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Your bedroom and bathroom are sacred parts of your home. You spend hours here, sleeping, lounging and primping to look your best. In essence, with the idea that sleep enhances beauty and your bathroom routine further enhances, hopefully, the good effects of sleep – shouldn’t the items that surround you in those spaces be the most luxurious and beautiful? Yves Delorme, the iconic French linen maker founded in 1845, is the only brand to consider when outfitting your bed and bath with the most stunning, well-crafted and luxurious linens on the market.
Choosing linens is an incredibly personal process. Selecting the correct thread count, style, design and color can literally change the way you perceive your bedroom and bathroom – and, therefore, yourself. These rooms should rise-up to meet you and are two of the most important rooms in your home. With a history deeply rooted in quality and craftsmanship, Yves Delorme knows how to make these two rooms come to life. Since 1845 the Fremaux family. manufacturers of linens and textiles, have rooted themselves in the process of fine fabric making. When they joined forces with talented designer, Yves Delorme, in the 1980s, and acquired his company, the brand became an unstoppable force in luxury home decor.
We sat down with the Head of Design for Yves Delorme, Ms. Laurence Rouet, to ask important questions about the nuances that make this brand so special.
IC: Who is the Yves Delorme customer? Who appreciates the craftsmanship behind the brand?
LR: The Yves Delorme customer is a modern woman, or man, traveling internationally, but who cares for his home and wishes to invest in design. Both U.S and European clients are quite sophisticated, but the U.S client is probably more classical and prefers our timeless designs, whereas the European client is more interested in the seasonal fashion lines…. Of course, both pay a great deal of attention to the quality and the hand of the fabrics.
IC: What makes Yves Delorme different in the luxury bedding and bath market?
LR: What makes Yves Delorme linens different? In a word: diversity. The Yves Delorme brand features the world’s most extensive collection of home linens, and continues to add materials and techniques to enrich its collection: cotton, linen, silk, jacquard, prints, dyes and embroidery create endless pieces to complement any home. The company has terrycloth for the bathroom, robes, cosmetic bags, plaids, bedspreads, quilts, candles and decorative pillows. If you want a beautifully dressed bed and lingerie to match, you’ll find it at Yves Delorme. There is one product, however, that absolutely defines Yves Delorme: floral-design bed linens. It is the DNA of the brand. Our florals can showcase up to 16 colors, which is exceedingly rare. Most brands print with 6 to 12. And the precision of the designs imparts such a vibrant look, no matter the seasonal motif.
IC: How has the brand evolved from its origins through modern times?
LR: The same family has been running the company since the beginning, which ensures a solid, forward-looking vision. The energy and spirit that motivated the sounding members continues to inspire today’s leaders. In May 2016, Yves Delorme began offering a couture collection to a select clientele in Paris, New York, Moscow and London. All Yves Delorme creations are sophisticated and luxurious; but some customers sought a more personalized approach, and a new collection was created in response. People can now ask for bedding in silk, rather than satin cotton, or request gold-tone, rather than silver-tone embroidery. What was missing previously was the haute couture aspect, where customers could personalize their choices to get exactly the product they wanted. Every piece is unique and made to measure, with hand-sewn finishes, embroidery and monograms.
IC: How are Yves Delorme designs conceptualized and crafted?
LR: I would say that I re-memorize the DNA of Yves Delorme before I begin to conceive each Collection: The poetry of nature, The audacity of creativity, The excellence of materials, and a Savoir-Faire of the highest quality. I travel, I nourish myself in various artistic domains such as fine arts, design, fashion, architecture, and literature, in order to maintain a continuous connection and sensitivity to the world around me. I give meaning to my viewpoint and to my gesture by drawing what seems to me to re-transcribe this act of reflection; comprised of current affairs, culture, and even the imaginary, at the same moment as an observation of Nature. This process is accompanied by our communications strategy that flows along the same charter as the art direction that I engage, thus allowing for a dynamic interpretation of the brand, and a re-transcription of the traits of the modern Yves Delorme woman: A woman that is of a romantic modernity.
IC: How do you approach new designs for the brand?
LR: My role is to make people dream about our beautiful linen through the stories of my inspirations. I want them to live the experience of creative and high quality products. First, I build the poetic history of the new season. All design’s creativity will be articulated around that theme. This phase of design is very important because it will be the stylistic framework of the collections and it will guide the thread of our collection story. Then I create the prints and imagine the products of all the bed linen lines, toweling, table linen, accessories … I hand draw and work the technical aspects (printing, weaving, knitting) with a team of collaborators in order to give the ideal final technical touch to our products.
IC: How are heritage moments or themes woven into the brand today?
LR: The Yves Delorme style has been defined over the years around Poetry but also Audacity for the creativity of patterns and textile production. This has made it from the beginning a mark of a romantic modernity. Added to this are the fundamentals that are the excellence of qualities and know-how through the expression of hand-made design and the work of exceptional textile artisans. This DNA serves as a guide for each of the collections I imagine. It allows me to create today’s designs with a great richness combining creativity, poetry, elegance and refinement.
IC: Where do you see the brand in the next 25 years?
LR: In 25 years, I see the brand continuing to maintain its heritage and tradition through several aspects: The timeless culture of beautiful linens, a signature of style elaborated with poetry and elegance for the past several decades, and the industrial power of the Fremaux-Delorme group that develops this culture. I also anticipate the company expanding into different cities around the world—spreading Yves Delorme’s timeless tradition and style on a global scale.
IC: What has been one of your biggest achievements as the designer behind this legacy brand?
LR: Working with Yves Delorme has been a dream come true. I cherish the time I spent with Yves Delorme’s previous designer of over 30 years, Evelyne Julienne, and continue to carry her aspirations for the company with me. I am proud to work with a brand that has such a deep heritage and that is so loved around the globe. While there have not been any sudden stylistic changes since I’ve joined the company, there is instead a creative evolution fueled by a vision, an imagination and a new hand. I have enjoyed the challenge of conceptualizing new designs that remain true to Yves Delorme’s textile history while refreshing the aesthetic, and I am excited for what is yet to come.
