Goyard

French trunk and leather goods maker

Maison Goyard, or simply Goyard, is a French trunk and leather goods maker established in 1792 as Maison Martin in Paris; the company also operated as Maison Morel, before becoming Maison Goyard in 1853. The brand is known for a certain amount of secrecy surrounding its products; little is known of the origins of the iconic interlocking Chevron pattern, seen on many Goyard bags.

Maison Morel was the official purveyor of Marie Caroline de Bourbon Sicile, duchesse de Berry, an honor that granted it the title of "box maker, trunk maker and packer of Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Berry". Maison Martin's store sign featured references to the three traditional crafts of "box making, trunk making and packing" that were at the core of its business. Pierre François Martin was the guardian of a young female ward, Pauline Moutat, and gave his business as her dowry. He was also instrumental in arranging her marriage to one of his employees, Louis Henri Morel (1817–1852). Morel followed on Martin's footsteps, and introduced himself as the "Successor to former Maison Morel, located on rue Neuve des Capucines, near Place Vendôme." In turn, Louis Henri Morel, passed on his skills and knowledge to a seventeen year old apprentice by the name of François Goyard, whom he hired in 1845. The apprentice received a state of the art training under the dual guidance of Pierre François Martin and Louis Henri Morel. Monsieur Morel died suddenly on 24 August 1852.

In a short time, the house's corporate name changed from Morel to Goyard, and from Goyard to Goyard Aîné (French for "elder", François being the firstborn among Goyard brothers), as to differentiate himself from his siblings. When he died, François Goyard left his son Edmond with a very reputable business with workshops in Bezons, a city in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. In 1834, Pierre François Martin moved his store from 4, Rue Neuve des Capucines, where Louis Vuitton opened in 1854, to 347, rue Saint Honoré. On account of the new street numbering policy implemented in Paris in 1856, the address changed to 233, rue Saint Honoré. His successors remained at this location at the corner of rue Saint Honoré and rue de Castiglione, near Place Vendôme. After a thirty two year tenure as head of business, François handed the company over to his 25 year old eldest son Edmond on April "1st", 1885. The house changed its name to E. Goyard Aîné. Edmond Goyard, drawing on his father François Goyard's work, turned the store on rue Saint Honoré into an increasingly elitist luxury brand with an international clientele. He created the first Goyard advertisements, participated in various World Expositions and opened four branch stores. He also laid the foundations for the brand as we know it today, as he came up with the Goyardine canvas, launched a pet accessories range and developed products for automobiles. He partnered with his eldest son Robert, and together they ran E. Goyard Aîné et Fils (E. Goyard Elder and Son). Robert followed his father's footsteps and ran the business from 1937 to 1979. In 1998, a purchaser took over from the Goyard family: Jean Michel Signoles, a keen collector of all things Goyard, undertook the challenge of reinventing Goyard with the help of his sons. Without the backing of a leading luxury brand group, he exploited the heritage of the house, built new workshops in Carcassonne, France, and opened retail stores all over the world.

The Goyards originated from Clamecy in Burgundy, where the family males had long worked as log drivers. They were members of the Compagnons de Rivière, a guild of transporters moving firewood to Paris. The family name "Goyard" derives from the French "goujard", also spelled "goyard". This sickle like tool with a blade attached to a two metre long strong wooden handle was used by the Bourguignon people from the Aube area to cut thorns they would then transplant onto hedgerow stakes.

In 1832, a massive cholera epidemic decimated the population of Clamecy. On 17 December, Edmé Goyard's father died at the age of 72. His son subsequently left the hamlet with his wife and two sons, François and Claude, who were respectively four and two years old. The family settled down in Paris and soon welcomed another son, Martin, who was born on 10 October 1833. Robert Goyard was also determined to contribute to the prestige of his neighbourhood. On 9 December 1936, the Place Vendôme Association was set up; on 25 July 1944, an extraordinary general meeting aiming to reform the association was held. The association initially changed its name to "Place Vendôme, Rue de la Paix and surroundings" before opting for "Comité Vendôme", its current name. Robert Goyard was instrumental in setting up this cooperative agreement by taking care of the formalities for its constitution and locating its offices at Goyard's headquarters at 233, rue Saint Honoré.

Jean Edmond François was the son of Robert Goyard, and collaborated with his father. The Occupation took its toll on the house, and the store at 233, rue Saint Honoré closed down temporarily. François took a stake in the family business on 25 May 1951, which became a limited company four days later. After the end of World War II, Robert resumed running the company until 1979; upon his death, his granddaughter Isabelle Goyard took over with the help of her father.

Goyard's letterhead paper dated 24 June 1891 bore the coats of arms of the United Kingdom and the Russian Empire and the Great Seal of the United States of America. The queens of Yugoslavia and Greece became customers after World War II, whilst the Duke and Duchess of Windsor purchased their first Goyard goods in 1939. High profile purchasers such as the Grimaldis or the Maharajah of Kapurthala rub shoulders with celebrities, socialites or first ladies like Catherine Deneuve, Édith Piaf, Romy Schneider, Jean Claude Brialy, who acquired his first Goyard pieces in 1974, Mrs Georges Pompidou, who became a client from 1963 onwards, princess Andrée Aga Khan (1956), princess Radziwill (1949) or the prince and princess von Fürstenberg (1968). Contemporary glitterati like Madonna, Victoria Beckham, Carla Bruni Sarkozy are regularly spotted wearing Goyard bags. Kanye West mentioned his affinity for Goyard trunks in the 2007 song, The Glory, and Rich the Kid filmed a music video in a Goyard store.

The coated cloth debuted for the World Exposition in 1900, and was used in the inter war years. It remains unchanged in present times, keeping its chevron pattern. In 2002, 110 years after its creation, the Signoles family inaugurated their tenure at the helm of Goyard with the introduction of twelve new colours in addition to the historic black canvas. Currently, the Goyardine canvas is available in red, green, sky blue, navy blue, yellow, white.

The initial meters of Goyardine were likely hand painted. When the Goyardine was launched, the workshops moved to Bezons, and the manufacturing of the canvas required a ground colour application followed by three successive layers of etching colours. The trademark slightly raised pattern of the Goyardine results from both the cloth and the printing technique used during the manufacturing process: the plain weave shows through the Chevron pattern, and superimposes on top of the raised pattern produced by the paint dots, leaving a unique design that is difficult to counterfeit.

In 2010, Goyard debuted a canvas woven on a jacquard loom, marking a technical feat, as it builds "E. Goyard" into a lighter shaded thread of the canvas, a previously unheard of achievement in the textile industry. The new canvas is currently available in a black charcoal grey dove grey white colour palette, and will shortly be available in other shades.

A rare canvas developed in collaboration with tennis player Suzanne Lenglen in the 1930s; its production stopped when Lenglen died in 1938.

Nowadays, special orders are to be placed at the store at 233, rue Saint Honoré, as it was the case when the factory was located in Bezons. Special orders are entirely hand made in the Goyard workshops in southern France, in the Aude department. The workshops are installed in converted wine warehouses. Whilst some trunk makers specialize in standardized goods, Goyard is equally at ease with both special orders and ready made items. or to meet the needs of a sportsperson, a fabulous picnic trunk. Each piece of hard sided luggage by Goyard is entirely hand made by a specific trunk maker, according to the highest, strictest standards. When the crafting process is over, the trunk maker writes down the serial number of the piece they made on its identification tag, along with their initials. They also write down that same serial number in the manufacturing register that has been keeping track of all items made by the Goyard workshops ever since Jean Michel Signoles took over. The manufacturing register is used as a reference in the event an item needs to be repaired.

When several members of a same family travel together, their luggage stripes are identical, and it is difficult to tell which piece of luggage belongs to whom. In France, tradition dictates that each piece should be monogrammed with the initials of its owner, whereas in the UK, it is customary to use the owner's full first and last names, whether they are a royal or a commoner. Initials have been used for a long time, as evidenced by the wooden trunk the compagnons de rivière used to carry along with them on their timber raft. It was the only valuable object on board, and it was used to protect food and personal belongings from the waters of the river. Over the course of time, it became a token of remembrance, reminding its owner of the many travels he made. It was monogrammed with its owner's initials and also stamped with the employers' logo. François Goyard's grandfather was a compagnon de rivière, and he owned a monogrammed trunk long before the family went into the trunk making business. Stripes perpetuate old traditions, notably those related to horse carriages, which were painted in the colours of each family. Goyard's monograms are hand painted onto the Goyardine canvas and can be customized with a variety of different colours. The revival of customized leather goods, whether they are adorned with initials, stripes or coats of arms, proved Goyard's answer to the logo craze.

Ever since it started in 1994, Goyard has been a supporter of Sidaction, a major French public event for raising awareness and collecting charitable funds for AIDS. Goyard donates prestigious prizes for the annual Fashion Dinner's raffle, in order to fund initiatives against AIDS, whether research programs, patient assistance or prevention schemes. Goyard is also a supporter of the annual AVEC (Association pour la Vie, Espoir contre le Cancer, a nonprofit organization fighting cancer) evening. At the end of the charity dinner organized at the Palace of Versailles in January 2012, "the auction was equally fun and lucrative: the Goyard prize (a hard sided suitcase worth 4700 euros) was auctioned three times and finally repurchased by the very man who had donated it in the first place, Jean Michel Signoles, president of Goyard, who ended up offering it to French TV show host Stéphane Bern."

For the third edition of Un bagage pour la vie, un bagage pour Curie, Goyard organized an auction of customized bags and luggage to raise money for the leading cancer research centre Institut Curie in Paris. The patron of the event was Amélie Mauresmo, and the pieces auctioned off were sponsored by twenty one female personalities from the worlds of cinema, fashion and sport: Sarah Biasini, Élodie Bouchez, Cécile Cassel, Audrey Dana, Emma de Caunes, Catherine Deneuve, Zoé Felix, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Vahina Giocante, Judith Godrèche, Audrey Marnay, Chiara Mastroianni, Amélie Mauresmo, Mathilda May, Héléna Noguerra, Géraldine Pailhas, Vanessa Paradis, Linh Dan Pham, Barbara Schultz, Audrey Tautou, and Elsa Zylberstein. Each personality was invited by Goyard to use the iconic chevron pattern canvas to express their own vision of travelling: stripes of colour, messages or drawings. Their imagination combined to Goyard's know how resulted in twenty one unique pieces auctioned at Christie's in Paris.

The Goyard art book published by Devambez is the reference publication upon Parisian trunk makers. It was dubbed "a luxury bible" by Suzy Menkes in the article called "A tender Tome of Art and Heart" that she wrote in the New York Times on 15 June 2010. The book had a print run of 233 copies, a reference to the address of the Goyard historic store that has been located at 233, rue Saint Honoré since 1834. It will never be republished and is visible by appointment only in the Goyard Paris shop. The Goyard art book pays tribute to the golden days of luxury travelling, from horse carriage to ocean liners. It retraces the history of Goyard and is showcased in a special made to order trunk that is altogether a jewel case and a book's binding (sewing). Each individual purchaser is invited to make their named copy into a unique piece by picking the colour for the trunk canvas, which can also be initialled or adorned with stripes in the shades of their choice. Copies are numbered from 1 to 233, and that number is specified both on the trunk and in the book. The Goyard art book is printed on watermarked deckled vellum paper that was custom made by Arches, France's most renowned papermakers. Lead letterpress techniques have been used for the texts. The Goyard art book is featured in the collections of the National Library of France, the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Kunstbibliothek in Berlin.