Métiers d’art de la mode

How can we protect ancestral know-how from the tiddlewave of globalization? The author was in charge at the ministry of Culture, for years, of overlooking art masters. She states in this book that the extremely specialised jobs protect a lot more than the enforced lowering of prouction prices. In the fashion world for example, rare professions seem to bloom. Ms. Farnault shows emphatically the success of recent French manufacturers of embroidery, leather, or soft furnishings. Indeed this this survival flollows a huge hemorrage. In France in 1900 there were some 800 artisans who worked with feathers in France in 1900, some fifty half a century ago,. Today four are left. othe trades also seem like survivors of another era, such as the floral decorator or, even better, the pleat specialist. The Gérard Lognon workshop had some 60 crafts women in the middle of the 20th century. They have kept thousands of cardboard molds that help make "peacock", or "accordeon" or "Watteau" pleats in the shape of flowers, of herrring bone patterns or of scales. A unique patrimony, a true historical monument.

• Métiers d’art de la mode by Hélène Farnault, Le Chêne, 2014, 282 p., €45.