From the Super U car park in Villiers-sur-Marne, in the Val-de-Marne, it is hard to imagine that on the first floor the former offices of the mini-market house the Ateliers Alix. “Pay no attention to it”, warns us Luisa Defoor, teacher of third-year students in this school specializing in haute couture, when she welcomes us at the end of October. Indeed, it is enough to cross the front door for the magic to work. A workshop worthy of a haute couture house is then revealed. In the silence, surrounded by rolls of fabric and the famous Stockman mannequins, eight third-year students concentrate on their work.
On a large high table, each one gets down to making a dress by hand, under the watchful eye of Luisa Defoor: “They are being examined under real workshop conditions. » Like all the teachers at this school, this former seamstress worked for the most prestigious houses – Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton, among others. Now retired, aged 70, she passes on to students her know-how and the rigor of the profession, in a sector in search of quality labor.
Eva Pereira embodies the next generation. From the height of her 22 years, a tape measure around her neck and a pincushion on her wrist, she meticulously passes a white thread through a blue fabric and draws, little by little, the contours of her future dress. With her professional baccalaureate in fashion and clothing in her pocket, the young Corrézienne arrived in Paris determined to sew. She was accepted at the Institut français de la mode (IFM), but she could not find an employer to follow the work-study program and was also unable to pay the tuition fees – between 12 000 and 14,000 euros per year. By chance, she discovers an advertisement for Ateliers Alix. “This school absolutely saved my life”, she admits, thanking the workshops for having covered part of the cost of his training.
“We realized very early on that the sewing level of all the students, whether they had attended a private fashion school, a CAP or a vocational baccalaureate, was too low. » Mossi Traoré, founder of Ateliers Alix
In recent years, financially accessible training without a diploma requirement has emerged. So many alternatives to classic fashion courses that immerse students in the life of a workshop and democratize the world of fashion. “We cannot be a school that selects for the portfolio”, asserts Mossi Traoré. A fashion designer, he founded Ateliers Alix in 2015 as a tribute to Madame Grès (1903-1993), a great seamstress also known as Alix and famous for her art of folding.
You have 64.69% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.