This piece features a variety of embroidery techniques, some of which were done using a specialized Cornely machine. Used for producing a kind of delicate chainstitch embroidery, the Cornely machine is a rarefied piece of equipment originally invented in France in the 19^th century.

The designs begin with a thread foundation, machine-embroidered in “point de chaînette” stitch using the Cornely machine, in shades of beige and brown. This iconic stitch is considered one of the oldest known sewing and embroidery stitches, with origins dating back as far as the third century B.C.

Built upon a base of sheer black muslin, this sample is embroidered with aquatic shapes, algae and patterns of vegetation. The piece draws inspiration from an existing Atelier Montex archive sample dating back to 1993, which features a landscape with Asian influences rendered in the spirit of the 1920s. The Atelier Montex Archive itself contains over 25,000 pieces.

This base is enriched with miniature seed beads in 18 different colors — mainly in shades of red, burgundy and pink — applied with the Lunéville crochet, as well as sequins and metallic spangles embroidered with the same technique. This style of crochet is a type of tambour embroidery that is said to have originated in the French town of Lunéville in the early 1800s.

“This autonomy keeps the creativity of the artisans alive,” one le19M liaison told me. “The point is to perpetuate the artisan’s skills, which can only really be done if you’re always taking on new challenges.” Thus, a studio could be producing samples for the upcoming Chanel collection one week, and switch to projects for other big-name fashion houses immediately after. While the workshops are not accessible to the public, le19M has become something of a cultural hub since it opened its doors in 2021. That’s due to the free, rotating cultural programs in its gallery, la Galerie du 19M, playing host to exhibitions, craft workshops, internships and lectures throughout the year.

It can be overwhelming to get your mind blown six times in as many hours. During my tour of le19M’s workshops, I was constantly struck by how blithely I’d taken for granted the painstaking skill and labor required in the construction of a single silk pleat or embroidered hem. Admittedly, I’d also imagined these studios filled with artisans who were much older, on the brink of retirement, grandfather cobblers and great-grandmother seamstresses practicing their esoteric art by lamplight. Instead, I was led through five floors of bustling workshops filled with tremendous diversity and youth. If the intention behind le19M is to keep these crafts alive for future generations — often passing on techniques that can’t be learned anywhere else outside of these walls — it seemed that rising generations had come in droves to learn. Of the 700 artisans working inside le19M, there were more tattoos than wrinkles, more piercings than bifocals, which is a sure sign of a vocation in good health.

Patrimoine, or heritage, is a word mentioned often in the Maisons d’art, understandably so, as one Maison d’art goes back as far as the Second Empire and Napoleon III. The haute Parisian embroidery house Maison Lesage, on the third floor, contains not only the workspaces for 80 artisans, but the archive of more than 65,000 embroideries, making it the largest collection in the world. The monastic black storage boxes that take up an entire room of the atelier preserve samples that were produced for some of the greatest designers and courtiers the world has ever seen. The Lesage embroidery of wheat, representing rebirth, could be seen on the blouses of Blazy’s first collection.