{"id":16008,"date":"2026-05-18T11:09:03","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/16008\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T11:09:03","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:09:03","slug":"why-lemaires-quiet-luxury-is-making-waves-from-paris-to-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/16008\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Lemaire\u2019s quiet luxury is making waves, from Paris to Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a specific \u201cLemaire person\u201d currently walking the pavements of Paris. From his studio window near a university, Christophe Lemaire sees them pass every morning: academics in crisp poplin, and creatives in oversized blousons and balloon-legged denim with the inevitable crescent-shaped bag slung across their chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not even be Lemaire they are wearing,\u201d the eponymous designer notes with quiet pride, \u201cbut you can feel the style is influenced by us. That is very gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

This speaks to the success of the independent French label co-helmed by Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran \u2013 as well as its paradox. For a label that shuns the traditional levers of fashion business, releasing collections that prioritise consistent DNA over newness, Lemaire has become remarkably, even reluctantly, ubiquitous.<\/p>\n

\"LemaireLemaire Mini Fortune Croissant shoulder bag. Photo: Handout<\/p>\n

There have been growing pains: the label recently met friction in China, when a campaign for its new Objets Senteur line was withdrawn from social media after users drew links to forced queue-cutting during the Qing dynasty, prompting the brand to publish an apology. Nonetheless, in an industry obsessed with \u201cquiet luxury\u201d, the designers have managed to achieve a genuinely influential vernacular.<\/p>\n

The numbers back this up. Just over five years after Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing bought a minority share of the business in 2018 (the duo already led the brand\u2019s R&D centre and designed Uniqlo\u2019s popular U range), Lemaire\u2019s sales exceeded \u20ac100 million (around US$116 million) in 2024, according to Business of Fashion. Yet, true to their media-shy reputation, the designers are less interested in the balance sheet and more in what they call the \u201cdialectic\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"LemaireLemaire spring\/summer 2026. Photo: Handout<\/p>\n

The brand\u2019s recent expansion into China \u2013 marked by months-old stores in Shanghai\u2019s former French Concession and Beijing\u2019s Sanlitun, after landing in Chengdu in 2024 \u2013 is less a calculated corporate land grab and more, Lemaire says, their heeding to kairos: the ancient Greek notion of seizing the opportune, fleeting moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t crazy about business plans,\u201d Lemaire says. \u201cHonestly, we would have preferred not to do it so closely together \u2026 it just so happened that we had two great opportunities in Shanghai and Beijing and said, \u2018OK, let\u2019s go.\u2019\u201d Lemaire and Tran aren\u2019t following the traditional road map, they\u2019re here to design a world they want to live in.<\/p>\n

In Shanghai, the Lemaire store is housed in a 1930s residence designed by the architect Dong Dayou (1899-1973). Spanning three floors, the space feels less like a boutique and more like the home of a tasteful, slightly eccentric collector. There are Enzo Mari stools, Carla Venosta furniture, shelves of books curated by Lemaire and Tran in collaboration with art book platform Jiazazhi, and it is all interspersed with vintage pieces sourced from local Chinese markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a specific \u201cLemaire person\u201d currently walking the pavements of Paris. From his studio window near a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3527,12132,12128,1165,12130,12125,12129,12126,12127,12133,12123,30,12124,12131,3526],"class_list":["post-16008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-paris","tag-beijing","tag-business-of-fashion","tag-carlos-penafiel","tag-china","tag-christophe-lemaire","tag-croissant-bag","tag-dong-dayou","tag-fast-retailing","tag-jiazazhi","tag-josef-yoakum","tag-lemaire","tag-paris","tag-qing-dynasty","tag-roland-topor","tag-shanghai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}