Portrait. Who is Audrey Geschwind, the creator of the 7474 workshop who dresses stars around the world?

Audrey Geschwind, the founder of workshop 7474, makes French elegance shine at the four corners of the globe. Portrait of a passionate woman who has become essential in the very popular environment of tailor -made haute couture.

As two major meetings of the international cultural scene approach, the Met Gala from new York (prestigious charity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and the Cannes Film Festival, Audrey Geschwind orchestra the latest details of her creations. While the dresses and costumes of her workshop are preparing to tread the most coveted red carpets in the world, she remembers that it is far from the spotlights that it all started for her: “ It was in 2015 when I left the creator Stéphane Rolland. I started as “freelance”, when I did not even know this word. JHe had not yet registered my company that the fashion houses contacted me in number. Orders were so important, that I had to open a workshop to be able to receive my customers on site “. The rest? A name: Atelier 7474, which in less than seven years will become an essential address for exceptional seam.

What I like most is to create exceptional pieces, which tell something. And who have high French know-how high around the world.

Audrey speed

Director of Atelier 7474

Audrey Geschwind first cut her reputation in high-end ready-to-wear. It is after the parenthesis of the COVIR that a new rhythm is essential, the events are linked more numerous and more spectacular: Golden Globes, Cannes Festival, Deauville, put Gala in New York etc. The order book is growing, the list of customers is increasingly prestigious: Catherine Deneuve, Jared Leto, Jane Fonda: “After the covid, people wanted authenticity, that’s what they find at home. Here, we are going to do one day from the Balmain, the day after the St. Lawrence, “she recalls. His workshop is naturally oriented towards a very targeted niche, very important personalities: “We had done the Gala a few years ago, and the fittings took place at the American actor Jared Leto, in Los Angeles. I Remember to have entered her house thinking of the little girl I was, in Lorraine, sitting in front of her sewing machine. There was something unreal in this contrast, But also very concrete: we were there so that everything in her outfit falls perfectly “, explains the workshop director with emotion.

Then she continues on the memory of an Indian wedding, opulent and out of the time when the American singer Rihanna was to sing: “I did the fittings with her at four in the morning. Dressing her, highlighting her, it was a real gift of life. It is one of the most renowned artists of our time, she comes from afar, and I too. I was very touched to be able to live this moment.” Anecdotes that sum up the spirit of the workshop well: a tireless requirement and teamwork.

Behind this French success, thirty years ago of patience and training. Audrey Geschwind started at the bottom to learn everything: from the course to the thesis to the Beaux-Arts, from the small workshop hand to the collection management. She knows each stage of clothing as a pianist knows her ranges: by heart, by the hand. Its requirement is commensurate with its career: millimeter, but never rigid: “I go for each challenge. It is as much a quality as a defect, but when I am asked for something, I have the concern for perfection, I like that my personality is happy, that it feels beautiful. It is my goal. I am reactive, whether the order is accepted, or not”, she simply said. A promise held creation after creation, thanks to a word of mouth which, in this environment, is never mistaken. The director also collaborates with prestigious institutions such as the Garnier Opera or the Bastille Opera. She was also inspired by theater costumes to create an inverted and revisited tutu which caused a sensation at the American fair “Las Vegan Fashion Show”, intended for ethical luxury. A remarkable performance that saves him the title of “Queen of the French Know-how“By the American press.

When the fabric is no longer enough, workshop 7474 enters experimental territory. Latest challenge: an order from the Balmain house for a dress entirely made of metallic regulations, these rigid and reluctant measurement instruments with any form of flexibility. “It is a material that is not flexible, nothing easy. It was necessary to patronize with extreme precision then assemble everything over a corset. Which makes it easier to work. But we will get there. We always find solutions”, explains Audrey Geschwind with a smile. At this level of creativity, sewing is silent. The hands also know how to adapt and push the limits of the possible, to master aesthetics, technical and innovation.

His surname, Geschwind, means “fast” in German. An almost tailor-made surname for the one who discovers sewing at the age of ten. However, this passion was not going by self -evident. Coming from an environment where university careers and intellectual successes are valued, Audrey Geschwind must face certain reluctance: “For my mother, doing great studies was essential. The artistic professions were perceived as precarious, uncertain. My mother dreamed that I became an engineer.” Despite this, a decisive gesture comes to consolidate things, his father offers him his first sewing machine: “I still have it”she confits moved. A symbolic paternal gesture that marks a form of recognition because it has always been he who encourages her to do the job she wants.

Transmitting, precisely, is its ambition today. Next September, the director will open in Cannes her school-workshop of know-how 7474. A place dedicated to sewing but also to other crafts: ceramics, jewelry, table art. For Audrey Geschwind Create is not enough, you must also hatch the vocations of tomorrow.