PARIS — For Longchamp artistic director Sophie Delafontaine, designing a collection usually begins with looking at art.
“When I start the collection, I always start by the color palette,” she told a panel talk at the opening of the Longchamp Art Festival in Paris. “And honestly, often it’s art that helps me to build the color palette.”
That inspiration was in evidence at the venue in Paris where the French house, best known for its wildly popular Pliage bag, hosted the free cultural event that gathered nearly 30 artists and creators from around the world for a three-day program spanning painting, sculpture, photography, design, music, dance and digital art.
Works by the likes of Elias Crespin, Maya Hayuk and Sarah Morris added a graphic splash of color to the all-white space, which also hosted concerts, DJ sets and dance performances, alongside a café. Celebrities including Juliette Binoche, Zoey Deutch, Jung So-min and Kim Se-jeong attended the opening party.
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Last Friday, Delafontaine sat down with Géraldine Sarratia, the host of French newspaper Le Monde’s Le goût de M podcast, to talk about her passion for art, which stems from her grandparents, who founded the company in 1948.
Together with her brother Jean Cassegrain, chief executive officer of Longchamp, Delafontaine scours exhibitions, galleries and fairs for new talents to take part in product collaborations, create art for its stores or produce campaigns like the 2012 campaign featuring Coco Rocha, directed by dancer and choreographer Blanca Li.
“I don’t know if it’s Longchamp which inspires my taste, or my taste which inspires Longchamp, but we are so linked that it’s a mix of everything,” she said.
“It’s an aesthetic that is very graphic, pure, abstract, colorful,” Delafontaine added, noting that she gravitates toward abstract over figurative art, as it allows more room for personal interpretation.
She pointed to the Xavier Veilhan mobile handing over the audience as an example. “You can imagine so many things looking at that, so it’s very inspiring,” Delafontaine mused.
When it comes to choosing artists to work with, fame is not a consideration.
The house’s tradition of artist collaborations dates back to 1971, when it tapped French painter Serge Mendjiski to design a bag, but Delafontaine’s most recent project was with Brussels-based textile artist Caroline Hélain.
“She was very surprised that I wanted to do a collaboration with her, but no matter whether she’s well known or how many followers she has on Instagram, the only thing [that mattered to me] was that I really fell in love with her use of color,” she said.
When it worked with Tracey Emin in 2004, Longchamp had to invest in new machines to produce her patchwork designs. For its partnership with Morris, it tapped a porcelain manufacturer to source the right technique for printing her works on black leather.
“Each collaboration has increased our know-how,” Delafontaine said.
She joined forces with performing arts curator and producer Olivier Bassuet to develop the program for the festival, which she described as a gift to the city. “We wanted to connect all this in one place and to share it with everyone,” she said.
