Egyptian-born Gaby Aghion pioneered the idea of prêt-à-porter fashion and became founder of beloved Parisian label Chloé. She showed her first collection at breakfast in the Café de Flore on the Boulevard Saint Germain in 1956 with a vision to give women the freedom to dare to be themselves. Now lead by Natacha Ramsay-Levi who is “very proud to be part of a house founded by a woman to dress women” the label is best know for its handbags and ethereal floral dresses that are both daring and feminine whilst oozing effortless Parisian chic.
This Chloé Marcie bag, crafted from textured leather with equestrian style stitching and gold-tone hardware, came into the atelier with one of the leather zip pulls detached and the other missing completely. Our solution was to make a new tassel from scratch using the other for reference to ensure it was a perfect match and reattach them.
We started by measuring the dimensions of the existing tassel, giving us the length, width, and thickness we needed to create a new one so it would be an exact match. Then from this, we made a paper template as a pattern to work from.
The original tassel had a leather surface on both front and back, so the new one needed to be made from two pieces of leather glued together. We put reinforcements in between the leather layers to ensure the longevity of our replacement tassel. After sourcing a matching leather to the original, we skived it to a thickness that when layered with the reinforcement would match to thickness of the original tassel. Then we cut out the tassel pattern using the paper template.
The next step was to recreate the decoration at the end of the tassel by making a pattern . We made a pattern and cut it out of a matching leather. After edge coating both pieces, we glued the decoration onto the piece. We then sourced a matching rivet and attached that to the tassel using a specific machine.
The final step was to simply re-attach the tassels to a metal ring and then to their respective zip pulls and the bag was returned almost as good as new.
In our atelier we have a number of capabilities to restore, repair or replace any hardware or embellishments that have gone astray ensuring it’s a closest possible match to how it was original crafted.
If you have an item that needs restoration or additional hardware just book a collection anywhere in the world through our online booking system or drop in-store at Harvey Nichols Knightsbridge. If you’d like a preliminary quote before sending it in, please just take some photographs and fill in our online form where our team will assess and come back to you.
