La Fabrique Nomade, a School of Cultures.

 

Founded in January 2016 by Inès Mesmar, La Fabrique Nomade is an association dedicated to promoting and facilitating the professional integration of migrant and refugee artisans in France.

“What we do here is give them the opportunity to apply their savoir-faire, honed over years in their home countries, in a local context,” Ghaita explains. 
“We provide them with a space where they can learn to adapt their skills to meet the expectations of the French market.”
Ghaita leads me and a group of other educators and design professionals on a tour of the jewelry-making workshops. She explains the workshop nurtures collaborations with French jewelry and fashion houses, while also featuring an in-house line designed by Megane the jewelry production coordinator.
“I handle client relations, project management, design, and artisan training,” Megane tells us as Ratna, the first artisan we meet, reaches over to turn the electric grinder off, so we can hear him speak. 

The background hum of cutting, polishing, and filing machines provides a fitting soundtrack.
This is no boutique on the Golden Triangle.

 

With that thought simmering, I press for a bit of confirmation, asking whether this setup sparks a real give-and-take: a space where skills and cultural know-how flow both ways, like a backstage runway of mutual learning and creative cross-pollination 

Surprisingly, Ghaita’s response is tinged with a slight shade of regret. 

“Here, we focus on teaching them what’s expected in France. When they work for fashion houses, honestly, we don’t ask them to create from their imagination—that’s a bit of a myth. But French brands are often intrigued to discover that the artisans achieve the same results using different techniques, and they’re fascinated by that. So, in a way, there is an exchange. It enriches both sides.”

However, as we move to the embroidery workshop, we find that the exchange of cultural and artisanal knowledge is actually far deeper than it initially appears.

Here, we are welcomed by one of the embroiderers, Moulin who is working on a very ancient technique called Lunéville. This might seem unnecessary but in order to understand why I believe the possibilities behind La Fabrique Nomade a much wider than it may appear I must give you a little bit of fashion-historical context.

Lunéville stitch refers to an embroidery technique created in the city of the same name, at the beginning of the 19th century. This embroidery is performed on a cotton tulle base, also using cotton thread to create a chain stitch. The work is done using a specific hook called the ‘Lunéville hook.’ Until the 1940s, this embroidery was used in the production of numerous garments and decorations. It was during this period that metal sequins began to be applied with a needle. Half a century later, an innovation by Ferry Bonnechaux (mayor of Lunéville) involved applying them with a crochet hook. This new technique gave a new life to this local industry by increasing the variety of beads that could be applied. The raw materials, namely glass beads, were imported from Italy and Bohemia. The finished products were exported to England and the French colonies. When the technique became less popular in France, workshops in the former French colonies took it up, continuing to learn and perpetuate it, even up to the present day. Today, it’s migrant artisans and political refugees who keep this French art form alive. They’ve transformed and enriched it through years of development and diverse techniques applied in different geographical contexts. 

“In some ways, it’s a form of decolonization,” says Ghaita. “The same goes for the Cornélis. The Cornélis is an embroidery machine. These are French machines that were widely imported into the former colonies. Now they’re here. There are very few people who still do this, and so the know-how comes back with migration… And that’s magical. The pathways of their exchanges.”

After a quick visit to the textile production workshops, I head back upstairs, and I can’t help but drawing some unexpected conclusions from the tour.

In the context of rehabilitation and reconciliation, fertile grounds emerge for a meaningful exchange of knowledge: skills — as well as tools — are shared with the aim of mutually improving the work and professional journey of each artisan. 

These exchanges reveal the possibility of reconciliation as a mean of mutual enrichment. While much remains to be done, what’s emerging is a quiet return of knowledge and creative agency to formerly colonised territories—regions that, for decades, were denied the legitimacy to cultivate and define their own cultural practices.

This knowledge returns, strengthened by all the modifications it has undergone. Enriched by other techniques, gestures, and methods from the regions where it was nurtured. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but this dynamic seems like a metaphor for a world that, over time, is resiliently moving towards collaboration. Making it a priority, melding global adaptation with the necessary and essential preservation of local fashion and textile traditions.

Filled with an appreciation for the people of La Fabrique Nomade, I wrestled with the metro once more. This time, flanked by Ghaita as we both stumbled into a sunny but cold Paris afternoon. While I still have questions, I now understand what it is for creation to define and change your life. These artisans are top of their field, and still practise the techniques brought by colonialism. Are these practices merely feeding the engine of French fashion, or have they stirred something deeper: a shift in how we understand the journey of fashion itself, how fashion concepts fight their way across borders, carried and reshaped by the hands of those who cross them? Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: this is a story far too rich to be contained in just 2,000 words.

You enjoyed this article?

We invite you to tell your story, submitting your decentralising perspective on artistic and fashioning practices.