Photos by Fabrice Fortin for Paris by Appointment Only™

Even though they live in the capital of couture, most Parisians can’t sew a stitch. Like most countries, France kicked home economics to the curb decades ago. Since hardly any one knows how to shorten a hem, fix a button, or take in a seam, you can find a retoucheur on practically every Parisian corner. But all that is about to change thanks to Sweat Shop, a new creative collective in the residential 10^th whose mission is to teach Parisians how to make and customize their own clothes.

Filled with revamped 60s school desks, a large central worktable, vintage sewing patterns, pools of colorful yarn, top-of-the-line Singer sewing machines and an adorable chill-out corner with sweet treats, Sweat Shop is a fun communal space where work equals wardrobe.

“The idea is to encourage people to buy less, make things for themselves and recycle what they already own,” explains fashion designer Sissi Holleis, who came up with the out-of-the-box concept with makeup artist Martena Duss.

Sweat Shop functions like a cyber café; only instead of computers you have sewing machines at your disposal. You can rent a machine by the hour and stop by anytime during the week and work on that little design of yours if you know what you’re doing. Or you can sign-up for one of the five thematic workshops that are available each week, and have one of the experts on hand teach you the ropes.

While I’ve never as much as sewn a hem, I’m already obsessing about the 70s YSL jumpsuit that I’m going to make using one of the vintage Vogue patters available for rent.

What to expect at Sweat Shop:

Atelier Ouvert (2H): From beginners to the highly advanced, anyone is welcome. All you need to do is bring your supplies to fix that winter coat lining, make a dress, or copy a pair of your favorite slacks, and your professor will guide you through your project.

Atelier Enfants (2H): Put that kid to work! This introduction course teaches children how to knit, crochet and sew by hand as well as by machine. Think of how much money and time you’ll save when your little tike knows how to hem his own pants or sew back buttons that have fallen off.

Atelier Tricot (2H): Every Tuesday night Sweat Shop turns into a knitting circle during this two hour all-level class.

Atelier Custom (4H): Ripped jeans, cut-off Ts, studded leather jackets, it all sounds so easy, but think again. Customization is the subtle art of glamorous destruction. So let the Queen of customization, Vava Dudu, guide you through the death and rebirth of your favorite frocks.

Atelier Mlle Kou (7H): Mlle Kou, aka Céline Dupuy, swings by the shop once a week to give this all-day couture workshop which starts with an original pattern, is punctuated with tea and snacks prepared by Bob’s Juice Bar next door and ends with you walking away with a fabulous handmade design.

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Prices: Click here for a list of prices.

Snugly stylish sweaters are the most wanted items in a wardrobe. Without them, you may as well spend the winter in bed. That’s why I dream not of sparkly jewels or wads of cash but of owning an army of grannies who send me a steady supply of gorgeous handmade knits from November through March (yes, it’s that cold in Paris).

Turns out my fantasy isn’t all my own. Sylvia Toth, a Columbian designer who moved to Paris eight years ago, dreamed up a way to battle the bitter winter months by hiring a gang of knitters from her homeland. Lucky for us, she shares the handcrafted gems through WARMI, her artisanal fashion label.

Launched in 2008, WARMI is a Franco-Columbian brand that blends contemporary style with indigenous craftsmanship. Each collection is designed by Toth in Paris then produced in a remote mountainous village in Northern Columbia by a cooperative of women weavers. Though you’d think the name was just a funky new diminutive for “warm,” WARMI means “woman” in Quechua, one of the last living indigenous languages of the Andean region.

“The artisanal traditions in Columbia are very rich,” says Toth who discovered her knitting dream team at a native crafts festival during one of her habitual trips home. “Working with these women brings me back to my roots and builds a link between the two cultures,” says Toth who travels to Tausa several times a years to knit with the women and soak up the local color and traditions in order to feed it back into her designs.

Her whimsical animals motifs, for example, pay homage to masks worn during the annual Carnaval de Barranquilla. Inspired by their wild colors and  graphics, she invents new species for her women to stitch, infusing her knits with a playful, folklore wonder.

In addition to her meticulously stitched graphics are sculptural works that blend art and fashion. “I think of the designs as objects, not clothes, because my background is in design, not fashion,” says Toth who layers organic forms, like leaves in her Eva Bolera, or waves in her Capeline Pauline, to build irregular shapes and volumes.

From complex stitching and embroidered detailing to intricate assemblage, each woman in the cooperative has her own particular strength. Toth not only designs with each woman in mind, she also encourages them to flaunt their personal style, resulting in a collection ripe with charming irregularities and individual quirks.

In additional to their subtle stylistic signatures, each baby angora, naturally-dyed design is tagged with the knitter’s name and the number of hours she spent making it. So when you get compliments on your one-of-a-kind, handmade knit you know exactly who to thank.

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Prices: €50-500
Stocklist: click here for list of boutiques where WARMI is sold
Special Orders/Bespoke: ParisBAO can organize a visit to the WARMI showroom in Paris to commission a bespoke creation. Contact me for more details.

Over the last ten years hundreds of French fashion artisans have been given the ax at venerable houses by number crunching executives sending production overseas. But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure…especially when centuries-old savoir-faire is heaped high in the bin!

Taking advantage of luxury industry’s shortsighted greed and indifference towards its own heritage, Chavernet, a new Paris-based couture house, is putting Paris’ forgotten couturiers back to work.

While only two-years-old, Chavernet has already carved a visionary niche in the word of high-end fashion. Promising a modern take on old-style craftsmanship at remarkably tame prices, the brand is the clever brainchild of two Parisian entrepreneurs, Maxime Liebens and Armen Der Agopian

“Most luxury brands adhere to the ‘Made in France’ mystique, but the truth is that the majority of their clothing is constructed overseas,” explains Liebens, who named the brand after his great-grandmother, Louise Chavernet, one of the first women to own her own fashion atelier in Paris.

“We wanted to go back to the source of couture and produce dresses in Paris using the best materials and savoir-faire.”

What Chavernet offers its word-of-mouth, international clientele is as crazy as it is chic. In less than a week (aka the average length of their client’s trip to Paris) they will design, produce and deliver an original couture cocktail dress to your Paris abode.

Their signature LSDs (little silk dresses) are all made by hand in Paris by a team of expert dressmakers (a 92-yr-old insider pointed them to the city’s best) using end-of-season couture fabric sourced throughout Paris.

“There are a lot of clients who are fed up with the whole circus of shopping in a giant fashion flagship and who just simply want a beautifully handcrafted original dress.”

Chavernet’s “One Woman = One Dress” motto caters to a very real desire to own something stellar that no one else but you will ever be caught wearing. Less obvious, but nonetheless priceless, is the exhilarating experience of buying the dress, which goes something like this:

Step 1: Come to Paris, but before you do, make an appointment with Chavernet.
Step 2: Think about the dress of your dreams and collect visuals to help you describe it.
Step 3: Meet with the Chavernet commercial director, designer as well as the couturier assigned to make your dress. At the end of your meeting your measurements will have been taken and a rough sketch made of your dress.
Step 4: Receive a definitive sketch with material samples the next morning at your hotel.
Step 5: Once you have approved sketch and materials, a muslin prototype is produced and sent over for fitting.
Step 6: A second prototype is produced in your chosen fabric and sent over with a couturier for the final fitting.
Step 7: Once you give the okay, the dress is made and delivered to your hotel.
Step 8: Traipse around Paris in your fabulous, new, custom-made frock.

Just a word of advice: if you plan on fitting into your dress by the time it’s delivered, you might want to lay off the macarons.

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Price: 1000E-1500E, depending on complexity of design and choice of fabric and finishes.
Further reading: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (by Dana Thomas); Chère Haute Couture (by Janie Samet); Luxury Considered (report by Ledbury Research); Agenda Inc.

All images by Nicholas Calcott for Paris By Appointment Only™

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Leading Role: The ageless, timeless Jacques Fivel (above), a man of many hats, including vintage fashion dealer, sculptor and gong therapist.
Supporting Cast: His wife, the amazing tattoo artist Philippine Schaefer (above), their two young kids, a couple of cats, and whoever else shows up.
Setting: Jacques Fivel’s vast, ground floor atelier in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, a remote neighborhood in the Northeast corner of the city.
Décor: A cabinet of curiosities, Fivel’s place is packed to the rafters with gorgeous handcrafted aural sculptures, random artifacts, ancient hunting tools, Balinese totems, and racks and racks of fabulous frocks.

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At high noon the first Wednesday of each month a series of sirens rings throughout Paris to test the city’s emergency warning system. Startling at first, the practice grounds you in the present—at that very moment you know exactly where and when you are. The sound is also a haunting blast from the past (it’s impossible not to think of curfews and distress alarms when you hear it). For those in the know, the signal has another sense entirely: it’s a stirring reminder to attend Jacques Fivel’s monthly fashion happening, Le Jour de la Sirène (The day of the siren), later on that evening.

Much like the bell for which it’s named, Fivel’s party has a bygone, La Dolce Vita feel to it. Full of fascinating eccentrics, surreal conversations, flamboyant costumes and breathtaking décor, it feels like a fin de siècle film thick with decadence, elegance and intrigue. With the exception of few added flourishes, the cinematic show unfolds much in this manner:

8:30pm: Just as the kids are finishing up dinner, people start wandering in carrying bottles of wine as offerings. A steady stream of characters, including Brazilian folk musicians, art restorers, starving poets, war heroes, and fashion muses gather around the kitchen before filling up the colorful space with their amiable charm and chatter. Animals and kids complete the Baccalian backdrop as Fivel works the crowd. Starting with his standard look—black leather pants, shagreen cowboy boots and a fitted button down shirt—Fivel changes attire every so often as the night draws on.  First it’s the tailored red and white striped dinner jacket, then the purple suede biker jacket and gem-incrusted starfish necklace made by an ex-lover, then the Dior Homme black and white spotted fur jacket with black leather sleeves.

10:00pm: Inspired by his whimsical display of sartorial play, revelers start plucking items to try on too. The gold leather Balenciaga jackets draped over the hand painted room divider mesmerizes all, as does the embroidered Kangaroo couture Lacroix jacket. People switch in an out of both marveling over their images in the mirror. Pictures are snapped, laughs exchanged and checkbooks taken out (the clothes are for sale, biensûr..)  A fan of large collars, an American expat blogger spots a Flash Gorden inspired Karl Lagerfeld jacket in the corner and tries it only to find out that it’s not only slightly too large but way out of her budget for now (800E).  One of Fivel’s more voluptuous lady friends is modeling a deep V-neck black Lanvin leather jumpsuit nearby, so no one has noticed the blogger’s disappointment.

11:00pm Camera pulls away from fashion action back towards kitchen where an erotic cartoonist is sketching figures on a sculpture pedestal in a bright pink felt marker. A crowd has formed to watch while sipping leisurely on their glasses of wine. Nearby, two people are crouched over a bundle of ancient metal spears that Fivel fetched from an off-camera closet.  Is a sale going on? Who knows? But the stuff looks pretty rare. What else does he have hidden around the house? The possibilities seem endless.

12:00am: Items modeled by Fivel earlier in the evening have now made their way onto his guests.  A strapping fellow is wearing the very smart-looking red and white striped dinner jacket and has his checkbook out. He turns to Fivel and says, “I can only pay by check, don’t have enough cash,” to which his host responds, “that’s alright, nobody’s perfect.”

1:00am
What’s this? An impromtu concert? Channeling Seu Jorge and Manu Chao, some dude is belting out Spanish love songs on guitar. Fivel saunters over arm raised like a Spanish dancer while clacking his heels against the floor. Eventually the whole crowd joins the dance, dressed to the nines is their fabulous new frocks.

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Email me if you’d like to attend Le Jour de la Sirène, the first Wednesday evening of each month.