sous les pavés

The Designers of « sous les pavés »

Sophie Lagreula had an early passion for design and decoration of tableware, highly appreciated by wellknown shops as Le Bon Marché, Saks, Barneys, Takashimaya, etc.
At the end of the nineties, she opens a shop in the gardens of the Palais Royal, Paris, which she leaves to go living in Marseille and afterwards Cannes. Once installed in the South of France, Sophie collaborates with Pierre Frey and Fragonard for whom she designs productlines. Sophie continues however the dinnerware and introduces to accompany this, a line of tablelinens, as well as bags and blouses. She returns to Paris with her family, where she designs a line of small bijous.

Catherine Tisserant leaves Paris in 1999, direction Venasque, a charming village in the Provence.
Because she adores decorating superb tablesettings for her friends, she follows courses for painting porcelain. Soon the interior-designers of the region fall for the grace and her tableware represents the french « savoir-faire »on the tables of Boston and Miami. Catherine did not forget her passion for fashion, she continues as since her adolescence to make bijous, small rocky and trendy, well appreciated by the fashion victims. After 8 years in the deep Provence, Catherine leaves to live in Marseille. A short stay of somewhat more than a year before returning to Paris.

Two similar (parallel) tracks : the porcelain, the bijous, Paris, the South, Paris.
No wonder that Sophie and Catherine, after a first and short encounter at common friends, they called on last autumn to drink a coffee together.

And what should happen happens…..

The girls discuss the envy for a fun bag, trendy, relaxed but elegant…different, astonishing…
Times are changing towards recycling, commemoration of may 68 with great implications for women, so it is decided they are going to use a « torture subject » to make a « «pleasure subject » : the floor cloth !
These cloths are painted in trendy colors and transformed and decorated to make bags and wallets………Made in France ….of course. To embellish their creations, they discover a stamping company, that accepts to re-introduce for them the production of old designs : the face of a vietnamese woman with her wedding-cap, a good-luck elephant or a wagging monkey, all hand-painted…

Their brand is « Sous les pavés » (under the pavement), a call to liberty, immagination….