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« Once upon a time, trees were people just like us, only more solid, more cheerful, more loving perhaps, more sensible. That’s all. » 
Jacques Prévert

Photography by Armelle Bouret: www.armellebouret.com

Aude, hairstyled by Gustavio, has gracefully endorsed the role of embodying The First Tree.

English translation by Sika Fakambi.

All models presented here have been registered at the INPI.

Arbatus coat:
* madrone orange-coloured wool crepe + young boar-coloured micromodal (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + young boar-coloured micromodal
* option: snow white-coloured wool crepe + inky cap white-coloured wool

Gumbo Limbo Dress:

* rabbitt grey-coloured wool + yellow-green bamboo-coloured cotton & viscose (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + young boar-coloured micromodal
* option: bark-coloured wool tweed + young boar-coloured micromodal
* option: ultraviolet silk

Butterfly Sensei Coat, threefold:

* bark-coloured wool tweed + inky cap white-coloured wool + pine green-coloured wool (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + inky cap white-coloured wool + bark-coloured wool tweed

Washingtonia Blouse:

* ivory-coloured Swiss muslin (picture)
* option: cork-coloured silk
* option: ultraviolet silk

and Amadou Tinder Skirt, long model:

* black-coloured tencel & wool twill (picture)
* option: forest green-coloured wool jacquard

Washingtonia Vest:

* pine green-coloured wool (picture)
* option: inky cap white-coloured wool
* option: squirrel-coloured wool & metal chevrons

and Aloe Dichotoma Skirt:

* silvery taffeta + yellow-green bamboo-coloured cotton & viscose (picture)
* option: silvery taffeta + ultraviolet silk

Simple Bud Coat, threefold and reversible:

* bark-coloured wool tweed + inky cap white-coloured wool (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + inky cap white-coloured wool

Megamendung Coat, reversible

* black-coloured mohair wool + forest green-coloured wool jacquard (picture)
* option: bark-coloured wool tweed + madrone orange-coloured wool crepe

Sun Dress:

* young boar-coloured micromodal (picture)

Sun Dress:

* ultraviolet silk

Hevea Coat, long model

* madrone orange-coloured wool crepe + ultraviolet silk (picture)
* option: snow white-coloured wool crepe + inky cap white-coloured wool
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + young boar-coloured micromodal

Guaiacum Dress:

* black pleats (picture)

Gumbo Limbo Coat, reversible:

* black-coloured tencel & wool twill + pine green-coloured wool (picture)
* option: bark-coloured wool twill + inky cap white-coloured wool

Lava Sweater:

* young boar-coloured micromodal (picture)
* option: inky cap white-coloured wool
* option: pine green-coloured wool

and Gumbo Limbo Skirt:

* black-coloured tencel & wool twill + young boar-coloured micromodal (picture)
* option: pine green-coloured wool + yellow-green bamboo-coloured cotton & viscose

Straelitzia Blouse with a Lavallière Neck:

* cork-coloured silk (picture)
* option: ivory-coloured Swiss muslin
* option: ultraviolet silk

and: Delta Trousers

* bark-coloured wool tweed
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill
* option: taupe grey-coloured cotton & viscose jacquard
* option: pine green-coloured wool

Hevea Coat, short model

* snow white-coloured wool crepe + inky cap white-coloured wool
* otion: madrone orange-coloured wool crepe + ultraviolet silk (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + young boar-coloured micromodal

Lava Coat

* black-coloured mohair wool + yellow-green bamboo-coloured cotton & viscose (picture)

Gumbo Limbo Vest:

* squirrel-coloured wool & metal chevrons (picture)
* option: pine green-coloured wool
* option: inky cap white-coloured wool

and Amadou Tinder Skirt, short model

* forest green-coloured wool jacquard (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill
* option: madrone orange-coloured wool crepe 
* option: silvery taffeta 
* option: taupe grey-coloured cotton & viscose jacquard 

Bahagia Coat, reversible

* bark-coloured wool tweed + madrone orange wool crepe (picture)
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + bark-coloured wool tweed
* option: black-coloured tencel & wool twill + forest green-coloured wool jacquard

Cyathea Jacket

* silver pleats (picture)

Mehari Dress

* black-coloured tencel & wool twill (picture)
* option: bark-coloured wool tweed
* option: ultraviolet silk

Kamarupa Stole, long model

* ultraviolet silk (picture)
* option: forest green-coloured wool jacquard
* option: cork-coloured silk
* option: inky cap white-coloured wool
* option: pine green-coloured wool

THE FIRST TREE

It was the time of my very first tree,

However much I felt it inside me

It surprised me with its so many branches,

It was tree a thousand times over. 

I who am all that is made up of me

I had not realized how leafy I was,

Yet here I stood casting shade

And I had birds above.

I hid my divine sap

In this trunk that rose high to the sky

But I was caught by the roots

As in a trap of nature.

It was the time of my very first tree,

Man came and sat beneath the leaves

So delicate from being so new.

Was it an oak was it an elm

That’s long ago and I do not quite recall

But I do know that Man was pleased with it

And his eyes lit up with joy as he fell asleep

Dreaming of a little wood.

So when he came out of his slumber 

All of a sudden I made a forest

Great trees born centenarian

And three hundred deer roaming about 

With their hinds that were mothers already.

For a very long time they had figured

That they lived there and knew it

The six-point bucks and their troating

Close to fawns yet to be born.

They were, as soon as they sprung out,

Filled with much more hopes than is fair

And burdened with memories

Which in mine took shape.

All of a sudden I made oaks, pines,

And many squirrels for the top of trees,

And the child looking for his way

And the woodcutter showing it,

I did my best to hide the sky

Because of its uneasy distances

But thus I gave it back 

In the birds and the dew. 

Jules Supervielle

Chérie Cherry Tree...

Photography by Armelle Bouret: www.armellebouret.com

Aude, hairstyled by Gustavio, have gracefully endorsed the role of embodying Chérie Cherry Tree.

English translation by Sika Fakambi.

All models presented here have been registered at the INPI.

“It was a cherry tree […] seen in the distance one evening in June, from across a large wheat field. Once again it was as if someone had appeared over there and was speaking to you, only without speaking at all, without making any sign; someone, or rather something, and a ‘thing of beauty’ indeed; and yet, while if it had been a human figure, a woman strolling, then my joy would have blended with some inner turmoil and the need, soon, to be running towards her, to join her, speechless at first, and not just because of the long running, and then to listen to her, and reply, and catch her in the net of my words or be caught in hers – and there, with a little luck, a completely different story would have begun, in this, rather unsteady, mixture of light and darkness; if it had been the beginning of a new love story, like a new stream rising out of a new source there in the springtime […].”

 “It was evening, quite late indeed, long after the sun had set, at the hour when light goes on beyond expectations, before darkness eventually wins the day for good, which is a grace in any case; because a further extension is allowed, a separation delayed, a dull wrench alleviated […]. This is also the hour when a surviving light, its hearth no longer visible, appears to be emanating from the innermost of things to rise from the ground; and on that very evening, from the dirt path that we had been following, or rather from the wheat field, high grown already but green-coloured still, almost metallic […].”

“Thus we found ourselves taken back […] under a faint pressure, tender as a caress, a long long way back in time, and deep down into ourselves, towards this imaginary age when the innermost and the furthermost were still bound, in such a way that the world would offer the reassuring appearance of a house or even, at times, a temple, and life those of music. I believe this was the very dim reflection of that, reaching me still, as reaches us a light so ancient that the astronomers have called it ‘fossil’.”

“And so it had appeared […] among other trees that were all darkening and darkening and soon would be even darker than the night sheltering their slumber of leaves and birds, so had appeared this tall cherry tree laden with cherries. Its fruit were like a long cluster of red, a flow of red, in dark green; fruit in a cradle or a basket of leaves; some red in some green, at the hour when everything flows into everything else, at the hour of a slow, silent semblance of metamorphosis, at the hour of the apparition, almost, of another world. The hour when something seems to be turning on its hinges.”

“A boundless smoothness was quivering over all of this like a breath of air, freshening as night approached. I believe our bark, rougher and rougher from year to year, has softened for a moment, as the earth thaws out to let the spring water rise out to its surface.”

 “There was a bond between the leaves and the night and the river further away, which we could not hear; there was one between the fruit and the fire, the light. […] That night, perhaps, without realizing, I felt that time, hours during which I had, myself, lived […] had slowly penetrated these pieces of fruit to round them out and finally turn them crimson; that they held all of this in suspension, being themselves suspended in their shelter of leaves, as if brooded by these green wings, soon to become dark, darker than the sky beneath which they hung quivering, in their slumber, barely…”

“Advice from the outside: some places, some moments, do “bend” us; there might be the pressure of a hand, an invisible hand, inciting us to take a different direction (with our steps, our hand, our thoughts); the hand could just as well be a breath of air, like the one blowing the leaves, the clouds, the sailing ships. An innuendo, in a very low voice, like one whispering: look, or listen, or simply: wait. But do we still have enough time to wait? And besides, is this really about waiting?

Did anything ever happen?”

The Cherry Tree, Philippe Jaccottet

*Bahagia Dress

Bronze-coloured cotton satin, cherry-red silk crepe

 *Straelitzia Tunic

Cherry-red silk crepe

*Gunungan Headscarf

Batik on cotton (traditional handmade wax-print fabric from Java Island)

*Lava Dress

Bark-coloured jacquard-weave viscose crepe

*Butterfly Stole

Cherry-red silk crepe

*Dupatta Vest, reversible with 3 positions

Bronze-coloured cotton satin / Ivory-coloured silk and MicroModal® with a pattern of unripe cherries

*Folded Shorts

Bronze-coloured cotton satin 

*Mehari Dress

Bark-coloured cotton with a small check

*Bahagia Jacket, reversible with 2 positions

Bark-coloured cotton with a small check / Ivory-coloured striated cotton

*Sun Dress

Cherry-red silk satin

*Simple Bud Coat, lined and reversible

Metallic putty-coloured cotton / Optical white cotton fleece lining

(+ Sun Dress, cherry-red silk satin)

*Gumbo-Limbo Dress

Midnight-blue linen and cotton, cherry-red silk crepe

*Bahagia Coat, reversible

Midnight-blue linen and cotton / Metallic putty-coloured cotton / Biais binding in cherry-red satin

*Kamarupa Stole, long model

Moon-grey Tencel®

*Lava Top

Cherry-red silk crepe

*Delta Trousers

Moon-white goffered cotton

*Megamendung Scarf

Batik on cotton (traditional handmade wax-print fabric from Java Island)

*Straelitzia Dress

Cherry-red silk crepe

*Bahagia Top

Ivory-coloured silk and MicroModal® with a pattern of unripe cherries

*Straelitzia Trousers-Skirt

Bark-coloured cotton with a small check

(+ Bahagia Jacket, reversible with 2 positions)

*Isosceles Top

Bark-coloured jacquard-weave viscose crepe, cherry-red silk crepe

*Blown Top

Putty-coloured fine-knit wool

*Gumbo Limbo Skirt

Bronze-coloured cotton satin, cherry-red silk crepe

*Gumbo Limbo Blouse

Cherry-red silk crepe

*Gunungan Skirt

Batik on cotton (traditional handmade wax-print fabric from Java Island)

*Megamendung Bolero, 2 positions
Batik on cotton (traditional handmade wax-print fabric from Java Island)

*Folded Bermuda Shorts
Cotton with a small bark-coloured check

 
*Muga Sweater
Putty-coloured fine-knit wool

*Megamendung Coat, reversible
Moon-grey linen / Midnight blue-grey cotton with a small check
(+ Sun Dress, hand-weaved ivory-coloured silk)

*Bird Dress

On sale at the Boutique 34 rue des Petites Ecuries, Paris, métro Bonne Nouvelle/ Château d'Eau.

Kennel is a collaborative workspace for creative entrepreneurs; defined by who they are, not what they do.

http://www.inthekennel.com/

Register here: http://sm002.eventbrite.com/

Our new collection Paris-Pondicherry, Draupadi, is being presented at Tranoï tradeshow:

Carrousel du Louvre, 75 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris

2nd - 5th march 2012 from 10 am to 19 pm

http://www.tranoi.com/

In the wake of my previous collection, “The Flight of the Women with Windy Soles”, I have imagined this new collection, “Skieshour”, as something light, evanescent, stealthy and protean as the passing clouds.

Here, a landscape woman shares with us her own chromatic declensions of a summer day. Her name, “La Nuheure” [“Skieshour”], was inspired by a book by French poet Jacques Roubaud, Ciel et terre et ciel et terre et ciel [Sky and land and sky and land and sky]:

“[…] duration, instead of being measured in minutes, in hours, in days, would be in skieshours; a ‘skieshour’ would be the time that the most ravishing of clouds would take to cross the sky. And this ‘skieshour’ would actually last indefinitely, the clouds ceaselessly slowing down so as never to reach the end of their errand, so as never to slide out of his gaze, to remain bound to him in an aerial bliss, and the shared solitude of contemplation.”

Photography by Armelle Bouret: www.armellebouret.com

Illustrations by Chloé Sanson: www.chloesanson.com

Maythinie, Muriel and Angélique, hairstyled by Gustavio, have gracefully endorsed the role of embodying Skieshour.

English translation by Sika Fakambi.

All models presented here have been registered at the INPI.

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.

.

Five hours and seventeen minutes after midnight

Sensei Butterfly Coat, black linen,

worn with a Mehari Skirt, men’s suit fabric, black with white stripes.

Five hours and forty-six minutes after midnight: first glimmer of light

Kamarupa Stole, violet-coloured cotton and metal

(also available in indigo blue or aubergine-coloured cotton and metal)

worn with a Straelitzia Skirt, long model

Six hours and twenty-two minutes: dawn

Cache Coeur 60 [crossover top], pearl grey viscose with white stripes

(also available in plain black, and in black & white tweed)

Six hours and twenty-three minutes: *Rayleigh’s hour

Blown Skirt, red-coloured cotton and metal, with an ivory-coloured silk lining

(also available in indigo blue, aubergine or violet-coloured cotton and metal)

Six hours and fifty-eight minutes

Six hours and fifty-nine minutes

 Seven hours and forty-seven minutes: daybreak

Mehari Dress, pearl grey viscose with white stripes

(also available in plain black and in black with white stripes)

Ten hours and eighteen minutes: morning

Flower Bud Coat, short model, pearl grey linen

worn with a handknit kid angora stole

One minute after noon

Sarong Skirt-Dress, mineral green cotton (also available in black linen)

Thirteen hours and five minutes: zenith

Fourteen hours and fifty-two minutes

Sarong Skirt-Dress, mineral green cotton (skirt version)

worn with a Stratus Vest, white & grey jersey

Fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes

Stratus Vest, white & grey jersey 

Seventeen hours and twenty-seven minutes: end of the afternoon

Kamarupa Stole, indigo blue cotton and metal

(also available in violet or aubergine-coloured cotton and metal)

worn with Delta Trousers, pearl grey viscose with white stripes

and a Blown Top, opal grey silk crêpe

Eighteen hours and twenty-eight minutes: almost evening

Eighteen hours and thirty minutes: evening

Delta Trousers, pearl grey viscose with white stripes

(also available in bronze-coloured cotton, and khaki cotton with ochre stripes)

Nineteen hours and forty-seven minutes: twilight

Lava Jacket, mineral green cotton, with an ivory-coloured silk lining

Twenty hours and seven minutes: sunset

Butterfly Stole, violet-coloured cotton and metal

(also available in aubergine coloured cotton and metal, in indigo-coloured silk, and in opal-coloured silk)

worn with a Chimaera Skirt, orange and khaki-coloured cotton and metal

Twenty hours and eight minutes: *Rayleigh’s hour bis

Twenty hours and fifty-two minutes: dusk

Twenty-one hours and thirty-eight minutes: last glimmers of light

Flower Bud Coat, long model, clay pink cotton and metal

worn with a Litham Dress

Twenty-two hours and two minutes: total nightfall

Litham Dress, taupe-coloured embossed fabric

Twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes

Nimbus Dress, aubergine-coloured cotton and metal, with an indigo-coloured silk lining

 One hour after midnight: pitch dark

Sari Blouse, aubergine-coloured cotton and metal

(also available in violet-coloured cotton and metal)

Mehari Skirt, black with white stripes

Five hours and twelve minutes: this is tomorrow

Straelitzia Skirt, long model

worn with a Blown Top, opal grey silk crêpe

 “He dreamt that he was boating down a river, the river of time; and at the same time it was the sky.”

Jacques Roubaud, Sky and land and sky and land and sky

La nuheure ao par marielabarelle

 "Skieshour"'s video is made in collaboration with Delphine Graticola and Elizabeth Fouché.

Clothes have a soul: take care of them. 

Marie Labarelle's clothes have been conceived with creativity and attention.

The materials used are as beautiful and interesting as possible since what is pleasant to work on is pleasant to wear.
Our suppliers are dedicated to associating both know-how and innovation. The production of small quantities is put into the care of workshops, carefully chosen and known for the attention and love that they put into their work.

We are convinced that 'making', is the reflection of our thoughts, and therefore much of our personality is brought out into the fabric that we transform.

The garment has its own story and has been passed on from one dedicated professional to another. 
When it is  yours, up to you to make its story more complete...

Fabrics are wowen in CEE.

Marie Labarelle's clothes are made in Paris, France.

The clothes presented on this website are produced in limited series and are available in a variety of different materials and colors.

A number of exclusive models are available at the Workhop-Boutique but are not presented on this website 
(this generally applies to models that have been reedited as classics or as one-off pieces).

Sizes range from 34-36 (extra small) to 44 (extra large) according to the model; some of them are one-sized. 

Please contact us for more details: 00 33+(0)1 44 83 94 47

Agent France:

Showroom Virginie Blieck, 

15 rue Godillot 93400 SAINT OUEN  

contact@showroom-blieck.com 

Tél:01 40 12 67 23 / Mobile:06 89 56 76 02

http://www.showroom-blieck.com/

This Autumn/Winter collection was inspired by a legend from the Mahābhārata Epic (Hindu mythology).

* The images below have been created with Armelle Bouret, photographer,  www.armellebouret.com

* Elise Ricadat, dancer, along with Maythinie and Alexandra, have in turn embodied Draupadi.

* Gustavio, hairdresser to the Queens, has attended to the hairstyles.

* English translation by Sika Fakambi.

All models presented here have been registered at the INPI.

 
These clothes have been designed and produced in different fabrics and colours. To discover them, you’re welcome to visit my Showroom-Workshop-Boutique: 34 rue des Petites-Écuries, Paris 10e, Tuesday to Saturday from 1 pm to 7.30 pm

..................................................................................................................................................................................

In the Mahābhārata Epic, the five Pandava brothers, deceived by their enemies, were forced to abandon their beloved queen, Draupadi.

When the order was given to strip her naked, Draupadi, distraught, began to pray to the gods to protect her.

Dhusana proceeded to disrobe the queen, but the veils of her sari kept extending as he unwrapped layers and layers of it.

And as Dhusana thus endeavoured to strip the queen of her garment, so the fabric would pile up on the floor, glistening, without Draupadi’s body ever being unveiled.

And so it was that the gods, protecting the order of the world,

saved Draupadi from being humiliated.

In Vedic times, the garment was a sacred thing.

Its intimacy with the human body bestowed upon it both dignity and grandeur.

Its folds were visited by Vayu, god of the wind.

In the ancient texts, it is said that the gods have made the universe in the image of an uninterrupted weaving.

The whole of creation, as well as the becoming of men and the worlds, are thus bound together in this divine weaving.

..................................................................................................................................................................................

Dune Coat, fuchsia-coloured mohair (also available in black)

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Vayu Jacket, silvery blue and mauve-coloured weaved wool (also available in silvery black)
worn with the Delta Trousers, plum-coloured cotton satin Jacquard (also available in bronze, and in black)

..................................................................................................................................................................................

Muga Sweater, long-sleeved model, violet-coloured jersey (also available in black)

worn with the Delta Trousers

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Dupatta Vest, soft grey and ecru-coloured cotton (can be worn in 3 different styles)

worn with the Folded Bermuda Shorts, blue-grey cotton (also available in black)

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Muga Sweater, thick jersey, pumpkin-coloured (also available in black with long sleeves)

worn with the Forgotten Skirt, blue and mauve-coloured Jacquard

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Flower Bud Coat, short model, blue-coloured wool with black chevrons (also available in mauve, and in grey)

worn with the Pythagoras Trousers, silvery brown cotton

....................................................................................................................................................... 

Draupadi Blouse, black silk (also available in yellow/bamboo-green cotton)

worn with the Folded Trousers, black cotton Jacquard (also available in blue-grey)

 .......................................................................................................................................................

Backstage

To learn more about the making of this Paris-Pondicherry collection, Draupadi,

Please clic on the link below:

Récit d'un voyage en Inde.

You will discover here the genesis of a collection, what nourrishes the clothes I design,

and the reasons for my collaborating with the singer Camille.

Photography: Armelle Bouret at Couvent des Récollets
Camille is wearing the Vayu Coat (hand-spinned, hand-weaved silk).
 

http://parispondy.canalblog.com/

Artistic collaborations and exhibitions:

 

July 2009: Workshop with Yusai Okuda, Master Dyer in Kyoto, Japan

Clic here to discover travel and workshop diary on line 

 

Photography: Matthieu Gauchet

 

 

April 2009: French Spring in Asia: Exhibition, workshop and performance in Jakarta and Yogyakarta (Indonésia)

Clic here to discover travel, exhibition and workshop diary on line

 

A Fashion[1].. par marielabarelle

 

 

 

December 2008: Exhibition at the Ateliers de Paris, "Mutations"

 

Performance de la Femme Paysage:  éclosion par marielabarelle

 

 

 

November 2007: costumes for french singer Mell

 

 

May 2007: costumes for solo dancer Marie Barbottin with pianist David Greilsammer, "Fantaisie-Fantasme", CDNS

Photography: Matthieu Gauchet 

 

 

Autumn 2005: costumes for theater, "Alice machine", Autopsia company

Photography: JC Lebreton 

 

October 2005: costumes for Morcheeba's singer, concert at the Grand Rex

http://www.morcheeba.co.uk/

France:

Showroom Dijon, 28000 Dijon

Tadzio, 67000 Strasbourg

Nebka, 13006 Marseille

Abyss, 34000 Montpellier

Pompons, 05200 Baratier

Kladagba, 24310 Brantôme

Des souris et des fringues, 38800 Clermont l’Hérault

Chapitre 2, 83980 Le Lavandou

Osmose, Valenciennes

Belgium:

Moi d’abord, 7500 Tournai

Modesalon, 9000 Gent

 

The Netherlands:

Armana, 6211 Maastricht

Switzerland:

On Stage, Carouge, Genève

Greece:

De toute facon, 10672 Athènes

Taïwan:

Art2Wear, Taipeï City

Kuweit:

Echo, Salmiya, Al Safat 13048

MARIE LABARELLE, CLOTHES DESIGNER 

(Excerpt)

© January 2011 

 Texte traduit du français à l'anglais par Sika Fakambi.

By way of a shop sign, a mere thread of white painting, as though unreeled from a spool, runs on the front window. A thread from the fabric, a thread from the seam, a thread from the thoughts, the thread of dreams or times – it signals this place “of all possibilities” where Marie Labarelle designs and creates clothes for women, following the course of her many travels – real or imaginary. 

The whole story started with a skirt – forgotten in a laundry basket. So this would be the name: The Forgotten Skirt (In the Laundry Basket). Marie Labarelle has examined each and every fold of the garment, she has reflected upon the aesthetics of accidental creases, and from this matter of chance she has made a piece of clothing. And she did it again, and again. Each piece that comes into shape in her hands – coats, skirts, trousers, jackets, vests, blouses, tops, twinsets, tunics… almost a decade of creation – thus results from her long researches on the fold: coiled, puffed, pointed, draped, flowing…

A piece of fabric may well lay on the couch of her workshop for a month or two, she will drop an eye on it as she passes by, she will turn it over, handle it, test its reactions. Then at some point, she will drape herself in the fabric, throw it above her shoulder, hold it tight around her waist. And that is how she truly “enters” the fabric, discovers the possibilities of the material’s natural movements. And from these movements, she will create forms. Every time, it’s a challenge: wanderings, trials and errors, sudden brainwaves, and the surprise of experimenting the very moment of conception, which might prove itself difficult to keep in mind or to rediscover when the time eventually comes to analyse it and bring it to reality. “When you’re actually looking for something, you never know. You make your choices instinctively, by accident. Everything is latent, and at some point it all turns to evidence.”

Unlike most designers, who first sketch a silhouette, then find the suitable fabric and cut it according to the pattern’s outlines, Marie Labarelle starts by working directly on the mannequin and creates her clothes directly in three dimensions. In this process, the fabric progressively comes to life – its soul unveils itself. A sleeper soul, laying in wait, ready to entirely unfurl when the clothes will finally move on women’s bodies…

In her travels to Japan and Indonesia, Marie Labarelle was caught in a particular stream of thoughts, visions and emotions, which have proved to be in harmony with her intuitions, abundantly nourishing her sources of inspiration. In the 2009 autumn-winter collection, entitled “On the Slopes of the Chimaera Volcano”, the forms and movements of the Straelitzia look are in perfect resonance with the magnificent tropical flower that gave its name to that very series; and the Lava Coat, the Merapi Coat, as well as the Lava Dress, directly stem from one of the most powerful experiences of that trip – the volcano experience.

The following collections were inspired by imaginary travels. In “My Mehari”, the 2010 spring-summer collection, the lines and movements of the Mehari look – Skirt, Blouse, Jacket and Dress – originate from the spine. The fabric resting on the vertebrae keeps in its folds the print of their pattern, its undulating lines reminiscent of a swaying camel caravan crossing the desert. The Draped T-Shirt or the Knitwear Twinset, light but covering, may well be imagined as garments to wear during a long walk under a blazing sun, while the Scarf Top, leaving the arms and the upper back naked, is to be worn under the shade of trees in an oasis.

We leave the desert. Enter three women – or is it just the one walking in the scorching heat and light of the desert who thus ends up thrice reincarnated? This is the “Flight of the Women with Windy Soles” – the 2011 autumn-winter collection. TheAviator, the Bird and Icarus’ Sister have in common the same fragility, meant here as a strength – that of lightness. The Earth, the Water and the Fire ran in the previous collections, but in this one, it is the Air that circulates. The Millie Trousers, Sweater and Coat do pay tribute to the boldness of illustrious American aviator Amelia Earhart, nicknamed “Millie”. The Alae Skirt, Blouse and Jacket directly evoke wings – organs of flight –, and study their lines, their spans. 

Marie Labarelle believes that a piece of clothing is not quite complete until it has been chosen – drawing to itself, for a complex set of reasons, a woman who will wear it with all her being. That is why the fitting room session is neither drudgery nor mere routine, but really an experience that must be considered as a moment of proof. Marie Labarelle positions the clothes on a body, completes the fit with a few stitches, adjusting it properly, making it a unique model. This is also the moment when she witnesses the transformation of a woman as she dresses up. To don a garment in the full sense of the phrase. The garment acts on the body, it reveals the body. But the garment is also revealed by the body, and thus fully becomes clothing [in French: habit]. “To inhabit a flower”… “To inhabit a shell”… “To drape oneself in a membrane of air”… So, each time they put on their clothes, women are invited to read the poem inscribed on the clothes’ labels. “In my heart, flowers in armfuls”. “Between fabric and skin, my mood roams”. “To lean on air”. And so it that, before departing with a particular woman, each piece of clothing is endowed with its own special formula, both an expression of the state of mind it may incite, and an evocation of the beginning of its story, at the time when, a year before or even more, a piece a fabric was chosen, brought into the workshop, and laid down to rest for a while on the couch…

As she was contemplating an Aboriginal painting in Musée du Quai Branly, Marie Labarelle has had the vision of a “Landscape Woman”, wearing a garment that she would inhabit as she would of a territory, a garment that would reveal the whole her body. That founding vision of an inhabited garment has directed her in all her creations since. From that day on, in that unique place where the threads of her inner life, of her art and her being-in-the-world are daily weaved, Marie Labarelle has been constantly tracking each and every movement in the fabrics, and she has been fashioning her folds to meet forms and bodies. Thus speaks the “Landscape Woman”: within nature a clothed body, an inhabited garment. 

* Isabelle Van Welden was born in Paris, in 1954. Her family is originally from the Flanders. With a theater career in mind, she devotes herself to acting and drama for a number of years while pursuing her studies in history. She starts writing in 1989. Since 1994, she’s been working at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Isabelle Van Welden is the author of Le Palais des archives, a novel published in 2002 by Christian Bourgois Éditeur.

Photography: Delphine Graticola, Armelle Bouret, Matthieu Gauchet.