He is one of the first to have made age-old gestures glamorous.
Those of the artistic artisans, these virtuosos of the hand, who prepare the haute couture collections of the great luxury houses behind the scenes.
But Loïc Prigent admits it himself, he filmed the fashion shows for a long time without knowing that behind the podium a whole secret machinery was working on the magic of D-Day. “When I started in this profession, the houses did not show their workshops and this handover between the creator and the little hands.
I myself have long believed that a collection is created in an almost divine and instantaneous way.
Until the day I opened the door to a Saint Laurent workshop…”
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In 2004, the journalist above all directed
Signé Chanel
, a documentary for Arte which follows in five episodes the development of a Chanel haute couture show, from sketches by Karl Lagerfeld to sales to customers.
Between the two, it highlights, for the first time, a whole world unknown to the general public, that of workshop premieres and art artisans, from the shoemaker Massaro to the embroiderers of Lesage, from the legendary trimmer Madame Pouzieux to feather workers of Lemarié.
This intimate dive into the mysteries of a legendary house will be a landmark, and
Signé Chanel
(now online on Amazon Prime Video) will become the best-selling French documentary in the world.
First memories
“In 2000, at Christian Lacroix, I discovered workshop premieres and seamstresses who were finalizing a dress that was going to go on the catwalk.
And, there, I begin to understand that a collection is not just a wonderful designer whim.
But it was above all a few months later, invited by the house of Saint Laurent to their workshop, that I understood for the first time what the notion of craftsmanship and perfection is.
I meet Mr. Jean Pierre, head of the tailor workshop, who explains to me how he works.
He shows me a sketch by Monsieur Saint Laurent, from which he creates a canvas, patterns, fabric choices... Everything is transformed into a trench coat, a minimalist marvel with the purest shoulder of all time.
I then realize that there are craftsmen who have worked for decades searching for a perfect line, and that they are at the same time the translators and guarantors of Saint Laurent elegance.
I think it was really from that moment that I started to be interested in workshop work.”
Loïc Prigent, fashion journalist, has become a reference in the luxury sector.
SayWho / Marill Parisi
“Signed Chanel
”
“It was Pierrette Ominetti, the Arte producer, who told me to leave my camera lying around in the workshops.
She was afraid that we would only film Karl Lagerfeld and that we wouldn't tell enough of the odyssey of preparing for a haute couture show.
She told me: “Don’t film a shadow, think about the hands!”
I didn't really have a synopsis, but I thought of Alain Cavalier's portrait films on rare professions.
I particularly remembered the latter's fascinating shot of the deformed hands – or reformed by work, depending on your point of view – of a Parisian quilter or of this worker who created strikingly realistic artificial flowers.
I spent two and a half months in the workshops on rue Cambon, discovering the work of the first and second in the workshop and the beautiful gestures of the craftsmen.
It was Virginie Viard, who, at the time, was Karl Lagerfeld's right-hand woman (
whom she would succeed upon the latter's death, in 2019, as artistic director of Chanel, Editor's note
), who put me in contact with all these beautiful people.
Ostrich feathers attached to a silk tulle camellia Antoine De Parseval
She is a conductor in the house's haute couture collections, we have the impression that she has a real craft software within her.
In 2004, the feather maker Lemarié, the embroiderer Lesage and the shoemaker Massaro were still in Paris (
bought by Chanel, since 2019 they have been grouped together in the building dedicated to crafts, 19M, Porte d'Aubervilliers, in Paris, Editor's note
).
I had the impression of being in the century of Colbert, I particularly remember the narrow mazes of the Massaro house, Place Vendôme.
We had the feeling of arriving in Venice, in Casanova's secret hideout.
There was a feeling of an enchanted parallel world, one could have believed oneself in
Peau d'âne,
by Jacques Demy.
It was very happy too.
Pierrette Ominetti, while viewing the
final cut
, said to me: “With
Signé Chanel
, you invented documentary comedy!”
Sketch of a Yves Saint Laurent jacket from the embroiderer Lesage.
Julio Donoso/Getty Images
Mrs Pouzieux
“She was born in Paris at the end of the 1920s. She and her brother are orphans, their story is a bit like
Rémi without a family
.
In 1947, they bought a manual and made a loom with pieces of wood and thread.
But, ironically, they put it on backwards and, despite this, created extraordinary braids, which Coco Chanel one day stumbled upon.
Raymonde Pouzieux then becomes the official trimmer of the house.
In 2004, when I was filming
Signé Chanel
, I went to film her at the stud farm she bought in the countryside.
Madame Pouzieux is 75 years old, she is rather tough and welcomes me by telling me that she has to bring in the hay, and that both my film and the house of Chanel will have to wait, because it will rain the next day.
So, I wait, then I tell him about my Breton farmer parents, and I manage to coax him.
And I film her all sleepless night, behind her job, making her stripes.
She said to me: “I’ll show you how I do it, because you’re nice.”
I see her improvising on her weavings like a jazz singer, the tweed threads she peels off being her notes that create rhythm and melody in a suit.
It was magical !
She died in 2010, I will never forget her.
Today, its looms still continue to function.”
What is haute couture?
“Question that I ask in all the houses on the official haute couture calendar for a documentary that I am making in 2016 for Arte.
From Stéphane Rolland to Bouchra Jarrar, via Dior, Giorgio Armani, Jean Paul Gaultier... I speak to everyone, from great couturiers to atelier premieres, and even to new generation clients, who express themselves more willingly than their elders.
When I ask them what it feels like to wear haute couture pieces, they reply: “It changes everything!”
At Schiaparelli, I also remember filming a seamstress who had worked three hundred hours on a raffia crochet dress which appeared on the catwalk in seventeen seconds.
At the end of the parade, she cried with relief, with sadness, with fatigue.
All the seamstresses say it: they all experience the big day like a birth where they give their baby (that's really the term they use) to the model, to the public, to the customer.
And they feel quite a
baby blues
in the days that follow.
Hand embroidered jacket from Celine.
Courtesy of Press Office
Little rituals and precious trousseau
“I like when Madame Cécile, the head of the Chanel blur workshop, tells me about the superstitions linked to couture.
She explained to me that when you prick yourself with a needle, each finger has a meaning: work, love, happy event, bad news to come... If a scissor falls and sticks in the floor, that's it. the death.
A story was going around in the Cardin workshops: a worker had dropped hers, and she died the same evening, with her husband, in a car accident.
Other little rituals: seamstresses who have not yet married always embroider one of their hairs into the lining of the wedding dress.
If a piece of clothing has been purchased, they also pretend to spit on the packaging so that it will never come back, which means that the customer will have liked it.
All the stories around the rare tools used by the artisan shoemakers at Massaro also fascinate me.
They buy their most precious tools at flea markets, and some say they can even travel as far as Japan to find the desired instrument.
They all have their own trousseau, their personal stradivarius.”
Tailor Bar à la carte
“I love going to see Monsieur Jean, the head of the Dior tailor workshop.
A real character like I like them.
He can seem grumpy (you should definitely not bother him at key moments), but he always very kindly takes the time to give me explanations.
He is a haute couture enthusiast who never pulls the cover, always starting by quoting Maria Grazia Chiuri in his work.
In particular, he reinterprets the iconic jacket from the house's Bar suit, created in 1947, each season.
He shifts a sleeve, revisits the peplum... Everything changes each time, both in the details and in the materials.
I've even seen them in knit, crochet, denim... I also remember this Bar jacket where he imagined the peplums as mittens.
A true engineering poet!”
Workshop leader at Dior, Monsieur Jean reinterprets the jacket of the legendary Bar tailor.
Dior by Pol Baril
The passion of the gesture
“One day, at the Lesage school, I had the opportunity to embroider for two hours, and I had the impression that the time had passed in five minutes.
Embroidery is like a football match, it's thrilling and very calming at the same time, you have to be concentrated, there are lots of stakes, you make a mistake, you go back, and you also score points. goals… I also love filming the work of the artisans at the Goossens goldsmith.
Watching them “microscratch” jewelry surfaces with incredible detail, then covering them with enamel, is mesmerizing.
I must not be the only one, because the video I made on Chanel bracelets for the Métiers d'art 2023-2024 collection in Manchester had an impressive number of views on Instagram and on TikTok.
Enameling a Chanel TikTok cuff
Sewing TikTok
“The outlook on artistic crafts has changed.
I see a new generation arriving today who choose them by true vocation and not by parentage.
We feel that the issues are no longer the same, and that the artisanal spirit can also be fully part of the contemporary world.
Take the spring-summer 2021 men's collection, The Dancing Kid, designed by Hedi Slimane for Celine.
The latter presented jackets embroidered on the back with phosphorescent palm trees which required hundreds of hours of work.
Hedi Slimane then said that these haute couture ornaments had, in fact, been inspired by the LED lights in teenagers' bedrooms posted during confinement on TikTok.
It's fun to imagine that these high-end artisanal embroideries were imagined from videos shared on teenagers' favorite network."