Inside the Fire Station-Turned-Sustainable Fashion Incubator in the Middle of Paris

A former fire station in the center of Paris is now a hot bed for fashion’s circular economy. 

Founded in 2021, La Caserne now houses around 30 sustainability-minded businesses — 10 of which are start-ups dedicated to ready-to-wear, accessories and technology — in a 43,000-square-foot space in the 10ème arrondissement, a stone’s throw from the Gare du Nord. Having been decommissioned some 15 years ago, the building (which belongs to the City of Paris) had fallen into disrepair when, in late 2018, the Mayor’s office put out an open call for proposals to regenerate it. 

Maeva Bessis, now the executive director of La Caserne, led the bid at the behest of French entrepreneur Jacques Veyrat, founder of holding company Impala, whose portfolio includes a diverse lineup across industries (finance, real estate. technology, culture, fashion, beauty, entertainment and biotech) united by a mission of environmental impact and innovation. 

For Veyrat, La Caserne was a passion project, as opposed to a money-making venture, according to Bessis: “He wanted to give back to the city.” 

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Veyrat gave Bessis carte blanche — the only criteria being that La Caserne should be “an impact place, a cool place, a place that wouldn’t actually lose him money.” (At the time of the bid, Bessis was CEO of e-commerce platform L’Exception, in which Impala is an investor; she’s since given up that role to focus fully on La Caserne.)

I meet Bessis in the sprawling courtyard that centerpieces the building, which is “classé” or “listed,” meaning major structural changes are generally not authorized. La Caserne did manage to secure permission to add a gallery “that now runs around the exterior of the first floor.” (It also has event spaces, showrooms, a boutique, florist, vegetarian restaurant and a night club.) “That was really integral to the project,” she says. “We wanted the residents to be able to easily connect.” 

La Caserne houses a combination of brands and service providers, all carefully selected to form a sustainable ecosystem, where they benefit from communal facilities such as a photo studio and a workshop. One of these residents is Nona Source, an LVMH–backed initiative that takes deadstock from the group’s maisons and makes it available to emerging brands at affordable prices. “I wanted to have a start-up focussed on raw materials,” explains Bessis.

Nona Source services both its neighbors at La Caserne and the wider fashion community. It has a showroom with a library of around 2,500 fabric swatches, from broderie anglais and pink chiffon to tweed shot with sequins, each with a QR code that allows you to access information on the supply volume of each, and a link to order.

“We want to be a solution that serves all luxury maisons who face the problem of accumulating dormant fabrics and where any designers from any field can come and get inspired,” says co-founder and CEO Romain Brabo. 

Nona Source’s current goal, he explains, is to expand the offering to include leathers and gemstones. It’s also partnering with another start-up called We Turn that breaks down existing materials and transforms them into brand-new fabrics; it plans to extend this solution to luxury houses outside of the LVMH umbrella. This summer, it’ll take over a larger, 1,400-square-foot space at La Caserne — four times the size of its current home — to accommodate this expansion.

Jeanne Friot is one of the ready-to-wear start-ups in residence at La Caserne. The eponymous founder — who worked at Balenciaga before launching her own venture in 2020 — says it’s “a great space for a young designer,” noting the access to a technical service platform facility called Le Lab by IFTH, another start-up housed at La Caserne, for prototyping.

I meet her in this shared atelier space, where she’s busy working on orders from the Fall 2023 collection. Alongside her team of four, she’s pleating and hand-stitching micro kilts in red-and-gray plaid, as coats in glossy red faux fur hang on rails, ready to be shipped. Many of the fabrics hail from Nona Source.

Another La Caserne resident is made-to-order leather accessories label Domestique, which launched in 2016 with a BDSM-inspired paddle in the shape of a feather that’s still a bestseller. Its offering has evolved from intimacy into more lifestyle-geared pieces, like small leather goods such as hotel-style “do not disturb” door hangers bearing tongue-in-cheek messages. “It’s about changing the context of items and reappropriating them in a different way,” says co-founder Simon Delacour. (Cue bags resembling paper shopping bags and the fruit and vegetable crates you’d find in a farmers’ market.)

Prior to La Caserne, Domestique worked out of a tiny room in an apartment. In addition to more space, Delacour cites the benefits of having neighbors with whom to discuss problems and bounce ideas: “We all help each other. We recently launched an e-shop, and some of the residents helped us integrate Shopify APIs, because it involved technical skills that we don’t have.”

Like Friot, Delacour also makes use of Le Lab, which was created by the Institut Français du Textile et de l’Habillement (IFTH). It combines digital visualization with laser-cutting and engraving machines, as well as machines for conducting performance evaluation of fabrics, like abrasion and stress testing. The idea, says FabManager (yes, that’s the official job title printed on his business card) François Pézeril, “is to allow fashion and accessories brands to optimize all their product development processes, from A to Z, under one roof.”

A particularly innovative service offered at Le Lab is a 3D body-mapping solution created by French tech outfit Nettelo. Using photographs and computer learning, it can export over 100 different body measurements in three minutes, allowing designers to adapt the dimensions of garments and see the changes directly on an avatar.

La Caserne also houses Web3 start-up Arianee, a blockchain solutions platform that creates token-based engagement programs and digital product passports for luxury goods. It has partnered with the Richemont Group, YSL Beauty, Breitling and Moncler, plus tech companies like IBM and The Sandbox.

On the consumer-facing side at La Caserne there’s also fashion rental platform Studio Paillette, which works with high-end brands like Balmain and Isabel Marant to rent out garments from previous collections, and Circle Sportswear, which creates technical clothing for running and yoga using recycled and recyclable materials.

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La Caserne is self-funded thanks, in part, to the restaurant, club and boutique housed therein. Incorporating other revenue-earning businesses into the facility was also integral to the bid, as the project had to bring benefit to the public at large, as opposed to just the fashion community. 

“When you’re creating an incubator ,the numbers are very difficult,” says Bessis. “On the one hand, you want to create an affordable place for young designers, and on the other, you need to have a balanced business model. We realized very quickly that only having the rent from the designers would not be enough to sustain it financially.” 

Residents pay rent at market rates according to square footage. The aforementioned benefits, though — such as the shared workshop space, an on-site photo studio, educational programming and network of likeminded individuals and businesses — bring added value.

La Caserne also brings in money by renting out its spaces for events. LVMH and Woolmark have used them for education and training activations, both for their personnel and collaborators, while buzzy Dutch designer Duran Lantink staged his debut Paris Fashion Week show there in March.

While Bessis acknowledges that the original idea was for each start-up to remain at La Caserne for a period of three years, the future isn’t set in stone.

“After that, we cannot give more than we already give in terms of education and the tools they can access, but maybe we will think that we need to keep some in order to make the ecosystem work,” she says. “We are very flexible. This is just the beginning.”

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Source: Fashionista.com