As Laurence Chauvin-Buthaud comes to London with Merchants on Long, she tells Nataal about her brand’s rebirth
Few designers would view a damaging fire in their HQ as a blessing but when this happened to Laurence Chauvin-Buthaud in 2015, it proved to be the reset she needed. “At that time, Laurenceairline had been in business five years and started to get too big for me. I had no life and was exhausted,” she tells me over tea and cake at a London cafe. “I had my factory and studio in the industrial area of Abidjan and then a fire came. No one was hurt and the production was saved. So, I was grateful. It meant I could stop.” Her biggest concern was for her 30-person workforce that would be out of a job. But, she says, “They all understood. Then I realised I had been putting too much pressure on my back.”
Chauvin-Buthaud’s flame has indeed always shone brightly. Born in Côte d'Ivoire, she grew up predominantly in France and left home for Paris aged just 16. “At that moment, I was experiencing hard times in my life and just knew I had to do something creative. It wasn’t my dream to be a designer but I was interested in creating beauty and expressing myself and I knew I could do that through fashion.” She studied at Studio Berçot, worked at LVMH and made stage clothes for Keziah Jones before launching her menswear line between Paris and Abidjan in 2010. Her effortless silhouettes in distinctive batik and woven textiles garnered press everywhere from Dazed to Vogue and gained stockists around the world.
After the fire, Chauvin-Buthaud decided to enrol at L'Institut Français de la Mode in order to build a more robust business plan and team around the brand. However, after two years, she realised what mattered most was going back to her roots and core values based around consciousness, spirituality and caring for the environment. She established a relationship with the Ethical Fashion Initiative and moved away from seasonal collections, instead offering couture and capsule collections handcrafted entirely from organic, upcycled and deadstock materials.
Most important of all though, she has established a new space in the Ivorian coastal town of Grand-Bassam that now acts as an atelier, boutique and gallery. And she is in the process of developing the concept further to offer workshops, seminars and artist residencies. “My motivation is to create opportunities and connections for artists who want to make an impact, and to invite people here to interact with artisans and learn about mindful ways of living. We will continue to run the brand but expand into spiritual art experiences and creative healing retreats. You come, you slow down, you breathe.”
From the very beginning, Laurenceairline has been an open-hearted adventure and now she has a home where she can truly manifest the feel-good vibrations that she – and the world – needs. “In Japanese culture, every object has an energy. So, what I do when I receive a fabric, is sing and put energy into it,” she says. “Creativity has been a great process for healing myself so what makes me happy is when my customers tell me that they use my designs to heal themselves. It’s more than clothes, it’s a celebration.”
Chauvin-Buthaud is also proud to be part of the country’s burgeoning creative scene, one that she has long helped to foster alongside alongside contemporaries such as visual artist Nuits Balnéaires and designer Loza Maléombho. “The community is growing really fast with so many talents coming through each year. Young people have a lot to share.”
“The new way of working is to do less and better, and to take time to put good intention into the process”
What brings this free spirit to London? The UK launch of her current offering, Mother Nature’s Dream, at Merchants on Long. The renowned Cape Town concept store has always supported Laurenceairline, making its current pop-up at Burlington Arcade a fitting home to bring her brand back to London. Nataal also collaborated with Chauvin-Buthaud and Merchants for an intimate in-store event with music by Melrose Alfalfa.
The collection invites us to reconnect with the natural environment and question over-consumption. Cosmic and dot prints and a calming palette of blacks, blues and browns shot through with tangerine, turquoise and candy pink, is reminiscent of her childhood memories of the African night sky. Central to the design process was the brand’s collaboration with CABES, a social enterprise active across Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin that ethically produces a range of storied West African textiles. These have been crafted into wavy shirts, belted vests, relaxed robes and fluid trousers that deserve to be cherished. “The new way of working is to do less and better, and to take time to put good intention into the process. These are handmade garments telling a story that you can come and experience in Bassam in the same way you experience art. My intention is that you buy one piece, that’s good, and you can keep it for life.”
Discover Laurenceairline at Merchants on Long, Burlington Arcade, shop 10-11, 51 Piccadilly, London, W1J 0QJ until January 2023.
Words Helen Jennings
Visit Laurenceairline
Visit Merchants on Long
Art direction Laurence Chauvin-Buthaud
Director of photography and film Nuits Balnéaires
Art direction and voiceover Blu Constellation
Make-up Kiela Annie
Photography assistance Jean Louis Tomety
DOP assistance Wal le Prince
Styling assistance Danae Grims
Fabrice Bolou, Stephane Oka
Cast Dorothee Biloa Mengue, Roméo N’guessan, Fabrice Dia, Deborah Koffi,
Awa Sanoko, Kouassi N’Guessan and the horse Tout Petit
Guest artists Keziah Jones,
Bayo Hassan Bello
Editing and grading Derkapolo Director
Sound engineering and mixing Ange Yoan Gbadjere
Sound editing Sealmi
Music supervision and editing Jess Fox
Music African Acid Is The Future
Accessories Art Comes First
Realisation Ethical Fashion Initiative
Published on 11/11/2022