Last summer I needed a men’s suit with a few hours’ notice in the middle of Paris. And it needed to fit my female frame. I called Husbands, the modern tailoring brand whose clothing is reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s, and dashed through the Palais-Royal to meet founder Nicolas Gabard. The Brittany native with a wiry frame and grand charm quickly whisked me into a gray, pin-striped wool suit that fit perfectly. Bisous, and I was off into the rain, with only velvet slippers for shoes.
I took cover in Officine Générale, the discreet French brand, searching for a dry-shoe solution. Pierre Mahéo—Officine’s mastermind—also hails from Brittany and understands practical style. The brand’s white Asahi Japanese sneakers, with a thick sole, were just the thing. The first time I’ve paired sneakers with a suit—but who cared! Feet dry, I made it to a meeting with L’Étiquette magazine.
Its co-founders, Gauthier Borsarello, Marc Beaugé, and Basile Khadiry—a trinity of Parisian style—established the magazine with an authentic, men’s-wear-advice-from-your-cool-cousin take. Borsarello, who moonlights as the creative director for the men’s-clothing brand Fursac, is known for collecting heavily patinaed vintage men’s wear and knows what’s real, what’s next, and what you’ll want next year. He’s also—you guessed it—from Brittany. It felt like everyone in the Paris men’s-fashion scene was from the coastal region in France’s northwesternmost corner.
Anyone who knows will tell you that Brittany—“Breizh,” in the native Breton language—is the real deal. But how does the oyster coast produce some of Paris’s young, leading men’s-wear designers? Marked by a rugged coastline, the vast region typically forecasts tides, not trends.
“I’ve never met a Breton who isn’t slightly imbued, proudly, with a sense of otherness that Brittany has. Outcasts with pride, in a way,” observes Esquire’s creative director, Nick Sullivan. “It has to affect how these brands design. Husbands is very Anglo-Scottish-centric, albeit in a sexy, French way. Fursac’s Summer 2024 collection was all about sailing around Saint-Malo.”
Breton designers certainly have a way of standing out, even if it’s with subtlety. Mahéo founded Officine Générale in Paris in 2012 with a line of made-in-Europe clothes that have a certain salt-washed ease. Mahéo is from a family of oyster producers and tailors, and was raised above his grandfather’s tailoring shop. “He was gardening in old dress shirts and never leaving his house without a suit and tie. On my father’s side, it was chinos, oxfords, denim, a navy blazer. Those two elements are the roots of Officine Générale,” he notes
He remains grounded in a maritime sensibility. “I need the sea, to be on the sea, swim in the sea.”
Fellow Breton Borsarello, whose family hails from the town of Josselin, shares this sentiment. “Next to the ocean, you need nothing but your eyes to see the sky change every minute. The simplicity, the efficiency, the uniform aspect of style, it removes everything that’s useless.” The coastal pace inspires a slower one while living in Paris. “I want something as raw and pure as the nature from Brittany,” he says. “I want to go as slow as possible. Like a perfect omelet, bread, and salt and butter.”
These nautical takes have helped him transform Parisian brand Fursac. “He is keen on sea-inspired garments. More generally, he avoids trends, hypes, bullshit. To me that is very Brittany,” remarks Beaugé, Borsarello’s friend and L’Étiquette co-founder.
Husbands’ founder, Gabard, hails from Châteaubriant. “My father mixed tailoring with Americana. I was a shy child in a small town, so I was attentive to the fact that fashion was a language. I could build a personality and protect myself through clothing.” After moving to the nearby city of Nantes, he landed in Paris and felt at home. “I notice older men who dress in their own taste. They don’t dress to be looked at or admired; they dress because this is their language. Ties are still important. When you put a tie on for your Saturday shopping, that’s real style.”
Gabard raises an interesting question: Is an outsider’s ideal more powerful than the real thing?
“When you’re from a more remote place where everything feels out of reach, you imagine versions of this world that exists, even if they’ve never existed,” he says.
While all three designers have an international hold on modern men’s wear, their clothes seem like they would be at home in any era—and as well suited to shucking oysters on the Breton coast as to sipping a glass of natural wine in Paris—which is the point. It’s this authenticity, as simple and enduring as the natural world itself, that anchors a Breton’s ability to tack deftly through the ever changing winds of fashion and capture the essence of Parisian style.
Emilie Hawtin is the founder of women’s-tailoring brand Clementina. She lives in New York City
