In this month of October, 100% creation is devoting a series to brands and associations involved in the fight against cancer. Garance Paris today. Cécile Pasquinelli, its founder, offers more than a fashion brand. Its models of swimsuits and its lingerie without armatures and without stays are intended for women after breast surgery. New collections every year for swimwear and permanent underwear models.
With her solidarity brand, Cécile Pasquinelli, designer of adapted lingerie, offers a classic and chic French style, more modern and far from medicalized design.
Creation is the basis of everything I do, whether it’s created from nothing, from something that exists but needs to be changed. This is what drives me and motivates me.
Cécile Pasquinelli, founder of Garance Paris
” It’s a name that I’ve always liked, Garance, and that my husband didn’t want to give our daughters because he thought the others were even more beautiful. When I started the project it was the name of the directory on my computer. It was called the Garance project. After a year and a half, when the first models came out, I said to myself: “Now I have to find a brand name”. And at one point someone said to me: “Why don’t you keep Garance after all?” There is a very classic, very chic, very feminine side to Garance. This also calls for color: madder red; the cultural side with the cinema and then a very French sounding. It is a name that can be read in all languages. »
Cécile Pasquinelli went to business school. For 17 years, she worked in the field of insurance but she always wanted to set up her own business. During her sick leave related to her breast cancer, she identified a need: the lack of offers in terms of lingerie and swimsuits for women who had cancer or breast surgeries. Cécile Pasquinelli launches Garance Paris in 2012. This solidarity brand helps women whose bodies have changed to find underwear like the others. Give back an alternative to women so that they feel beautiful and desirable, far from the austerity of medical lingerie.
” Beyond the fact that the Garance brand moves the lines, obviously, it is excessively useful. There is a very selfish side, Garance fills me. Beyond lingerie, it’s like a crutch, a solution, so that buying lingerie isn’t a moment of sadness and anger. When we go to get our lingerie or swimsuits, these are very pleasant moments, when we look at each other, when we want to be pretty. We are in a relationship, certainly of utility, but also of seduction. That’s how I experienced it at the time. This is the genesis of the Garance Paris brand. It had become a just useful purchase and I didn’t want it to be a just useful purchase. I wanted to rediscover futility, seduction, there are plenty of subjects behind it: sexuality that takes a hit! It’s an object, a piece of clothing that allows us to reclaim a lot of things when we buy it, when we put it on, when we show it, when we show ourselves. The moment to feel like a different woman, but one that pleases us again. »
Dressing a body marked by the test of illness in style is the offer of Cécile Pasquinelli with Garance Paris. And for its founder, this goes beyond the “Pink October” event.
” There are too many of us, but it’s still “a niche market”, so there are three models in October and then afterwards, there’s nothing! Well, that makes me really sad. It should not remain a marketing speech. Unfortunately, until there is another permanent offer that exists, but which is not medical, which helps women regain control over their choices, which offers models, perhaps also a little more in trends, I would fight for Garance to continue to exist. The disease is still there. It is a disease of which the body retains the stigmata. These are journeys that never end. As a result, lingerie and swimsuits that are adapted dress this body that we need all our lives. »
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