Lemarie: Feathers and Flowers

The legendary feather and decorative flower maker Lemarié has supplied almost every Parisian couturier since the days of Coco Chanel herself. The small family firm was one of the handful of specialist artisans’ ateliers bought by the Chanel company in the mid-1990s in order to safeguard their endangered savoir-faire. Chapeaux volières — plumed, feathered and delightfully named “birdhouse hats” — were all the rage when the company was founded in 1880 by Palmyre Coyette, André Lemarié’s grandmother. But by the time 21-year-old André took over the family business in 1946 extravagant millinery was already on the decline and Lemarié’s shipments of feathered headbands to Saks Fifth Avenue were hampered by the increasingly restrictive import laws in the United States. Soon, though, Lemarié began collaborating with Parisian fashion houses, working in close collaboration with haute couturiers including Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior. Over the years, Lemarié won fashion-world fame for elaborate handcrafted creations, among them a white ostrich-feather evening coat for Yves Saint Laurent, a pheasant-feather bodysuit for Givenchy and a marabou trench coat for Thierry Mugler. At the same time Lemarié was crowned “king of the camellias” as his atelier turned out some 20,000 of Chanel’s iconic flowers every year, their intricate petals made of silk, chiffon, satin, organza, velvet, tweed, vinyl, leather and more. When André Lemarié retired in 2000, Eric-Charles Donatien was plucked from his job in the menswear atelier at Hermès to become the company’s new creative director. While the staff at the atelier still works with century-old techniques and hand tools, Donatien has modernized the look of much of Lemarié’s output, and also launched an edgy line of jewelry influenced by tribal art, using feathers, rhinestones and precious metals.

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Originally published in the December 2009 issue of France Today.