Stars´ Wedding Dress Lace Maker Bought By Chanel

Chanel has added yet another artisan manufacturer to its stable of brands - this time the lace maker which created fabric for the Duchess of Cambridge and Amal Clooney's wedding dresses, and the tulle for Angelina Jolie's embroidered veil. The new acquistion, Groupe Holesco, is the parent company of Sophie Hallette, which specialises in both classic and more modern lace, and is the fashion industry's go-to lace maker. Hallette has created designs for labels including Gucci, Miu Miu, Valentino, Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, Roberto Cavalli, Erdem, Mary Katranzou and many more over the past season alone.

"The partnership aims to perpetuate the historical lace sector - the pride of Calais and Caudry's heritage," Chanel told WWD. "It also aims to maintain in France a unique know-how and the essential leavers, these bicentennial machines that allow to create very high-end and labelled lace, which is crucial to meet the demand of haute couture and creation."

Chanel has a history of investing in small artisan producers who create items useful to its collections - having acquired shares in hat specialist Maison Michel, Scottish knitwear factory Barrie, embroiderer Lesage, feather and flower maker Lemarie, and luxury button manufacturer Desrue, as well as several others in recent years. Rather than absorbing these brands into the business, Chanel prefers to allow them to retain autonomy and work with other designers - even creating pieces for direct competitors of the house.

"We are different," Chanel CEO Bruno Pavlovsky told us when asked how Chanel compared to other conglomerates such as LVMH and Kering, "we choose the opposite approach. In order to continue to be creative, our brands have to continue to work with many designers. If you work all the time with the same brand, at some point you stop developing your creativity. Different designers and different requests mean that you have to be more agile, you have to adapt yourself. And Chanel benefits - directly and indirectly - from this agility. They have to be able to go out, work with young names, big names - as long as they can foster their creativity, we are moving in the right direction."