French Label Destree Is Merging Parisian Chic With A New American Ease
The ready-to-wear and accessories label is going off the cuff.
There has been much written on capturing the effortlessness of the “French Girl.” As the co-founders and co-CEOs of Destree, Géraldine Guyot and Laetitia Lumbroso are helping women around the globe achieve the elusive style. Logging onto our Zoom call, the duo are wearing chunky gold baubles that reflect the sensibility of Destree—unique but distinctly wearable, with a Parisian sensibility.
Art—both contemporary and classic—has long served as the central inspiration for Guyot, who studied Contemporary Arts at Central Saint Martins and has headed up the creative side of Destree since its founding in 2016. “I come from a family of art collectors and grew up in a very creative environment,” she says. It’s reflected in her own designs, but also in the ways that she has chosen to collaborate with creatives across a range of disciplines. Guyot has enlisted artistically minded acquaintances to bring their own visions to the world of Destree.
The brand’s latest collaboration is with Ben Arpéa, an artist and friend of Guyot who designed two prints inspired by his own practice. “When we started to imagine something together, it wasn’t obvious that it was going to be ready-to-wear,” Guyot says. “He’s the artist, and we wanted to respect his vision for this collaboration.” The result was a mix of Hockney-esque sunny-hued graphics inspired by Arpéa’s original work, splashed across six silhouettes. Despite Arpéa’s French upbringing, the colors feel decidedly Californian.
With Lumbroso in Paris, Guyot now based in New York, and Arpéa having shown in both New York and California, French style remains at the core of the collaboration—but American touches can’t help but creep in, whether through Arpéa’s inspiration or simply the laid-back styling. “Having this American view, now that you’re based in New York,” Lumbroso says to Guyot, “is adding more infomation and context, instead of just being focused on Paris.”
Still, even as Destree draws more American influence, and reaches a wider audience in the U.S. (it is now the brand’s biggest market—through direct-to-consumer but also via retail partners like Neiman Marcus, The Webster, and Hampden), Guyot and Lumbroso understand the power of Parisian style. Guyot explains that living in the U.S. hasn’t shifted her own style sensibilities so much as it has allowed her to tell the brand’s story in a new way—to break down the mystique of Frenchness into something achievable. Guyot’s more colorful style alongside Lumbroso’s minimalist sensibility offer the breadth of Destree. “We each express a different way of wearing the brand,” Lumbroso says. The duo’s dynamic vision of bold accessories that can live within both of their fashion universes has continued to garner an impressive list of A-list fans. Last year, the brand courted a group of new investors including Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Gisele Bündchen, a co-sign on Destree’s potential to become a global name to know.
“When women come to our brand, they always say that they’re looking for something that will stand out and be different,” says Guyot, who describes Destree’s customers not as artistic, but as women across all fields who are “sensitive to creation,” and on the hunt for something that feels distinct.
You may recognize Destree first and foremost for its bags: structural pieces with unexpectedly quirky touches—a swirl here, a geometric angle there. Take the Gunther, a slick leather crossbody splashed with a spiral of rope across the front, or the Albert, a quilted top handle with its zippered top opening turned at a diagonal. “I have always been fascinated by the relentless efficiency of accessories,” Guyot says. “Your outfit can be very simple, but accessories will always give you a sort of caché. I wanted to create very graphic, structured pieces with their own unique DNA.”
The brand began with accessories, but, when it came time to shoot the designs, Guyot struggled to tell the story that she wanted to, having to pull clothing samples from other brands. So, in November 2021, Destree launched a small line of ready-to-wear pieces to complement their existing jewelry, bags, belts, and hats. The cadence may seem backwards, but was part of the brand’s plan to grow slowly, on their own terms. “We wanted to keep it small, to stay an accessories brand and have ready-to-wear help us tell a story. Instead of being as we planned, it started growing a lot.” So much so that ready-to-wear has become one of Destree’s most important categories. In this case, not going according to plan is a good thing.
The brand’s approach to clothing has eschewed the traditional trend model, choosing to swap seasonal turnover for a more static approach. “We want to stay away from throwing [out] everything every season,” says Lumbroso. “We want to have strong signature pieces—we work in the same way as we do creating accessories.” Customers now come back to the brand season after season for the same silhouettes, reimagined in new fabrics and colors. In this way, pieces can easily be mixed and matched, even when purchased years apart—effortlessness made easy.
“Your outfit can be very simple, but accessories will always give you a sort of caché.”
As the brand continues to grow, it’s finding new ways to showcase its artful identity. In summer 2022, Destree opened its first store just off Rue Saint Honoré, designed by Simone Bodmer-Turner, a Brooklyn-based artist and friend of Guyot.
“The first collaboration we did was a photoshoot in [Bodmer-Turner’s] gallery,” says Guyot. “That moment when we saw the ready-to-wear, the bags, and the jewelry all together with her work in the background…We were convinced that a store would be the greatest idea to do together. It’s a part of my life in New York brought to Paris.
The all-white interior of the store is natural and textured, like a room from Casa Orgánica transported into the center of Paris’ biggest shopping district. In many ways, the minimal space mirrors the brand’s balance of elegance and ease, and in Guyot and Lumbroso’s minds is less a store and more an art space decorated with Destree pieces.
“The two universes match, not only highlighting the product, but highlighting [Bodmer-Turner’s] work at the same time,” says Lumbroso. “When we had the opening in Paris, we had so many comments on how those two artistic universes are in conversation.”
As the brand grows, collaboration will be something that continues to inspire and push Destree forward. “We don’t want to hurry ourselves, so I don’t know when the next [collaboration] will be,” says Guyot. “But we’re trying to mix art and fashion as much as we can.”
