At the edge of the Rambouillet forest, in the Paris region, one evening in 2017, in the living room of a rustic building remodeled into a Californian villa. As she puts her son in pajamas, Candice Fauchon notices aloud that, apart from luxury houses, few brands offer elegant nightwear for children. “With Paul, my husband, we looked at each other, and it was the click”, she remembers.
In parallel with the seven years spent at the French edition of the magazine Grace, during which she styled numerous fashion series – “I already liked the feminine masculine, but sometimes it was crazier” –, the editor collaborated with her husband at the head of James, a Parisian furniture gallery from the 1950s and 1960s.
During a trip to these exotic destinations where the dream sales images printed on the magazine’s glossy paper are made, the young woman fell in love with Brazil, more particularly with Trancoso, a fishing village in the state of Bahia. This passion will lead the couple to multiply the stays there, tourist, then professional. “We knew there was some interesting modernist Brazilian design. We had to do some scouting, we came back with a container. We hunted in Rio, in São Paolo…” Candice Fauchon and Paul Viguier will become the experts of this furniture in Paris. Maturing the desire to live their Brazilian experience, with a gallery there, the duo will leave the capital. But, after seven months, the adventure will come to an end.
Italian poplins and English woolens
Back in France after this parenthesis, heavenly all the same and formative, the couple chose to live in the countryside, in a family home, on the edge of the forest. Even where, on that famous evening of 2017, the two serial entrepreneurs will foment an interior clothing project for dandies aged 2 to 10, imbued with stylistic references to the art of tailoring.
Choice of Italian poplins – plain, striped, in very soft and robust double-twisted cotton – and English woolens – plain flannels, houndstooth or Prince of Wales pattern, chalk stripes or checks window pane –; search for a production plant (in Poland); production of technical drawings by a model maker; production of prototypes; numerous fittings “inflicted” on their child; price calculation… After a long and meticulous development, Candice Fauchon, homewear brand, was launched on May 15, 2019.
Her husband having joined the design section of a large auction house, the stylist runs the small business. Then, in order to distribute her line composed of chic classic or kimono-style pajamas, shirts, nightgowns with breastplates, little English lord’s dressing gowns, she participated in children’s fashion fairs. ” The brand was well received, especially by English and Spanish buyers, but there were not many orders at first. Then the pandemic and the lockdowns hampered the development process. I almost stopped everything several times…”
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