A Rose by No Other Name; Maison Legeron

The atelier of maison Legeron, founded in Paris in 1880, in Rue des Petits Champs, conserves all of the delights and enchantment from the last century, thanks to over-size wood furniture with profoundly deep drawer, enormous boxes, matchless catalogues with incredible colour schemes, old labels and inside the smallest space occupies floral bouquets, garlands, and blossoms in every grade of colour accent and tint, ready to be package in their silk papering and only at that point in time are sent to The Best of Moda Parisian…French Couture .

To create a reference book of different colour hues of a single rose, the artist creates a bunch of shades from painted formulas created beforehand: then dyes very small swatches of fabric using drops of a coloured solution carefully measured and only then a precious catalogue of rose petals is created. At this point with just a few inches of silk mussouline, the artist transforms small tinted swatches into perfect groups of magnificent blooming petals.

Realized exclusivity for Dior with rare complexity and achieved only with expert hands was a rose with petals dyed in light grey with leaves made of rich velvet: each rose amazingly constitutes at least ten different types of petals cut in different sizes and forms, then borders are hand painted from top to the heart of each petal.

Languidly soft are these silky petals; roses are infinitely delicate, which makes them divinely elegant, prolonging graciously to antique roses with evocatory names like:
“Assemblage de beautès”, “La Belle Sultane”, “Mousseline” and “Perpétuelle
mousseuse”…
 

I wrote this post being deeply inspired with maison Legeron’s antique process of the-art-of-flower making and how the maison continues today in a century-old atmosphere seemingly intact with archives preciously conserving catalogues with the most incredible colour variations.
 

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did…. I am teaching myself how to make flowers too, for my millinery collections. It will take lots of practice and technical study, as well as experiencing the natural growing cycle of roses.
This also affirms my love and passion for roses and antique gardens. 

How about you?