Jean Claude Jitrois will stay faithful to leather
26/04/2013
During the event, Mr Jitrois told French fashion media that his commitment to leather and to remaining independent remains strong.
“We are a single-product company,” he said, “centring on leather, obviously, mostly for women, but not exclusively.”
In fact, Jean Claude Jitrois, who started his own brand in 1983, believes he deserves credit for taking leather clothing away from a macho environment and into the world of women’s fashion. High-profile devotees include Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Vanessa Paradis.
“We’ve been lucky that leather garments are something very special,” the designer continued. “They are comfort objects and they carry around our emotions and our memories. They even grow old with their owners; we leave our imprint on them. And the older a leather garment gets, the more we love it. It’s like good wine, it gets better with age.”
Mr Jitrois, who, apart from stockists throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, has own-brand stores in Paris, Cannes, the Courchevel 1850 ski resort in the Alps, Beijing, New York, London and Luxembourg, went on to say that he has had opportunities to expand into other areas. He explained that he has resisted the calls to move away from his specialism because he wants to stay faithful to his roots.
“I’ve ignored the siren calls,” he said. “The company works, and our savoir-faire has already won over several generations of women, women who know what they are looking for when they come to us. We have to keep innovating, as we did [in 1993] with stretch leather and [in 2009] with machine-washable leather, but we are in the luxury market with a special and long-lasting product, and that’s where we have to stay.”
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