Welcome back to The Scoop. I hope you wore and did so little this summer that you are actually looking forward to layering for the fall shows. If you’re reading us for the first time, this is a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week.
This week’s guest is Charlotte Gaucher-Holmann, CEO of Repetto, a Parisian brand that’s been making ballet flats since 1947. Its founder, Rose Repetto, was inspired to recreate a dancer’s shoe for walking by her son, choreographer Roland Petit, who would complain about sore feet after his ballet classes. The brand grew very popular in the mid-20th century with its Cendrillon ballet flat, while Rose’s muses and customers included Brigitte Bardot, Rudolf Nureyev and Serge Gainsbourg.
Charlotte took over the company’s reins from her father, Jean-Marc Gaucher, after his passing in 2023. Jean-Marc Gaucher acquired the then-struggling company in 1999 and reinstated its hero ballerina as a must-wear for anyone who wanted to look cool and/or from Paris. He did so through a number of collaborations with fashion designers including Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto, who is the subject of today’s scoop.
Hi Charlotte, what’s the scoop?
We have a collaboration with Yohji Yamamoto launching on September 14. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Yohji Yamamoto because he built his house independently and has kept it going for over 50 years, with a commitment to creativity, craftsmanship, discipline, and at the same time, freedom. These are values we share because Repetto is also a family-run business and our focus is dance, which requires discipline and a rebellious vision at the same time. I am really happy with the results of the collaboration; they feel unexpected but, at the same time, very coherent with our two brands.
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There is a new wave of Japanese influence in Paris… How did the collaboration come about?
We collaborated for the first time in 2002, and so the lines of communication between our houses have been open since then. We have been looking for the right moment to create something together again. Japan is also a key market for Repetto.
Did you get to meet Yohji? He’s hard to get.
I didn’t have the chance to see him. I know his team really well, though. He has such a unique way of working closely with his team that it felt like we were talking to him in a way. Yohji was really interested in the world of dance and found inspiration in the pointe shoes. Then he came up with the ideas and the design; you can’t really dictate to him, and that wasn’t the point of this collaboration.
