FASHION : Needlework and Beads as the Fabric of Success
Francois Lesage made a triumphant return to Los Angeles last week.
The first time he arrived, he was only 18. It was 1948, and he came from Paris with little more than a suitcase filled with beaded embroidery samples made by his parents, Marie-Louise and Albert.
This time, Lesage brought more embroideries--more than 150 samples from the family archives to display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He also brought some of his embroidered accessories--a pair of embroidered sequined earrings, without a single gemstone, is priced at $1,300--to I. Magnin in Beverly Hills.
In the 43 years since that first visit to Los Angeles, Lesage embroideries have become a textile art, and Lesage has become one of the most influential creators in the fashion business.
His embroideries are the crown jewels of haute couture , the intricate beading and appliques that drive couture prices up to the celestial heights of $100,000 for a gown and $60,000 for a suit jacket. The Lesage embroiderers may spend as many as 600 hours on a single jacket, and his company charges designers $100 an hour for their services.
The exquisite needlework is sought by Christian Lacroix, Yves Saint Laurent, Geoffrey Beene, Jean-Louis Scherrer, Karl Lagerfeld and Hubert de Givenchy. His is the only company in Europe that can produce the volume and quality that the haute couture designers demand. He is treated like a national treasure in France.
But, it was not always so.
Soon after he arrived in Los Angeles the first time, he opened a small shop on Sunset Boulevard, and all of the notable costume designers of the day came calling: Irene, Jean-Louis, Adrien and Edith Head sought him out to embellish the gowns worn by such stars as Lana Turner and Lauren Bacall.
“It was glorious. I opened my workroom and made $10,000 the first month,” Lesage recalls. For one bright and shining year he basked in the glory, but it was short-lived. Albert Lesage died and suddenly Francois had to return to Paris to run the family business.
“I didn’t want to go home,” Lesage admits. “Here, I was considered a great artist. In Paris I was not even considered the tiniest petit pois. “
Lesage had been living the high life in Hollywood. (“I was not going to bed very early,” he says.) But he knew when he returned to Paris he would be treated as a second-class citizen. Embroiderers had to peddle their samples door to door at the fashion houses; they were expected to use the trade entrance--never the front door--and were often kept waiting for hours to show their wares.
He also knew his youth was not an asset, that it would be years before the big names in Paris fashion would consider him a serious artisan, and that he would probably never receive the accolades to which he had become accustomed in Hollywood.
“In Europe you need to be born with a beard to be considered a master,” he says ruefully. “It was very hard to leave.”
It took several decades for Lesage to recoup the star status he had briefly experienced in Los Angeles. He eventually rallied the family business by creating a sample group of experimental embroideries to show to the designers before each couture season. He worked with exotic materials and tried new techniques to give them something unique. His persistence paid off and today he has a $9-million concern. Indeed, at 62, Lesage could sit in his salon and wait for designers to come to him. But he calls on them--via their front doors.
For each couture season--there are two each year--he produces 200 samples that require 8,000 hours of labor. Because of jealousy and competitiveness among his clients, he shows each designer a small selection of his work. He says if the designers saw the whole collection they would want every piece--or at least they would not want their competitors to have them.
“It is like a menu,” he says, “they can order from my menu or I will make them something special.”
Yves Saint Laurent, who has been a faithful customer since 1969, usually orders a la carte. One year he asked for rats, Lesage said. “That is all he said to me, ‘rats,’ so we made him beautiful rats. It was the Chinese Year of the Rat or something, I can’t remember now.”
There have been requests that were too outrageous even for Lesage, who enjoys incorporating visual humor in his embroideries. Once, Thierry Mugler went too far.
“He wanted a trashy beach,” Lesage said. So the Lesage embroiderers went to work stitching pull tabs and soda bottles out of sequins and beads on an evening gown. Mugler wasn’t satisfied with the variety of beaded trash and wanted me to add some condoms,” Lesage says with a horrified expression. “That’s when I said, ‘enough.’ But we did make two of those dresses--one for the runway and one for Tina Turner.”
Rats and rubbish are hardly the hallmarks of Lesage embroideries. The samples at the county art museum in “The Master Touch of Lesage: Embroidery for French Fashion,” on view through July 14, have been culled from more than 100 years of samples. They are the selling tools and reference guides the embroiderers used. The workmanship and artistry is without peer.
Using sequins, bugle beads, rhinestones and silk threads, the artists of Lesage create three-dimensional pictures. What looks like ropes of gold ribbon hanging in a tangle of loops is a flat surface of gold bugle beads made for the now-defunct Jenny line in 1926. The original silk fabric is as fragile as a cobweb and in danger of disintegrating, but the beadwork is as perfect as the day it was made.
A later example, from 1986 shows a trompe l’oeil rendition of crocodile hide rendered in turquoise sequins and beads. Another sample from 1986 shows feathers sewn into flower shapes and appliqued to a black beaded trellis that was used for the Chanel collection.
The haute couture market has dwindled in the last few years and last fall it was dealt a nearly fatal blow. Because of the mounting tensions in the Persian Gulf, many of the couture customers (wealthy Saudis and Americans in particular) did not attend recent shows.
Several designers were forced to cancel their presentations, and that in turn hurt business at Lesage, which depends on the couture customers for 70% of its orders. The other 30% is devoted to work for the ready-to-wear lines. “The war gave a big knock to the luxe industry, we have only recuperated half of our business,” Lesage laments.
The king of beadwork, however, realized that couture might not continue forever and began diversifying several years ago. He began an accessory line that was inspired by his family’s archives of 25,000 embroidery samples. By culling some of the old ideas, he managed to produce jewelry and handbags that incorporate some of the most whimsical and elegant ideas from his portfolio. Oversize beaded watches drape across pink burlap handbags, the capital of an Ionic column makes a stunning evening bag and a Victorian picture frame is the historical reference for a blue and pink sequined handbag that looks more like the art of a confectioner. Some of the handbags at I. Magnin cost more than $6,000.
Lesage has started a home furnishings line--pillows, tapestries and embroidered boxes--that is only available in Europe at present. His third expansion project, still in the formative stages, is a group of Lesage embroideries for the home seamstress--do-it-yourself kits.
“Well, why not?,” he says, “In Paris I see policemen on stakeouts doing needlepoint. Why not embroideries? I think everyone would like a little Lesage in their life.”
Indeed.
