A journey through time
Few have the design pedigree of Ramesh Nair, artistic director of French luxury house Joseph Duclos. He is a pivotal part of a new set up for the revived brand, which first made its name as a privileged manufacturer of leather and leathergoods under Louis XV in 1754.
A long association with the art and craft of what might be considered ultra-luxury has led Kerala-born Ramesh Nair to this moment. Cosily enveloped by art, design and leather history books in the reading area (formerly a dining room) of his Parisian home, Mr Nair generously – and light-heartedly – pauses his schedule to take us on a journey through time.
The art of humility
Though originally trained in clothing design, the now creative lead at “JD”, as he occasionally calls Joseph Duclos, was hand-picked by LVMH chief executive, Bernard Arnault, in 2010 to spearhead the revitalisation of nineteenth-century leathergoods brand Moynat. This followed almost a decade of work first under Martin Margiela and later Jean Paul Gaultier at Hermès, where Mr Nair worked on ready-to-wear and leathergoods collections. Known for having been behind the (recently relaunched) Shadow Birkin, collapsible Kelly Flat and Paris-Bombay handbags, plus the Médor clutch, the designer undoubtedly emerged as an innovator within the world of leather craft at Hermès. “I seem to have done a decent job of creating a few models and some of them turned out to be quite decently received,” he tells us modestly.
The first time Mr Nair tried his hand at handbags was at Hermès, which he describes as his first real encounter with leather. Today, there is an entire thread dedicated to his designs on established handbag fan site PurseForum, but the transition into leathergoods without any formal training wasn’t easy, he says. His ideas were initially met with some misgivings in the Hermès leather workshop, for instance, where superior know-how is prized. “You’re told you don’t understand anything about bag design,” he remembers, adding that one must adopt humility very quickly when working closely with artisans. Prior to Hermès, he notably trained in fashion under Yohji Yamamoto and Christian Lacroix.
Later, at Moynat (not part of LVMH, but rather owned by investment firm Groupe Arnault), where he quickly established his own atelier, Mr Nair harnessed learnings from his Hermès experience to forge a brand reputation for exceptional leather artistry. He was responsible for inventing the Réjane, Pauline, Marie-Louise, Gabrielle, Ballerine, Loulou and Limousine handbags, among other much-loved creations. Indeed, by the look of things, he has been sorely missed by fans of the house since his departure after a decade last year. One even posted to PurseForum in early October: “Anyone besides me missing the old Ramesh designs [for Moynat]? Simplistic, beautiful, user-friendly and well-made. All were hand-sewn, hand-painted and perfect.”
Like a blank canvas
Despite his success at Moynat, Mr Nair “just wanted to get out of the whole [handbag] thing”, telling us that he originally had no intention of designing bags again after leaving, or at least not for a long time. However, on his last day there, he received a call from friend Emmanuelle Voisin, a former Moynat executive who is now general manager of the Joseph Duclos brand. Out of politeness, he entertained the idea of her ‘secret project’, but in all honesty did not think much of moulding a new luxury brand on the reputation of a now-defunct tannery and leathergoods factory. (Eighteenth-century Toulouse merchant Joseph Duclos’ Manufacture Royale de Lectoure, which received its letters patent in 1754, ceased operations over a century ago. The building at Lectoure, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the south-west of France, is now being transformed into a high-end hotel.) “My initial thinking was, why?” he elaborates. “Why would I want to do something with a tannery?”What truly captured his imagination, though, was the idea of forming a brand almost as if from clay, starting with a base material - in this case, leather - and building upwards into design, craft and, ultimately, finished leathergoods. He has always been interested in materials, particularly woven textiles, he adds, describing being almost captivated by a fabric’s constituent fibres, structure and properties. In a similar vein, Mr Nair paints his approach to leather artisanship as similar to the fitting process in apparel design. “A seam doesn’t work, you take a little pinch, you put a needle in it … you keep working,” he says. To a certain degree, the artisans he is working with at Joseph Duclos, many of whom he worked with previously, have been trained in this way of thinking. Together, they had developed “unique” leather-working techniques at Moynat, and he wanted to ensure the continuation of this artisanship at Joseph Duclos.
Mr Nair has therefore maintained a very close and direct working relationship with leatherworkers over the years, even going so far as to state that he had promised to help several of them through “difficult times” compounded by the covid-19 pandemic. They are leather artisans who have received official training under the Compagnons du Devoir scheme, which has been responsible for passing on expert manual skills to students since the Middle Ages. Bringing in a cross-pollinating aspect from his own fashion education, the designer explains that he pushes Joseph Duclos artisans to try new (and even rediscover or “reinvent”) techniques from other disciplines, which they can then hone as part of their traditional leather-working vocabulary. Further, whereas other leathergoods designers may render digital drawings or create a relatively fixed design, which is then assembled and refined in a factory, Mr Nair’s own approach is more fluid, adapting and responding to the material itself.
History buff
Working directly with “very specific” tanneries in France, who take around eight months to complete the tanning process for each hide, Mr Nair describes his frequent visits to these facilities as involving “poking around, looking under the tables at what they’ve rejected, asking can we do this, can we do that”, pointing out that he is keen to keep pushing for finer-quality leathers. After working so long with the best, he says, he finds it hard to compromise. Traceability and transparency are paramount to this process, he emphasises, both in terms of the procurement of hides and skins and production methods. Although culturally vegetarian since childhood, during a discussion on ethics and sustainability he praises leather as the ultimate in recycling and upcycling and notes how he only recently rebuffed a mycelium supplier who contacted Joseph Duclos, citing scalability as one issue.
On the concept of leather substitutes, he draws parallels with the rapid spread of the synthetic fibre Terylene in India and beyond during the second half of the twentieth century, describing so-called periodic “revolutions” in materials as nothing more than jumping on a bandwagon. He stresses how during the European lockdowns, he visited many museums in Paris and London, especially, where he kept encountering specimens of stone, iron and leather, dating from before the ancient Egyptian period. “And yet we still have a problem with the ethics [surrounding leather],” he shrugs.
Steeped in French heritage, even the closure of the inaugural collection’s Diane bag, also designed by Mr Nair, is pendulum-like in shape, partly inspired by golden braids he observed on eighteenth-century ceremonial military jackets during one of his museum visits. Extending this appreciation for aesthetics, the brand’s financial backer, Monolith Investments chief executive, Franck Dahan, is also a member of the Centre Pompidou’s acquisitions committee.
Jewellery and fragrance are also on the menu at Joseph Duclos, which leads Ramesh Nair to expand the conversation on France’s luxury heritage to the country’s last queen, the legendary Marie Antoinette. With the enthusiastic air of a true history buff, he says: “If I am not mistaken, she used to have perfumed powder inserted into her leather gloves so that her hands wouldn’t smell of [the skin].”
While keeping all these echoes of past glories, the revived Joseph Duclos, which launched in late September via a flagship Parisian boutique located at an exclusive address, 54 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, as well as online, will now seek to forge a new history.
The lines of the Saint-Clair messenger are intended to be reminiscent of the cartridge bags worn by eighteenth-century imperial guards in France.
All Credits: Marie Liszkay for Joseph Duclos
