Craft and Labour

French Fashion & Haute Couture

Course 1 · Chapter 9 · Craft, Labour and Ethics

The glamour of the shows depends on people whose names rarely appear: the embroiderers, feather-workers, seamstresses and pattern-cutters of the ateliers, and the factory workers who make the ready-to-wear. This chapter looks at the craft trades behind couture and how they have been protected, at the history of the seamstresses and their strikes, at the supply chains and laws that cover them, and at the arguments about counterfeits, fast fashion and waste. It is written from the record, and all claims about companies are limited to what is documented. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Métiers d'Art

The workshops

Behind each couture house stand specialist workshops called métiers d'art: embroidery (Maison Lesage, founded in 1924), feathers and flowers (Lemarié), hats (Maison Michel), shoes (Massaro), gold and costume jewellery (Goossens), buttons and ornaments (Desrues) (check). Many worked for several houses, and Schiaparelli was among Lesage's early clients.

The rescue

By the 1980s many of these small firms were in danger as couture shrank (Chapter 5). From 1985 Chanel began to buy them through a subsidiary, Paraffection, to keep the skills, and bought Lesage and Lemarié in the early 2000s (check). In 2021 the group opened a Paris building, Le 19M, that houses several of them (check). Chanel also bought the Scottish knitwear firm Barrie of Hawick in 2012 (check).

The training

The skills are learned through apprenticeships and schools. The fashion school ESMOD, founded in 1841, is often described as the oldest in the world, and LVMH set up an Institute of Excellence in Crafts in 2014 to train craftspeople (check). The state also gives a label, Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant, to firms with rare skills (check).

Why the houses buy their suppliers The groups have a commercial reason to preserve the crafts: handmade work is part of the claim to luxury, and it is hard to find elsewhere. A critic could say that the groups are buying control of scarce skills, and a defender could say that without them the skills would have vanished. Both are true in part, and both can be tested against what happened to firms that were not bought (Exercise 2).

The Seamstresses

  • Petites mains and midinettes. The workforce of the ateliers was largely female, from the provinces and from abroad. The Paris seamstresses and shop workers were called midinettes, because they took their midday break (midi) in the street (check).
  • The strikes. The dressmakers of Paris struck in 1901 and again in 1917, when thousands of women walked out of the houses in May and June for higher pay and shorter hours. One of their demands was the semaine anglaise, an "English week" with Saturday afternoons off, borrowed from British practice (check).
  • The exiles. After the Russian Revolution, Russian women of the aristocracy and others worked as models and embroiderers in Paris, and the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna opened an embroidery house, Kitmir, in 1921 (check). Italian, Spanish and Polish workers were also common in the trade.
  • Today. Houses report a shortage of skilled workers, and wages and recognition for the trades are discussed. The names of the individual makers of a couture piece are rarely credited, though some houses have begun to name their ateliers (check).

Supply Chains and the Law

Point (check each)Detail
Made in FranceCouture and a share of high-end ready-to-wear is made in France, but most clothing sold under French names is made elsewhere in Europe or Asia. "Made in France" has legal conditions, but "designed in France" has none.
SubcontractingLuxury goods are often made by subcontractors, which can be hard to monitor. In 2024 Italian prosecutors placed the subcontractors or subsidiaries of several luxury houses under court supervision for labour practices, and the companies responded and cooperated with the investigations (check). The findings were allegations of the prosecution until tested.
Rana PlazaThe collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh in 2013, which killed over a thousand workers, put the working conditions of the global garment industry in front of the public (check).
The duty of vigilanceA French law of 2017 requires very large companies to identify and prevent serious human-rights and environmental harm in their supply chains. It was passed partly because of Rana Plaza (check).
ModelsThe rules on models' age and weight (Chapter 8) and reports of abuse in the industry from 2017 led to codes of conduct at the major groups (check).

Counterfeits, Fast Fashion and Waste

  • Counterfeits. French luxury goods are among the most copied in the world. The luxury trade body, the Comité Colbert, founded in 1954 and named after Louis XIV's minister (Chapter 2), represents the houses and lobbies against counterfeits (check). The houses and French customs seize large numbers of fakes each year. Counterfeiting causes losses, but it also works as unwanted advertising, and the real effect on sales is disputed (check).
  • Fast fashion. Companies such as Zara and the online firm Shein sell cheap copies of catwalk styles within weeks. France has debated laws on "ultra-fast fashion" and a bill passed in the Senate in 2025 (check). The designers of the luxury houses face the same copying issue that Vionnet faced in the 1920s (Chapter 4).
  • Waste. A French anti-waste law of 2020 bans the destruction of unsold goods from 2022 (check). It followed reports that luxury firms had burned or shredded unsold stock to protect their brand.
  • Sustainability. The big groups have set targets for emissions and materials, and in 2019 a group of fashion companies signed a "Fashion Pact" at the G7 meeting in Biarritz (check). Critics say that the commitments are voluntary and that a business model based on constant new collections is hard to make sustainable (check).
A British comparison The British luxury brand Burberry reported in 2018 that it had destroyed unsold goods worth millions of pounds in the previous year, and promised after public criticism to stop (check). Scotland has its own craft protection: the Harris Tweed Act of 1993 defines Harris Tweed as cloth handwoven by islanders in their homes in the Outer Hebrides, a legal label much like the couture one (check). The Hawick knitwear mill Barrie, now owned by Chanel, is another example of how Scottish crafts supply French luxury (check). The semaine anglaise of the 1917 strikes is a reminder that French workers have borrowed from British labour practice.
Check the details This chapter covers contested and recent matters, and the position of companies and laws changes quickly. Check any claim about a named company against court records, company statements and reliable reporting, and separate allegations from findings. Do not treat an unproven allegation as established. Dates of laws and strikes should be checked against official and academic sources.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain in a short paragraph why a craft such as embroidery needs protection from a fashion house or the state, and what each form of protection risks.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Write a short research note on one métier d'art firm (Lesage, Lemarié, Maison Michel or Barrie): what to find out, where to look and what to treat with caution.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Test the claim "Luxury fashion is ethical because it is handmade in France" with the six questions.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Craft: Lesage, Lemarié, Maison Michel, Massaro; Chanel's Paraffection and Le 19M
  • Labour: petites mains, midinettes, the 1917 strike and the semaine anglaise
  • Law: the duty of vigilance (2017), the anti-waste law (2020), model rules
  • Issues: counterfeits, fast fashion, unsold goods, sustainability