"Atteindre l’excellence et la défier chaque jour."
"Achieving excellence, and renewing the challenge each day"
Armand LÉTRANGE, 1865
In 1838, young Auguste Lespiaut was just 21 years old when he began working as a saddler at the stables in the Palais du Louvre. He quickly became a renowned craftsman, recognised by prominent figures such as Eugène Delacroix and Victor Hugo. In 1865, his son-in-law, Armand Létrange, who continued to garner patents and medals at several world exhibitions, succeeded him. As many as 700 people were employed both at the LÉTRANGE Paris workshop and at the plant in Montargis, where they manufactured purses, accessories for gentlemen, for hunters and the military, as well as for cyclists and photographers.
Made-to-measure and special orders developed continuously, and not only did the House include customers such as Jules Verne, but it even went all the way to Antarctica with Commander Jean Baptiste Charcot in 1908, who carried his equipment in LÉTRANGE luggage during his second Polar expedition on board of the ship Pourquoi-Pas?
LÉTRANGE is a pioneering company, a thriving witness to cultural, industrial, political and social revolutions, as well as to the great tragedies, glories and changes of society and its various lifestyles.
THE REBIRTH
In 2014, Sébastien Létrange, from the family’s seventh generation, a globe trotter who had gone into advertising, became passionate about this family history which he had absorbed over 40 years of his life. He was immersed in the archives to write the family saga, when this passion turned into a much bolder ambition: to bring LÉTRANGE back to life.
Meeting Mathias Jaquemet, a graduate of the IFM Paris and the Basel University of Art and Design, triggered the implementation of the project. After having worked for Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, Mathias becomes the artistic director and immediately shared the same virtuous ambition based on fundamentals, on know-how in haute leather crafting, and on the legacy of a brand that was almost two hundred years old.
Sébastien and Mathias are deeply convinced that the rebirth of LÉTRANGE will not happen without a reassessment, risk-taking, and that it was necessary to «do battle» with outdated stereotypes, to generate a personal vocabulary and introduce entirely new creations.
Using the most beautiful high-quality materials, the most sophisticated finishings and the most innovative constructions, LÉTRANGE offers a modern leather goods collection to be seen in a different light, inventively designed, rigorously crafted and nourished with vibrant imagination. Every single bag is ingeniously designed, versatile in the ways it can be used, and has a personality of its own.