Alexandra Latour, embroidery stylist and creator of the Denim Jacket. With her young French brand, she revisits an iconic piece of our wardrobes: the denim jacket. To do this, Alexandra Latour collects old denim pants, cuts them up and recomposes them according to the weave of the textile and its colors. Its jacket creations are unique, reinterpreted and enhanced thanks to embroidery, original collections while doing good for the planet.
“ There are no limits to embroidery, it’s just impressive. We can do anything, everything can be embroidered from the moment we can fix the material, we can embroider. We can embroider mother-of-pearl, beads, sequins, all sorts of things. We can. There are no limits », says Alexandra Latour, embroidery stylist and creator of the Denim Jacket.
“ I really liked the little black dress and I said to myself : “the denim jacket”quite simply. » Alexandra Latour began her career in interior architecture and scenography after studying at the Boulle school in Paris, a school of applied arts. After her degree in visual arts, she worked in a style office for two years. At 25, she started her own business and set up her embroidery workshop. She works in drawing and embroidery techniques for Lesage and other haute couture houses. And in 2020, she launched her brand Denim Jacket. Alexandra Latour is an artist, craftsman and entrepreneur. His embroidery workshop and his denim jacket brand are growing together.
“ It’s been several years since I said to myself “I would like to create a brand”, because selling embroidery to local customers was not possible through samples. We work more for haute couture, ready-to-wear and I found it interesting to develop a brand. This allowed us to embroider. Which textile to use? A material that is polluting when it is manufactured : jeans. »
“ I am passionate about jeans »
“ I am passionate about jeans so, I found it obvious to create a brand that is eco-responsible. Failing to use rollers, you might as well recover jeans that were intended to be thrown away and enhance them with embroidery. So, we use know-how to enhance our main material. »
Alexandra Latour collects used jeans to give them a second life and transform them into unique and embroidered jackets. Partnerships allow it to have an eco-responsible approach. “ Emmaus in Trappes has been following us for three years now. They sell us jeans by weight. We source the material upstream, that is to say they give us a pre-selection of what they are going to put on sale, for example jeans which cannot be sold, which have holes. We select the material to be 100% cotton without elastane and we purchase it by weight. This sourcing of materials, I wouldn’t say all the time, but at times, it’s problematic. That is to say, if we had more Emmaus who could follow us and if we had more storage space, this problem would not exist. »
“ Our problem, at the moment, is a space that is too small to both work and store all these materials. There are plenty of them. But you have to have the whole process: selecting, cleaning the jeans and then storing them. For the moment, it is more the second stage which is problematic. Recovering the materials, no, it’s not at all problematic. And this could be done on a larger scale. »
Denim is an abundant material and allows you to embroider the reconstituted pieces on the basis of recycled denim pants. After the material, there is the choice of the theme, the shades of the denim and the design before moving on to the creation of the jacket.
“ Sometimes there are special tinctures. Denim has a multitude of shades which is quite impressive, shades of blue, blues which are redder, blues which are greener or more greyish. For the collection, I always start with a drawing, but sometimes I take out certain drawings from other collection periods for a fashion show. I stay on a theme. Last time we collaborated with artists. We made a star jacket which is quite exuberant, I would say quite atypical. We had what we needed in terms of material. »
“ We are also starting to source leather materials, leather scraps from people who work in furniture, there are some pretty interesting scraps. We also combine jeans and leather. There is always a sketch at the base, it is still artistic craftsmanship since we embroider. Embroidery takes a lot of time. We cannot afford to go in blind. »
Alexandra Latour created an embroidery workshop and a brand with the objective of reducing, as much as possible, its impact on the environment. “ During the collection periods, there are a lot of creations that are made abroad. The idea was to create a new workshop close to the fashion houses. And when I created the denim jacket, it was with the idea of solving a hint of the problem on this theme of denim which is very polluting when it is manufactured. It was to bring a technique, a know-how close to home. It’s being able to work in short circuits, to reuse a material that was initially destined to be waste. »
“ The people who accompany me in the workshop are either trained in sewing or embroidery, sometimes both. We are a team of four people. These are also values that I try to pass on to them : show that it is possible to work with other materials than just rolling out a simple roll on a table to be able to embroider. »
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