What Chanel actually bought from Lesage was a 75,000-piece embroidery archive
Lesage keeps roughly 75,000 embroidery samples, and the oldest were stitched for the court of Napoleon III. The archive is older than the name: Albert and Marie-Louise Lesage took over the Michonet workshop in 1924, founded in 1858, and the sample collection came with it. When Chanel (@chanelofficial) bought the house in 2002 through Paraffection, it acquired 144 years of accumulated samples. They are working stock, not a museum: a current-season embroidery can start from a 19th-century sample. Buying the house did not buy exclusivity either, since the Paraffection ateliers stay independent and supply rivals. The scale of a single piece: Saint Laurent (@ysl)'s 1988 Irises jacket carries 250,000 sequins in 22 colours and 200,000 beads, and took more than 600 hours by hand. Its Sunflowers companion, one of four made, sold at Christie's in 2019 for 382,000 euros against an 80,000 to 120,000 estimate.