Bérengère de Lassée
Portrait
Founder of Lastelier which is a French fashion accessory house made mainly in Italy.
I have always loved to travel, I love authenticity, sunshine, the dolce vita, family, friends, smiles, simplicity, joie de vivre, moments of happiness... And I have been lucky enough to live in Italy for several years where they cultivate these values to perfection. This is what shaped me.
At the time I was working at Bottega Veneta as a leather goods product manager and then as the world coordinator for training in the brand's accessories manufacturing techniques. Then I had the chance to meet my husband.
I was living in Italy and he was an expatriate in Indonesia at the time and it was only natural that I ended up joining him to live a life that was always so incredible and exceptional. It was together that we created Lastelier. It is thanks to my exciting experience in the world of fashion and the confidence that the artisans I was working with at the time had in our project, that our brand Lastelier could be born.
I had it in mind for so long! I wanted timeless pieces that would stay with us for all occasions, essential accessories that follow us everywhere, those that we never part with, that are an integral part of our lives, our travels, our homes and that evolve with us, in our own history.
Lastelier is the contraction of my family name "Lassée" and the word "atelier": Lassée + Atelier = Lastelier.
How did your project start?
Lastelier, "volere bene"
Lastelier is a French brand of fashion accessories that offers timeless, functional and durable pieces made in a traditional way in workshops selected for their know-how.
Lastelier is also the famous Italian "volere bene", having beautiful intentions for the people who wear our accessories with a message of happiness hidden in each piece.
These strong values come directly from Lastelier's logic of responsible and slow-fashion thinking with only one collection per year, small series made with selected materials and a quality and sustainable handmade production.
What are your objectives in terms of sustainable development?
- Reduce our carbon footprint
- Recovering, transforming and reusing existing materials whenever possible
- Eliminate polybags (often requested by US customers) with compostable packaging
- Beware of over-packaging (individual plastics, oversized boxes, etc.)
- Continue to offer timeless, quality and practical accessories because these points contribute to maximizing the life span of a piece
- To carefully monitor the respect and the follow-up of the working conditions (in workshops in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia which produce some of our bags)
What is your major challenge in terms of improvement within two years?
Reduce our carbon footprint.
We only produce a few pieces a year and we work with excellent craftsmen who produce for the big houses, which also means that they take care of our small series between two larger productions. We often find ourselves behind schedule, which means we have to fly more often.
We're going to move our calendar forward to use less impactful distribution methods and gain autonomy. And if a piece that we had intended to release is not ready in time, we will simply postpone its release. This is also one of the advantages of offering only timeless pieces that do not suffer from trends.
Your definition of “sustainable luxury”?
It would be a responsible luxury that strives to respect the values of sustainable development by taking into account the best possible social and environmental impacts of the company.
Being transparent, showing, demonstrating and making commitments to improve: this should become THE standard. And this new standard should be the basis, the real starting point. This is what would allow us to stop the greenwashing and monetization of the words responsible, green, upcycling or sustainable, which are currently overused and overexploited.
Why join 1.618?
Firstly to evaluate our social and environmental responsibility and to see how we can improve.
Secondly, because today, everyone talks about CSR but few can prove their actions in a concrete and factual way.
For Lastelier, right from the start we tried to do things in a responsible way, or in the way we thought was the best possible, because for us it was normal to do so.
We knew that the end customer would also feel it. Today, in the age of greenwashing, we want to put things in their place and show that what we do, we do it well.
Everything is not perfect yet, but we are working on it and being part of the 1.618 community allows us to validate our approach and confirm our commitments.
What is the meaning of your name?
Lastelier is a combination of Lassée, my family name and the word Atelier.
