When it comes to tailoring there are two kinds of linen. There’s the heavier, coarser and less crease-prone fabric that comes out of Ireland. Then there’s the crisp, tissue-paper-light textile that’s more identified with Italy. So it makes sense that a linen that sits between the two springs from their geographic midway point: France.
Enter Maison Hellard Linen
Maison Hellard was founded in 2021 by Nathan Hellard, who on paper sounds like an unlikely lead for a textile firm. A former paratrooper and a graduate of the elite French military academy Saint-Cyr (founded by Napoleon in 1802), Hellard hung up his sword to pursue his true passion—fabric. Starting initially with Zegna and Scabal, Hellard struck out with his own designs in the midst of the pandemic. While 2021 was not a great year for the industry, it provided a lucky opening for Maison Hellard to emerge.
“When you approach a mill and its peak production time and everything is working well, and you say, ‘I’m a new company and I want to make something exclusive,’ they will tell you ‘No way,” Hellard recalls. “But for us, covid was actually good news because those mills wanted work… I think in a different context, it wouldn’t have been possible, to be honest.”
The long-fiber flax that Maison Hellard uses is cultivated in Normandy before being woven in Italy. Here, it is finished to have an “in-between handle and weight that could be summed up as a French approach between the Italians and the Brits,” as Hellard puts it.
A family business with a passion for cloth and the French Aesthetic
A Distinctly French Aesthetic
It’s not just the weight and feel of a Maison Hellard cloth that puts it in its own category: it’s also the colour. Keen to avoid the bright hues otherwise associated with the fabric, Hellard drew inspiration from the countryside of Southwestern France where he resides. The resulting shades are “more muted, more masculine and more mild.”
While the 48 fabrics that constitute its flagship book Heures Bleues—a constellation of mossy glen plaids, complex yet muted checks and earthy windowpanes—were greeted by many tailors as a revelation (Cad & The Dandy, notably was Maison Hellard’s first customer), Hellard doesn’t view it so much as an innovation as a return to the past. Recalling visits to museums in Normandy or Brittany that exhibited the regions’ history in textile making, Hellard sees his output as the reclamation of a uniquely French viewpoint.
“Everyone can identify a British cloth, everyone can recognize an Italian cloth, but what’s the French aesthetic? And to find that is truly fascinating,” he says.
