The Philosophy Behind Lemaire’s $100 Million Ascent

PARIS — In designer duo Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s Place des Vosges office, a brutalist wooden table is backdropped by modular USM bookshelves and a smattering of images pinned to the wall: their “Pantheon of heroes,” Lemaire calls it, populated by New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, philosopher Guy Debord, a young Vivienne Westwood, David Bowie on set for “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and more.

The inspirations capture a distinct 1970s vibe, when post-war economic optimism gave way to an era of listlessness and disaffection, which manifested in fashion as a crumpled, tossed-off dandyism. In Paris, artists and intellectuals grappled with how to navigate the banality of a society increasingly transfixed by spectacle and mass consumption after idealistic 1960s protest movements collapsed. “All that once was directly lived has become mere representation,” Debord wrote in “Society of the Spectacle.”

It’s no wonder that Lemaire would draw inspiration from this period: the designer, Paris’ champion of low-key, logo-free design, first came onto the scene during fashion’s big-bang of the 1990s, when luxury was turning into a global business powered by the theatrical glamour of creators like John Galliano and Alexander McQueen. Lemaire’s clothes — a mostly seasonless wardrobe inspired heavily by archival workwear from France and Asia — were a departure from prevailing trends.

“For us, reality isn’t a dirty word,” Lemaire says. “We’re interested in everyday life, human relationships, real culture.”

Lemaire put his brand on pause in 2001 when he went to work as artistic director at Lacoste. From 2010 to 2014, he designed womenswear for Hermès while simultaneously relaunching his namesake brand with Tran, his former romantic partner and co-creative director since 2010

Day-to-Night Look

Tran, who came of age in New York City and Paris’ Marais and worked in publishing before transitioning to fashion, infused the brand with a softer, more sensual bent. The brand built a cult following, but after its decade-long hiatus still found itself running contrary to industry forces — this time the rise of influencers, logomania and graphic streetwear designs calibrated to pop on smartphone screens.

But the brand’s vocabulary of oversized, everyday garments, often rendered in rugged canvas and a muted palette of tinted neutrals — anticipated other key fashion super-cycles: the casualisation of luxury, a focus on comfortable garments, gender-fluid design and day-to-night dressing.

“Paris is a complete city where you want to be able to navigate different spaces, be with very different types of people from day to night. Sometimes you want to be able to blend into the crowd,” Tran says.

“They created the ‘nine to nine’ look,” La Samaritaine merchandiser Florian Malfroy says. “It’s sexy, timeless—but still fashion, in a way that’s both camouflaged and visible. Really it’s the perfect Parisian wardrobe.”

Lemaire built a cult following from its original store on Rue de Poitou, but like many designer labels remained small and financially fragile for years. Keeping the brand afloat required reinvesting money from the design duo’s consulting gigs with Uniqlo (they design the Japanese giant’s “U” sub-brand as well as serving as artistic directors of the brand’s R&D centre in Paris).

A 2015 capital injection from France’s Bpi state investment bank, a 2017 distribution deal with South Korean retail behemoth Samsung Group, and a large minority investment from Uniqlo parent company Fast Retailing in 2018 also helped to support the brand.

Ten-Fold Expansion

Then came liftoff: Lemaire’s business surged following the pandemic as customers worldwide burned through savings on designer items. Sales continued to accelerate in 2023 and 2024 as many customers turned their attention to more discreet and accessibly-priced alternatives to luxury mega-brands.

Sales grew ten-fold from less than €10 million in 2019 to over €100 ($103 million) in 2024, as best-sellers like twisted seam pants, bathrobe coats and matte silk blouses continued to fly off the racks, rejoined by a burgeoning leather goods business featuring supple anatomic footwear and quirky bags shaped like seashells and croissants.

A new chief executive, Laetitia Mergui (a former M&A lawyer hired from Chloé), came on in 2022. Mergui worked to accelerate the transition to leather goods, which now account for more than half of the business, as well as spearheading the brand’s expansion into retail.

A flagship store in Paris’ Marais, opened in 2023, has continued to boast a line of fashion pilgrims even as demand sputtered across the broader industry. Last fall, the brand rolled out new flagships in Tokyo and Seoul — converting residential houses into immersive retail destinations — and opened its first boutique in China, in Chengdu. Retail and direct e-commerce now make up more than half of the label’s sales.

Operating margins have risen to around 20 percent, Mergui said, boosted by a full-price sell-through of 80 percent.

Lemaire’s success stands out in a challenging ecosystem for designer start-ups that’s seen outfits including Y/Project, Vampire’s Wife and Mara Hoffman shutter over the past year. The brand’s low-key approach to design and communications — relying principally on word-of-mouth to drive sales — is also a clear differentiator from the only other Paris designer brand to have broken the $100 million threshold in recent years: Jacquemus, which has been propelled by social media-savvy narration and star-studded runway spectacles.

A Fashion Philosophy

“Discussions about personal style often focus on being loud to be yourself: extreme individualism,” Lemaire says. “The fact that people are returning to something simpler doesn’t mean it isn’t personal; it’s a more subtle way.”

For women, that one’s power to express a sensual allure can be augmented rather than extinguished by covered-up, sartorial ensembles is a well-known trope from Shakespeare’s comedies to Marlene Dietrich. It’s a notion Lemaire, Tran and their community of shoppers embrace.

Rather than sexiness, “sensuality is interesting to us; eroticism is important,” Lemaire says. “Sensuality that’s suggested, that has to be guessed at a bit is more powerful — it isn’t necessarily about ‘boobs out’.”

“We have always had an approach that’s about questioning our relationship with fashion a little. Is fashion a social shell, a disguise to demonstrate social status? We are interested in more essential things. Such as the luxury of being in alignment with one’s personality; of being comfortable in clothes, of feeling confident without having clothes that take over your personality,” Lemaire says.

“What is elegance, in fact? That’s the basic question. What makes someone have style, if you think about, is not the ‘codes’ being played out by the fashion system. It’s rather people who create their own uniform. Who have a singularity. Who seek to understand themselves. So it’s not such a superficial thing.”

Lemaire sets itself apart from other logo-free, seasonless designers like The Row with its more accessible pricing (hobo bags are priced at €1,300, versus €3,200 at the Olsen twins’ luxury concept) with a value proposition underscored by sturdy construction: €590 for a pair of jeans isn’t cheap, but the heavy-weight canvas is designed to be worn hundreds of times. “People can tell they will be able to wear our clothes often,” Tran says.

“Luxury is having clothes that hold up, that are well designed. Objects and accessories that age well, that are thought out in their functionality,” Lemaire says.

Next Steps

Looking ahead, Lemaire is preparing to open a flagship in Shanghai later this year, while exploring options for an additional Paris location and expansion to the US, currently the brand’s biggest e-commerce market.

The brand is dipping its toe into advertising and celebrity marketing, running targeted campaigns for store openings and cultural events like sponsored art exhibitions and concerts.

“We’re ambitious, but continuing to be very prudent, because we don’t have private equity as a majority shareholder or anybody else putting pressure,” Mergui says. “We’d rather have a scarcity of products than wanting to reach such big sales targets and having a lot of inventory at the end of the season.”

It’s a view Lemaire says he’s held since relaunching the brand in 2008. During his experiences at Lacoste, Hermès and Uniqlo, he learned that “to be a designer, to make good collections and a clear vision of style is great, but there needs to be an organisation that’s really coherent with that vision, or it won’t work.”

Lemaire’s design studio, atelier, showroom and corporate headquarters are all regrouped in the brand’s Place des Vosges base, allowing the company to continue to make decisions carefully but swiftly even as the team has grown from 20 to 120 employees over the last five years.

The brand is open to bringing on additional investment, but “the most important thing for us is to keep that independence,” Lemaire says. “Of course we want to grow, but we don’t want to have some super ambitious plan because what’s more important to us is building a human platform. Once you have a strong, coherent team, you can do anything.”