The Journal

The Hands That Made the Birkin

PierreAlexis Dumas stands in the leather workshop on the third floor of 24 Faubourg SaintHonoré, holding a halffinished Birkin. The bag has no handles yet. The craftsman—Thierry Outreman, who has been with Hermès for thirtytwo years—is fitt...

The Loafer Room sits one floor above the main atelier at Gucci's Scandicci facility, twelve kilometres west of Florence

The Loafer Room sits one floor above the main atelier at Gucci's Scandicci facility, twelve kilometres west of Florence. It is smaller than you might expect — eight benches, each assigned to a single craftsperson who works a rotation of thr...

## The Hands Behind the Bow

The Hands Behind the Bow The first time you see a Givenchy bow constructed, you understand why it takes three people. Not because the fabric is difficult — though grosgrain at that scale does have opinions — but because the proportions on...

Fendi's artisans, named

The atelier sits on the fourth floor of Fendi's Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, the white travertine cube that Romans still call the Square Colosseum. Light comes in from three sides. At a long wooden table, Anna Fontana is handstitching th...

## The Hands That Embroider Sicily

The Hands That Embroider Sicily The atelier sits three floors above Via Goldoni in Milan, where the hum of industrial sewing machines competes with Radio Deejay. Maria Grazia Fiorentino has been here since 1991, bent over a frame, pulling...

Dior's artisans, named

The Bar jacket — that nipped waist, the rounded shoulder, the peplum that sits just so — has been remade, in some form, every season since 1947. What is less often discussed is who remakes it. On a Thursday in late September, in the Dior at...

The Hands Behind the Jacket

Jacqueline Mercier has been setting sleeves at Chanel for thirtytwo years. She sits at a worktable on rue Cambon's fifth floor, a halffinished tweed jacket pinned to a dress form beside her. The shoulder is still open. She lifts the sleeve...

The Triomphe bag leaves the atelier on Rue Vivienne in a cotton dust-bag, triple-knotted

The Triomphe bag leaves the atelier on Rue Vivienne in a cotton dustbag, tripleknotted. Inside: thirtytwo hours of work, compressed into five hundred grams of calfskin. The woman who assembled it — edgepainted the gussets, set the chain, bu...

## The Coat Maker

The Coat Maker Stephen Doig stands at a cutting table in Castleford, Yorkshire, holding a pattern piece against a length of gabardine that cost more per metre than most people spend on a winter coat. He has been cutting trenches for Burbe...

The fitting room in Solomeo smells faintly of cedar and coffee

The fitting room in Solomeo smells faintly of cedar and coffee. Brunello Cucinelli stands beside a workbench, turning over a camelhair coat as if it were a manuscript he's been asked to authenticate. His fingers trace the shoulder seam — ba...

## The Hands That Weave

The Hands That Weave Giovanna Bianchi has been plaiting leather for thirtyone years. She sits at a bench in Bottega Veneta's Montebello atelier, a lowceilinged room outside Vicenza where the air smells faintly of tannin and machine oil. I...

Balenciaga's artisans, named

The atelier on Avenue George V is quiet at nine in the morning, the kind of quiet that holds thirty people working in concentration. Dominique Leblanc sits at a table near the north window, a halffinished coat sleeve pinned to a dress form...

## The Hands That Built the Horns

The Hands That Built the Horns Simon Ungless is cutting antlers from leather in a basement studio in Central Saint Martins when Lee McQueen walks in with a deer skull wrapped in newspaper. It is 1992. The skull goes on the table. Ungless,...

The leather jacket hanging on the form in Stockholm has no lining

The leather jacket hanging on the form in Stockholm has no lining. Turn it inside out and the seams run raw, edges burnished but unbound, the way a glovemaker might finish kid skin destined for a hand that will never see it. Jonny Johansson...

## The Table in Antwerp

The Table in Antwerp Karolien Vandenberghe and Wout Vandenberghe are not related, despite the surname. They met in 2014 at a shared worktable in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, where students are assigned alphabetically. The coin...

## The house that Gianni built

The house that Gianni built Reggio di Calabria, 1972. A twentysixyearold dressmaker drapes jersey across a client's shoulder, pins it at the clavicle, and watches the fabric settle into something between a chiton and a second skin. Gianni...

## The Fitting Room on Via Gregoriana

The Fitting Room on Via Gregoriana Valentino Garavani stood in a firstfloor salon on Via Gregoriana in 1959, pinning a sleeve that wouldn't hang right. He was twentyseven. The room smelled of sizing and steam. His business partner, Gianca...

## The man who built a house out of sex appeal

The man who built a house out of sex appeal Tom Ford once said, in a 2004 interview with Vogue, that he had spent his entire career "trying to make women feel powerful through their sexuality." One could argue this was less a career strat...

## The Last Fitting

The Last Fitting Yves Saint Laurent stood in the centre of his atelier on avenue Marceau in January 1962, pinning muslin to a mannequin with the deliberate slowness of someone who had already decided what came next. He was twentyfive. Dio...

## The Saffiano Standard

The Saffiano Standard One enters the Prada archive through a side door off Via Fogazzaro, past a security desk staffed by men who do not smile. The room beyond is climatecontrolled to museum specification. Row upon row of steel shelving,...

## The Fitting Room in Milan

The Fitting Room in Milan Virgil Abloh stood in a fitting room in Milan in 2013, holding a piece of fabric he'd marked up with a Sharpie. The word "SCULPTURE" ran across the back of what would become a leather jacket. The quotation marks...

## The Second Line

The Second Line Miuccia Prada stands in the Via Fogazzaro showroom, midfitting, pinning a schoolgirl skirt that sits four inches above the knee. The year is 1992. The model shifts her weight. Miuccia steps back, considers the proportions,...

## The White Lab Coat

The White Lab Coat Martin Margiela did not bow. At the end of his spring 1989 show—his first—models walked a disused playground in the 20th arrondissement while children kicked a football against a chainlink fence. When the applause came,...

The workshop stood at 4, rue Neuve-des-Capucines, a short walk from the Place Vendôme

The workshop stood at 4, rue NeuvedesCapucines, a short walk from the Place Vendôme. The year was 1854. Louis Vuitton, then thirtythree, had spent the previous seventeen years layering canvas, oiling hinges, and solving the geometry of stac...

The founders of Loewe

The workshop sat above a tobacco shop on Calle del Príncipe, four flights up, and the men who gathered there in 1846 were not founders so much as leather workers who realised they could pool orders. Madrid had money then — court money, old...

## The Fitting Room in Arles

The Fitting Room in Arles Simon Porte Jacquemus stands in a rented studio in Arles, pinning a linen shirt onto a dress form that is, by his own admission, too small. It is 2009. He is nineteen. The shirt is cut from fabric his mother once...

## The Harness Maker's House

The Harness Maker's House Thierry Hermès opened his workshop at 24 Rue du Faubourg SaintHonoré in 1837, not to dress women or gentlemen but to equip their horses. He made bridles, saddles, and the full complement of leather goods required...

## The Saddler's Son

The Saddler's Son Guccio Gucci did not begin with leather. He began with luggage — other people's luggage, specifically, during a stint as a lift operator at the Savoy Hotel in London sometime around 1897. The trunks and valises that pass...

## The Fitting

The Fitting In 1952, Hubert de Givenchy stood in a workroom on rue Alfred de Vigny, cutting muslin for a coat that would have no lining. He was twentyfive. The fabric fell in a single unbroken plane from shoulder to hem, no darts, no shap...

## The Five Sisters and the Furrier's Daughter

The Five Sisters and the Furrier's Daughter A fitting room on Via del Plebiscito, 1946. Adele Casagrande stands at the cutting table, adjusting the fall of a mink collar. Her daughters — Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla, Alda — range in age fro...

## The House That Sicily Built

The House That Sicily Built Domenico Dolce stands in a fitting room in Milan, pinning the bodice of a black lace dress to a model's torso. He does not speak. Stefano Gabbana watches from a chair by the window, arms crossed, occasionally l...

## The Avenue Montaigne Paradox

The Avenue Montaigne Paradox Christian Dior was fortyone years old when he opened his couture house in 1946, which is to say he was not young. He had spent the better part of a decade as a sketcher for other designers — Robert Piguet, Luc...

## The Fitting

The Fitting Gabrielle Chanel stood in the doorway of her Rue Cambon atelier in 1926, watching a client turn in front of the mirror. The dress was black crêpe de Chine, cut straight through the hip with no ornament except a strand of pearl...

## The Saddle-Maker's Daughter

The SaddleMaker's Daughter Céline Vipiana was not a designer in the sense we now use the word. She cut no patterns, sketched no toiles, held no fittings in a mirrored atelier. She was, by training and disposition, a leatherworker — someon...

Thomas Burberry opened his first shop in Basingstoke in 1856, at twenty-one

Thomas Burberry opened his first shop in Basingstoke in 1856, at twentyone. He sold outdoor clothing to farmers and sportsmen. By 1879 he had invented gabardine. That is the official story. The truth is messier. Burberry did not invent wat...

The founders of Brunello Cucinelli

The man stands in a stonewalled room in Solomeo, a medieval hamlet forty minutes from Perugia, holding a length of cashmere the colour of wet sand. He is seventyone, dressed in a sweater and jacket cut from the same cloth his atelier will s...

## The Leather Room in Vicenza

The Leather Room in Vicenza Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro met in 1966 over a cutting table in the Veneto, where most Italian leather goods were still being made by hand in workshops that smelled of tannin and glue. They were not desig...

## The Last Fitting

The Last Fitting Cristóbal Balenciaga did not believe in applause. When the final model exited during his Paris shows, the designer remained backstage, invisible to the press and buyers seated in rigid rows. He preferred the atelier — nat...

## The Fitting

The Fitting Lee Alexander McQueen once told a journalist from The Face that he learned to cut a sleeve in an afternoon and spent the next fifteen years learning everything else. That was 1996, before the horns and the hologram, before Giv...

## The Room Above the Jeans Shop

The Room Above the Jeans Shop Stockholm, 1996. Four men in a room above a production facility on Torsgatan, screenprinting logos onto raw denim. They had made a hundred pairs of jeans — red stitching, unfinished hems, a fit borrowed from...

## The Fitting Room

The Fitting Room Łukasz Nowak stands in a firstfloor atelier off Rue de Turenne, pinning the sleeve head of a coat that refuses to sit flat. The fabric is a doublefaced cashmere from Loro Piana, cream on one side, tobacco brown on the oth...

The fitting room at Versace headquarters in Milan smells of espresso and hairspray

The fitting room at Versace headquarters in Milan smells of espresso and hairspray. Donatella Versace stands five feet from a model draped in gold chainmail, arms crossed, head tilted. She says nothing for twelve seconds. Then: "Higher." Th...

The fitting room at Palazzo Mignanelli runs the length of the first floor

The fitting room at Palazzo Mignanelli runs the length of the first floor. Alessandro Michele stands near the far window, arms crossed, watching a model turn in a gown that appears to have been assembled from three separate centuries. The b...

Portrait: the creative director at Tom Ford

The fitting room at Tom Ford's Madison Avenue flagship runs to black lacquer and low light, which is to say it runs exactly as one would expect. On a Tuesday afternoon in late September, the designer himself stood at the centre of it, hands...

## The Long Line

The Long Line Anthony Vaccarello stands in a fitting room on Avenue Marceau, pinning a jacket that won't close. The shoulder sits where it should. The lapel rolls cleanly. But the button stance is wrong by two centimetres, and two centime...

The fitting room at Prada's Via Fogazzaro headquarters smells faintly of steam and wool

The fitting room at Prada's Via Fogazzaro headquarters smells faintly of steam and wool. Miuccia Prada stands beside a dress form draped in a halffinished coat — charcoal mohair, the sleeves still pinned — and gestures at the shoulder line....

The fitting room in Off-White's Milan headquarters smells faintly of steam and sizing

The fitting room in OffWhite's Milan headquarters smells faintly of steam and sizing. Ibrahim Kamara stands beside a rack of samples, pulling a sleeve forward to check the fall. The jacket is black nylon with diagonal stripes running from s...

The fitting room on Via Fogazzaro is smaller than you would expect

The fitting room on Via Fogazzaro is smaller than you would expect. A single mirror. A rack of samples. Miuccia Prada stands to one side, arms folded, watching a model turn in a pleated skirt that stops four inches above the knee. The hem i...

## The White Coat

The White Coat John Galliano stands in the atelier on rue SaintMaur, adjusting the sleeve of a coat that appears to be disintegrating. The fabric is intact. The construction is not. He pulls a seam, watches the shoulder collapse inward, t...

## The Fitting

The Fitting Pharrell Williams stands in a back room at Louis Vuitton's Asnières workshop, one hand on a toile draped over a mannequin, the other scrolling through reference images on his phone. The toile — a canvas mockup of what will bec...

The fitting room at Loewe's workshop in Madrid is smaller than you'd expect

The fitting room at Loewe's workshop in Madrid is smaller than you'd expect. Jonathan Anderson stands near the window, turning a sleeve inside out. The jacket is halfcanvas, halfdeconstructed, and he's testing where the lining should stop....

Portrait: the creative director at Jacquemus

Simon Porte Jacquemus stands in a whitewalled studio in the 10th arrondissement, pinning a straw hat the size of a bicycle wheel to a model's head. The brim extends so far it grazes her shoulders. He steps back, considers, removes two pins,...

## The Fitting

The Fitting Nadège VanhéeCybulski stands in front of a mirror at 24 Faubourg SaintHonoré, adjusting the fall of a leather jacket that weighs less than it looks. The sleeve is cut long—deliberately so—and the shoulder sits just behind the...

The fitting room on Via delle Caldaie smells faintly of steam and bergamot

The fitting room on Via delle Caldaie smells faintly of steam and bergamot. Sabato De Sarno stands near the threeway mirror, one hand resting on a mannequin draped in camel cashmere, the other gesturing toward a seam that runs just slightly...

## The Fitting

The Fitting Sarah Burton stands in the Givenchy atelier on Avenue George V, one hand on the shoulder of a mannequin draped in black wool. The jacket is halfpinned, the sleeves not yet set. She lifts the fabric at the armscye, tests the fa...

Portrait: the creative director at Fendi

The fitting room at Fendi's Via Solari headquarters runs long and narrow, with bolt upon bolt of fabric stacked floor to ceiling along one wall. Kim Jones stands near the far end, sleeves rolled, turning a sleeve head inside out to examine...

## The Fitting

The Fitting Domenico Dolce is adjusting a sleeve. The model stands still in a black lace dress, the kind of garment that looks simple until you notice the six different techniques holding it together. Stefano Gabbana watches from the corn...

The atelier at 30 Avenue Montaigne runs quiet in the hour before a fitting

The atelier at 30 Avenue Montaigne runs quiet in the hour before a fitting. Maria Grazia Chiuri stands at a wooden table, one hand steadying a toile draped over a mannequin, the other gesturing toward the waistline. She is explaining someth...