Digital age be damned.
Just as people are increasingly absorbed by life online and other digital environs, Emeric Thibierge, the first creative director at Arjowiggins Fine Papers, is busily working on projects using artisanal papers in marketing media for a range of fashion houses — and even a paper for a Chanel dress.
“Because the Internet is cold, electronic, virtual, it creates a need for something warm, tactile, real,” Thibierge said. “There is an interest in [papers with] very strong characters.”
Most of Arjowiggins” focus, Thibierge said, was on designers in the worlds of fashion, hotels and automobiles; Chanel is the company”s biggest customer worldwide. Over a recent dinner Thibierge had with François Lesage, one of les petit mans (embroidery specialists) at Chanel, the two agreed they ought to develop a paper specifically for paper dresses. Realization of the project, however, is at least a year away.
“In the paper industry, you need to count in years,” Thibierge explained. “A small paper machine is as big as a steam engine. Each time I develop a new paper, I need to find a new way to make it because of the aesthetic I want to achieve.”
More typical projects for Arjowiggins, a seven-year-old offshoot of France”s 515-year-old Arche papers, include invitations, promotional pieces, brochures, look books and print ads, but it is the more perfunctory press kit that most often uses the firm”s 152 couture papers. The papers are produced by 55 paper machines in 31 mills and are based on six styles that vary by color, texture, finish and weight: translucents (iridescent, patterned, vivid or clear); metallics; touch (with a soft, smooth-to-sueded feel); particles (with colorful thermochromic bits that fade as the paper warms up); canvas, and plastics.
Recent applications of the artisanal range, which Arjowiggins calls its Curious Collection, include Cartier”s coated gold paper for an invitation to a pearl jewelry introduction in November, and Ralph Lauren”s matte, deep black paper in August for a look book.
Givenchy, Hermès and Kenzo, Thibierge said, were big customers of the couture paper in Europe. In North America, the Curious Collection”s annual sales are exceeding $10 million, the fashion business accounting for approximately one-third of the volume, said Michael H. Carlisle, North American sales director for Arjowiggins and Curious Collection.
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The priciest of the fine papers typically range between $700 and $800 per hundredweight, 100 pounds worth of sheets that vary in number according to the weights of the different papers offered. Some go for as much as $1,100 per hundredweight.
Currently, Thibierge is working on 23 prototypes for artisanal papers and is planning to introduce two kinds each year for Curious. Thibierge took his post last March as creative director of Arjowiggins, one he said was unusual for a paper company, following an encounter with Philippe Starck. When Starck asked for a meeting with the company”s creative team and there was none, Thibierge was appointed to the position.