City Threads : Paris
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Hi everyone and Happy Valentines Day to all of you lovely readers who take the time to pop by my sewing room. Today is a special journal posting as I have a new project that I am finally ready to show you…City Threads. This has been rumbling along in the background for several years as I always think it is fun to make a souvenir of your holiday or weekend jaunt to a favourite city. I love to travel and to see what gives cities their character and absorb the design aesthetic and colours of different destinations around the world. I wanted to make a series of embroideries to reflect this and I have had ideas for taking it in different directions, but after a lot of rethinking in this time of upheaval (a major house move), I have decided that it is time to share Ruby’s travels and the embroidery designs that follow her journey. These designs will all be available as downloadable pdf’s in my Etsy shop, so if you would like to embroider them you can make your own versions that would be perfect reminders of places visited that stay in your heart. You could even customise them with names and dates to make an extra special gift.
A very dear friend, who is sadly no longer with us, said to me a few years ago…. “Ruby is like your alter ego, she sits upon your shoulder whispering ideas into your ear and conjouring up magic with a needle and thread that works its way down to your finger tips”. Based on a mixture of the my two grandmothers and a great aunt she become a little character in her own right and as I wanted to add a little bit of myself in there, she has a cat called Basil, who travels everywhere with her. Basil is a whole other story for another day, but suffice to say that we acquired him in Russia for one rouble and he ended up travelling the world with us, speaking street french and a smattering of Swedish and finally becoming the English gentleman he was born to be. In a way it is true that the whole persona of Ruby, that started off as a bit of fun in my mind, because I didn’t want to put my real name on my blog, but she has evolved into a rather sassy young lady that definitely has plans. I fancy she would have written for an upmarket ladies magazine in the 1920’s and 30’s and with her red shoes tapping impatiently, she was certainly ready to take to the high seas and the silver tracks a little while ago. Somehow, I couldn’t quite find a cohesive story in there. Like all creative people, I would love someday to do a book, but the world of publishing is so intimidating and overwhelming the frankly overcrowded, that I prefer my little square of cyberspace here on my journal and decided that it was the right platform to start off this new project. So here goes….. Ruby’s first trip is a long weekend sojourn to Paris…city of dreams…
The ‘fleur de lys’ is a natural choice for a symbol of France…you find it everywhere there, as an architectural feature, on walls, in wood, glass, jewellery and fabric. Based on the shape of a lily it was actually on the coat of arms of France up until the French Revolution and even afterwards often featured as a representation of the country. It is the perfect outline for an embroidery and I decided to pop a little Parisian scene inside it to capture the flavour of the city. It’s an easy one to stitch and adding little sequins or beads is a pretty touch to finish it off with some sparkle. All the details are included in the pattern, with a tracing diagram as well as a stitching diagram with ideas for making your embroidery.
The words ‘Paris’ and ‘Fashion’ are woven together with a silken thread that alludes to the smooth union of fabric and style, which will set the tone and shape of what we wear the world over. It’s history is long and all encompassing, weaving it’s story from the early exotic imported silks in Marseille to the design halls of the revered Coco Chanel and Christian Dior. Even if you think you are not influenced by the high priests and priestesses of the haute couture world, their design elements wend their ways down the chain to the high streets of our provincial towns and probably even into the wardrobes and closets of even the most unconscious dresser. I was never more aware of this than when visiting the V & A’s wonderful 2019 exhibition of Dior gowns. I didn’t know what to expect…but almost immediately upon entering the cleverly displayed galleries of the most exquisite and sought after dresses in the world, I realised that ‘Style’ was something intangible and magical and that the age old art of embroidery had a perfectly symbiotic relationship with this fairy dust. Many of the exhibits were just captivating and the stitchery that trailed around these tissue like fabrics, sweeping along full hemlines and wrapping around tiny waists was all together something in it’s own right. It is so easy when you look at an embellished garment to just think of it as a single piece of fabric, but it didn’t begin life on the cutting table like this and it wasn’t the tailor’s needle that created this additional dimension. It was almost certainly the skilled craftsmanship of Maison Lesage.
I was lucky enough to visit L’ecole de Lesage, the embroidery school and it was fascinating to see the techniques used and taught here for embellishing fine fabrics with embroidery, beads and sequins. The work is done by hand using a tambour hook which makes light work of adding fine details to what will become some of the most sought after gowns in the world. Maison Lesage is now owned by the House of Chanel, but of course it began long before that.
Albert Lesage was born in Paris in 1888 and acquired the atelier from Albert Michonet in 1922 on his return from working in the United States. In fact Monsieur Lesage is a rather interesting and dynamic character. He spoke of his time in America with a sparkle in his eyes that betrayed that his ideas of modernism in the fashion world are rather exciting. His story is worthy of a novel in itself. After working in the rag trade for a few years in Paris, the War interrupted any plans he might have had. Injured in fighting in Germany, he found himself a prisoner of war for four long years but in 1919 through a family connection, he got a job in the United States managing and designing in the women’s department of a Chicago store. At 31 he was ready for the adventure and used the opportunity to learn English and study business and fashion. He returned to France, three years later, bursting with modern ideas and future plans and cash jangling in his pocket.
Monsieur Lesage saw the changes that the modern society both wanted and could produce. Paris, always at the heart of fashion and style could market it’s designs not just in europe but to a hungry american market too. Albert Lesage saw immediately the versatility of the Luneville hook which enabled precision tambour beading. The beads are threaded in advance and held on the underneath of the framed fabric. The design is worked from above with the wrong side of the fabric facing up and the luneville hook is pushed down through the fabric to scoop up the thread and lock the bead or sequin in place as the hook returns to the surface to complete the stitch. Once a rhythm is established, the designs can be worked quickly and neatly on very sheer fabrics. The wonderful fashions of today with their layers of net and bead embellishments are more quickly produced with the technique.
These innovations are what has made this business so successful. Together with his wife Marie Louise, the Lesage’s make a formidable and ambitious team. She is a hugely talented force in the business, with a natural sense of colour and style and a former student of the Ecole National des Arts Decoratifs she worked in dressmaking under the legendary Madelaine Vionnet before meeting her husband and joining him in his venture. Madame Vionnet was a frequent customer where she commission many embroideries to embellish her gowns. The highly embroidered and beaded gowns of the roaring twenties were in huge demand by the wealthy of Paris and the business booms.
The business flourished in the very glamorous interwar years and despite the disruption that World War 11 caused, Albert and Marie Louise’s son, Francois took over the business lived in the booming post war era, collaborating with Dior and his ‘new look’ amongst others. Francois Lesage lived until 2011 and saw many turbulent times in the fashion industry. He was shrewd enough to carry the business through it all until in his later years Chanel took over the business. Today, Maison Lesage is owned by Chanel and still produces masterpieces of embroidery on haute couture garments and catwalk creations. Famed for its fabulous archive of embroidered samples and School of Embroidery, it oozes precision and creativity at the highest level. Fashion underwent the most epic changes in the 20th century and Maison Lesage bore witness to it all.
Today Lesage’s embroidery school, ‘L’ecole de Lesage’ is housed at 13 Rue de la Grange Bateliere and they offer courses specialising in tambour work.
As a huge fan of embroidery I was inspired by these influences to make my own humble little design. I do hope you enjoy it and if you want to buy the pattern, hop along to my Etsy shop here.
Join Ruby next time as she travels to New York, with a new design and a new story to tell.
ps. You can read more about my visit to the Dior Collection at the V&A here.
