Portrait & Interview - Pascal Gautrand - Made in Town - Club Sustainability & Fashion

To re-launch the 2021 series of IFM ALumni - Portraits and Interviews , Olivia Chammas ( IFM Management 2015 ) met  Pascal Gautrand ( IFM Management 1999) to discuss about his profesionnal paths, his passion for Fashion and Creation as well as his relation ship with the IFM.

Not to be missed : The Pascal Gautrand inspiring projets Made in Town and Olivia Chammas lastest news 

1  Dear Pascal, let us know. Where did your interest for sustainability emerge from?

My first training, before following the management cycle at the IFM in 1999, was both in fashion design and textile design. Attracted by the fashion world, I quickly understood that my interest in the sector was not so much in product development, but rather in the invention of new manufacturing chains that could bring to the product more than aesthetic or design values. Thus, the object of my textile design degree at ESAAT in Roubaix, was particularly focused on the experimentation of production rules allowing to produce unique pieces in series, which allowed to bypass the very strong standardization imposed by industrial production (today we call it customization) and also studied the emerging concept of up-cycling based on the recycling of existing clothing or textile remains from the workshops cutting mattresses.

2 How did you make your professional practices coincide with your CSR priorities?

From 2000 to 2003, I marketed, at Le Bon Marché, La Samaritaine and in a few Japanese point of sale, collections of clothing resulting from the transformation of vintage T-shirts and shirts, under the Label XVI brand. In 2008 I obtained a year's residency at the Villa Medici in Rome which allowed me to focus on the notion of local manufacturing. At that time, I wanted to highlight the fact that manufacturing, its locations, its actors, its know-how, shaped the fashion products we consume. Not necessarily from an aesthetic or stylistic point of view, but rather from an ethical, cultural, heritage, political point of view... In particular, I approached about thirty tailors of custom-made shirts in Rome to "copy" a Zara shirt, the archetype of industrial, standardized and globalized production. The aim of this experiment was to demonstrate how a product as classic and timeless as a striped men's shirt can be interpreted according to the "hand" of each tailor, his way of doing things, his experience or his personal preferences, offering a multitude of variations from one piece to another, all characteristics of the artisanal and local approach. The following year, I therefore created Made in Town, a consulting agency, in order to apply the fruit of my research to the fashion and textile industry by accompanying trade shows such as those organized by the Première Vision group, professional groups seeking to highlight the specificities of their professions, or local authorities wishing to highlight the companies and know-how present within their perimeter.

3 This period of sanitary crisis, has been, for many, a time to introspect. Which activities/habits do you think you will change or pursue? 

Since 2018, initially with the support of Première Vision, my activity has been particularly focused on finding solutions for the French wool industry. Every year, more than 14,000 tons of wool are sheared in France and most of it, in recent decades, is no longer valorized locally. This leads on the one hand to an economic loss for sheep farmers since the cost of shearing far exceeds the value of the wool of each sheep and on the other hand to the loss of processing know-how specific to this sector such as washing, combing or spinning. When the first confinement was announced in March 2020, with Paris Good Fashion and Deloitte Sustainability, we were on the verge of recruiting key founding members to finance the formation of Collectif Tricolor, a non-profit inter-professional association that restores dialogue between the worlds of breeding, the wool industry and distribution. In spite of the difficulties that our sectors of activity are going through, we immediately noticed how much this crisis allowed us to increase the awareness and commitment of many actors in order to invent new models, more virtuous, more eco-responsible, which favor common sense and a local approach. Thanks to the energy and commitment of 35 members, professional federations, institutions and private companies, on November 25, 2020, at the Mobilier National, we organized the official launch of the Collectif Tricolor in order to offer a tool for dialogue and action to the entire French wool industry.

4 Within IFM, how would you like the alumni to support sustainable development in fashion? 

It seems to me that one of the priorities is to create more proximity between the upstream and downstream of our sectors. To enable the players to come out of their bubbles, to exchange on their needs, to highlight their specificities. Learning the vocabulary and knowing the stakes of all the players, moving towards the development of more collective visions and practices is essential. Recovering the logic of the sector that a current of individualism had erased. The hyper-professionalization of self-centered companies and the relocation of industry to the other side of the planet have introduced a lot of physical and cultural distance between the various links of our sectors. This is undoubtedly one of the roles that the IFM and its alumni can play: helping to reintroduce inter-knowledge and strengthen the links between professions.

Interviewed by Olivia Chammas (IFM Management 2015)