspired by the jackets of Chanel’s one-time boyfriend the Duke of Westminster — and constantly reimagined since. Today, much of the fabric is produced by ACT 3, a weaving atelier in Pau, from design samples created at Lesage, using everything from ribbon to muslin, paper, leather, wool, pearls, rhinestones and pebbles. This pink suit, a homage to the monochrome outfits of Queen Elizabeth II, was designed by Lagerfeld’s successor, Virginie Viard, for Chanel’s acclaimed post-punk 2023-24 Paris-Manchester Métiers d’art collection. The ochre trouser suit, made from a tweed that includes pompoms and fluffy cotton, is a Lagerfeld design for S/S prêt-à-porter 1998.

Before founding her research and design studio Clinique vestimentaire, Jeanne Vicérial co-developed a robotised process for producing no-waste, made-to-measure clothes and worked with Hussein Chalayan. Now represented by the Templon gallery, the artist and fashion designer collaborates and exhibits widely: with Hubert Barrère, she resuscitated the medieval figure of the gisant (tomb effigy) in a sculpture of pleats, threads and drapes that open to reveal bejewelled organs embroidered by Lesage.

After the Paris attacks of November 13, 2015 ended his rugby career, Aristide Barraud turned to writing, photography and making art. In this monumental work conceived with Hubert Barrère, hundreds of starlings have been embroidered by thousands of hands on several layers of organza, celebrating a “natural phenomenon of collective symbiosis in an increasingly fragmented society”. It’s back in Paris after free workshops in Marseilles, Dakar, Venice and Hyères, in which members of the public were invited to add their individual stitch to the collective whole.