A question of format
Just as in his design language, also in person, Jérôme Dreyfuss is not a friend of verbose statements or superfluous words. The founder of the bag label by the same name is both tough and refreshingly honest in his dealings with the fashion industry.
Your brand has been on the market for almost 20 years now and you have been working in the industry quite a bit longer. How do you think the industry has changed over the last two decades?
The remarkable changes in the last two decades are that the rates of production, collections, and content have accelerated and intensified considerably! We have also witnessed the birth of large conglomerates with extraordinary financial means, which have professionalised as much as they have killed the creativity of our industry... The result is a very high degree of complexity in activities, diversification of players, customers, with an increasing marketing. We must multiply ourselves while maintaining consistency! We also observe a real ecological awareness, but it is really not enough and too marketed.
One almost gets the feeling that there has been a saying of a paradigm shift in fashion at least for the last decade …
It is in progress. There is a real awareness of the actors of this industry and of the customers, even if not everyone does it with the same honesty. What is missing today is a real change in the regulatory frameworks.
Revolution is also a good keyword here: as we all know, fashion thrives on change, but what is really new and innovative?
Arts and crafts and savoir-faire. These values have gradually been lost to communication and the perpetual quest for novelty. It is revolutionary today in fashion to return to this culture of “making” to build collections.
Which of these developments have a particular influence on your brand?
The savoir-faire around leather. I fight so that we don’t give in to the injunction of the rigid, fixed bag that doesn’t move in time. Leather is a natural material that must live!
In general, the industry is criticised for having exacerbated socio-political grievances in the past rather than contributing constructively to a solution - how political and activist can or should a brand be?
I don’t believe in speaking out too politically, or too rakishly, because fashion will never have enough legitimacy for that. On the other hand, we must strive to do better, each at our own level but also collectively by implementing new standards and new rules.
A very popular buzzword is sustainability, to which you have been committed for a very long time. How do you approach this topic in concrete terms and - hand on heart - aren’t fashion and trends at odds with this?
Yes, there is a lot of hypocrisy. The important thing for me, for my company, is to seek, at all levels, how to be better. It’s sometimes in very operational packages and not sexy at all. All this in a very concrete way. We are all aware that fashion is an extremely polluting industry: let’s seek to reform it from within rather than putting up marketing messages on Earth Day!
What else drives your personal aesthetic development?
My inspirations come from different personal passions like architecture for example. Recently I did a course in the reconstruction of ancient villages in northern Spain. You will often find references to workwear as well: the sober lines, the stitching, the metallic accessories...
You said in an interview that you always start a design with a problem - what do you see coming up in the future?
When I start a new creation, I ask myself what are the new issues the women of today are facing. In 20 years, their daily life has changed and they have new tools to manage it. I have to propose practical and functional bags that integrate all these aspects. Function is my primary concern.
Function above design: For almost 20 years, Dreyfuss has been aiming to meet the demands of modern women with its bag models. He succeeds with simple designs that prove themselves above all in practice.