LE BOOK sits with Solène Lescouët
Written By LE BOOK
There is something quietly defiant about Solène Lescouet. She graduated from the Chardon-Savart workshop in 2017, spent months stitching canvases by hand in Chanel's haute couture ateliers, and then without a grand plan, without a backer started getting orders. Her label took shape the way the best things do: naturally, stubbornly, on her own terms. She was twenty-something, fresh out of school, and she simply began.
Four years later, she worked out of a Parisian incubator that was once Jean Paul Gaultier's first studio. The symbolism is not lost on her. What she builds in that space oversized Dracula collars, theatrical crinolines, patchwork coats that feel lifted from a Gothic stage set is fashion as pure narrative. Her label is not a brand that sells clothes. It is a brand that tells stories.
A world built collection by collection
Each collection is conceived as a complete world. The first was punk meets Renaissance. The second, The Tales of Hoffmann, drawn from the classical ballet. The most recent: Dracula, anchored around the label's most iconic piece, an enormous white lace collar that has become Lescouët’s signature. She arrives at her subjects the way a researcher might: through libraries, films, music, a deep immersion in whatever era or mythology she is chasing. The story ends, she says, when she feels it not when she plans it.
This approach to creation is inseparable from the materials she works with. She builds almost entirely from deadstock fabrics: off-cuts and surplus from major houses, rescued before they become waste. She creates accessories from whatever remains. She collaborates with Hurel the embroidery supplier for Chanel to develop exclusive prints, including a custom motif in velvet on tulle and, for another collection, a hand-drawn repeat that she describes as somewhere between a Mickey Mouse on drugs. It is, she says with complete sincerity, her favourite fabric she has ever worked with.
"I wanted to communicate through fashion not just create a T-shirt. Telling stories through clothes is what inspired me from the beginning."
The collar nobody wanted
At Chardon-Savart, she was told her collars would never sell. The teachers were not cruel, they were practical. Nobody wore oversized collars in the street. The market did not exist. She kept drawing them anyway. When she launched her label, the collar became her manifesto: first in its full theatrical scale Dracula lace, red tarpaulin crinolines and then in a more accessible form, a mini-choker designed to bring her vision to a wider audience. Affordable, wearable, still unmistakably hers.
It took four years, but the collar had its moment. The instinct proved right. That particular stubbornness, the refusal to stand down a vision that the market has not yet caught up to is perhaps the most defining thing about her. It also extends to how she runs the business. Lescouët is alone. She handles the design, the production, the client outreach, the sales calls she openly admits to hating. She describes herself as shy. She does it anyway, every day, because she has no other choice, and because she believes not without difficulty that she deserves to be in the room.
The year of the Palmers
Last year changed the scale of things. A direct message from television presenter Daphne Burki led, somewhat improbably, to Lescouet dressing artists for the Paris 2024 Olympic opening festivities, on top of dressing Keke Palmer for I Love Boosters. Her work is also featured in a scene from Emily In Paris - filmed at the Louvre featured one of her looks.
None of it was planned. The Olympic commission came from a single DM asking if she liked sports, which eventually led to a call with the legendary Daphné Burki. The film placements came through her press office, which sends her pieces to productions and stylists on an ongoing basis. What is striking is less the volume of placements than the breadth: music, cinema, live performance, prestige television. She has found its way into every format where image matters, without compromising anything in the process.
Custom commissions follow the same logic. A singer in Los Angeles sends a mood board; she designs from scratch red leather, metal hardware, and an oversized jean. A London singer needs a vinyl Union Jack dress for a Sex Pistols tribute. Yoa needs a ruffled bodysuit for a tour. Each piece is different. The voice, as she puts it, stays the same.
"The clothes change. The voice stays. I put myself entirely inside what they need while still offering my style."
What comes next ?
In the shorter term, she is building out her wholesale presence, exploring concept store partnerships, and dreaming of Tokyo, a market she has been eyeing since an invitation from the Indonesian embassy brought her to Jakarta for a show last year. She teaches at a fashion school in Lyon on the side. She is three months from leaving the incubator and finding a new space. She is, by most measures, still at the beginning.
Her mother is a sculptor. Her father is an engineer. The creative obsession, she says, came entirely from her mother's side and it has been the through-line of everything since. Jean-Charles de Castelbajac came to her first show. That was four years ago. The collars have found their audience. The rest is still being written, stitch by stitch, in the studio that used to belong to someone else.
Quick fire Q&A
Favourite film: La planète sauvage, Mulholland Drive, They Shoot Horses Don't They?
Favourite designer: Alexander McQueen
Favourite legend: Patti Smith
Favourite place in Paris: Le Lipstick, the Bottle Shop in Bastille, Hotel Amour
Whose wardrobe would you steal?: Lady Gaga's
Three words to define your DNA: Theatrical. Poetic. Colourful.
Your sign: Gemini
One piece of advice for young designers: Persevere. Believe in your dreams. And hang in there even when the months are hard.