A Creative Studio
The Creative Studio, led by Artistic Director Ingrid Lager, infuses designs and fabrics with a bold, meticulous quality and complete freedom of inspiration… None of the Lelièvre collections are swayed by fashion trends: all the creative input comes straight from the studio. Our style has a pure character to allow the designs to speak for themselves, the colours, the materials, the senses.
The fabrics in the Lelièvre Collection are never obvious but follow their own path: inspired by art, travel, history, French heritage and other lands… Even if design is simple - and it may well be - the fabric always conveys an emotion.
Original weaving looms
Lelièvre Paris remains one of the rare textile companies that have their own weaving mill. Located in the Loire near Lyon and equipped with stunning original weaving looms, the Lelièvre workshops produce exceptional silk fabric collections with a highly-developed sampling system.
This atelier, in the inner suburbs of Lyon and only a short walk from La Croix-Rousse, has under one roof a collection of hand-looms which offer a unique savoir-faire. A team of artisan weavers, wedded to their craft, can fulfil all manner of special silk orders for classic properties, including chateaux and museums: lampas brocades, chiselled velvets, silk brocades with gold and silver threads. All of these fabrics are produced by means of the Jacquard system, installed and perfected in the manufacturing ateliers by 1806. This manual weaving process proceeds at the rate of anything between a few centimetres to several metres per day, depending on the complexity of the work.
The latest generation of machine looms of Lelièvre Paris can reproduce the majority of either ancient designs or create contemporary collections with incomparable quality, making them available to a much wider public.The savoir-faire can fulfil all manner of special silk orders lampas brocades, chiselled velvets,silk brocades…
Craftsmen
Our textile partners have a wealth of experience in fabric production. Fabric experts and craftsmen with a unique set of skills…
In machine weaving:
Translate the drawing (archive) or the pattern of a fabric into a language read by the electronic jacquard machine, set the weave, taking into account the number of threads, the number of colours to be used, the repetition of the pattern etc.
Prepares the bobbins of dyed yarn before they are put onto the loom or used for the warp
Prepare the warp before it is placed on the loom. Making sure the correct number of threads of the right length are set up in parallel…
Place the warp on the loom. Each warp thread is knotted to the previous warp. If there are 12,000 threads, there are 12,000 knots…
Supervise and monitor the smooth progress of the weaving, act on stoppages, breakages, anomalies, etc…
Monitors the quality of all pieces of fabric leaving the loom, checking, minor repairs, etc.
Adjustment of weaving machines and other machines for each step of production - stopping, starting, replacing parts, etc. - The technician starts the weaving.
Supervises manufacturing, technical solutions and steps to be taken for special orders, tests, preservation of archives and gives layout instructions.
In hand weaving:
They take care of the assembly and adaptation of the loom to each new order, placing the warp threads, or bobbins for jacquard velvets. They manually insert all the frames into the weave, and manually manoeuvre the jacquard mechanism. They constantly check the pattern so that it stays the same over the entire length of the production.
Supervises manufacturing, technical solutions and steps to be taken for special orders, tests and preservation of archives.
