Interview with Jeanne Friot : genderless and militant fashion

For you, Jeanne Friot is a way of expressing yourself politically. Is that what sets you apart from other designers?

Talking about our community, talking about the role of women in fashion and talking about a lot of things about gender, I think we're maybe the only ones today who really have a voice.

Is it difficult, in our society, to break away from the codes of masculine and feminine in fashion?

That's why I created this brand. There's a difference between what I perceive and what society is like. For me, we’re in an ideal world in which we're no longer in a binary situation. But it's not the reality of society today, it is only the case for a fragment of the population. There are still things to deconstruct and work to do.

Each collection carries a message. How do your ideas and inspirations influence your creative process? 

The themes of each collection inspire us to create the themes that will appear on the shows. Renewing themes changes things, but the creative process remains the same. 

You use upcycled fabrics for your collections. Does the choice of fabrics inspire your pieces, or do you choose fabrics according to your ideas?

It's a dialogue between the two. There's no one way of working; with us it's quite organic. Sometimes we have a piece structured around the body and we'll choose the fabric because we want something that's luminous or voluptuous, lighter or denser. And sometimes, when I go to Nona Source (supplier of deadstock fabrics from partner luxury houses, also located at La Caserne) with whom I work, I'll see fabrics and that will give me the idea of working around the fabric to create a piece. There's nothing definite or preconceived about it.  

Can we hope that the accessibility of deadstock materials will greatly encourage slow fashion?

You have tools like Nona that are accessible to everyone and are very well made. Then there's the question of how you produce and on what scale. It's quite easy to work with at first when you're a very young designer and you're not producing many pieces. As the company grows, there's the question of not being able to deliver as many pieces as you want, of having to choose between stores because you can't deliver to all the stores that want that creation. I think the real question is how we grow as a structure when you use deadstock materials. It's accessible, but the work around it is going to be more complex. 

You were included in Vogue Business' "100 Innovators" this year. What does it mean to you to have your work honored by such institutions?

It's important because we need institutions to help us and acknowledge us. It gives us good news and moments of joy too. As a young designer, you're always quite precarious, you have ups and downs, very happy and lively moments and others that are very hard to deal with emotionally. For me, fashion is a battle, so it's obviously good to see that others understand you.

You were part of the Sphère program of the Fédération de Haute Couture and had your work exhibited during Paris Fashion Week. What are your goals for 2024?

It's to present shows in January and in June. I'm especially looking forward to presenting the next collection, which has a theme that's important to me. Then, my goals are to develop the company and pay my teams. We're still very small at the moment, we look big because we're lucky enough to have exponential media coverage that opened doors for us, but in fact we're really very small. It's getting harder and harder to keep up, and what I really want is to be able to expand the company and hire more employees, and to be able to keep growing too.

You worked with Clémence Cahu on the "Sirens" collection, and now you're collaborating again for Première Classe. What prompted these collaborations? 

Clémence and I worked together for nearly 8 years, I was her assistant. We became friends, of course. I was looking for a brand to do a bag collaboration with and we'd been talking about doing something together for a long time. I think the timing was right and it just happened. We know each other, so it was easy. It's about making a family within an entity like the brand. All the people who work with me are close friends or people who join the family for one reason or another. When you're a small company, it's also easier to work with people that you get and who you understand straight away. We don't need to talk for hours on end. We send each other three things and we know exactly which idea we're going to like, and we know we're going to agree on the processes.

On Premiere Classe, there are around fifty brands that are less than three years old. You created Jeanne Friot in 2020. Do you have any advice for someone wanting to create a fashion brand these days? 

I don't think so, I don't have any advice, but I think it's important to take the plunge and to have a strong backbone. You have to be able to foresee that, for three years, maybe even five, it's going to be difficult. You have to be able to see it in the long term. I think you have to go step by step and not get discouraged, and set yourself little goals to achieve as you go along.