Christophe Lemaire

Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran now work solely on their own house, Lemaire, after ending a decade with Uniqlo U in 2026. Lemaire had earlier led Lacoste and women's ready-to-wear at Hermès. Across those very different jobs, he has favoured generous cuts, practical pockets and clothes that make sense when worn, not just when photographed. (Uniqlo, via Hypebeast; Complex)

The name on the label tells part of the story. His original line carried Christophe Lemaire; the relaunched house became simply Lemaire in 2015, acknowledging Tran as a co-author. Its softly curved Croissant bag has made that shared work familiar to people who may never have seen a runway show. (Lemaire; Complex)

From a Jura childhood to the Paris ateliers

Lemaire was born on 12 April 1965 in Besançon, in eastern France. (Wikidata) He did not train at a fashion school; his education came from working inside other designers' studios. He passed through Thierry Mugler and Yves Saint Laurent before spending several years as an assistant to Christian Lacroix, first at Jean Patou and then at Lacroix's own house, where he helped run ready-to-wear collections and absorbed Lacroix's approach to colour and fashion history. (ANDAM)

An ANDAM fellowship — the French fashion prize that has launched several independent Paris houses — allowed him to present a first collection under his own name in 1990; the house's own history instead dates the label's founding to 1991, and the two records do not agree on which year comes first. (ANDAM; Lemaire) His menswear line followed, and by 1994 it had won the City of Paris's grand prix; a second ANDAM fellowship in 1995 supported its expansion. (ANDAM) The label built an early following in Japan and ran independently through the 1990s, but Lemaire — sole designer and manager of a team of fifteen — closed it down around 2000 rather than continue running both the studio and the business alone.

Lacoste's runway decade

In 2001, Lemaire became creative director of Lacoste, staging the brand's first-ever runway show that June. (ANDAM) Lacoste had spent the 1980s as a byword for preppy tennis wear; Lemaire spent the following decade reworking that image with looser tailoring, sportswear detailing and a visible debt to streetwear, without discarding the crocodile logo or the brand's country-club associations. It was the job that made him visible to the wider industry for the first time, after a decade working largely inside other people's studios.

A quieter Hermès

Hermès announced on 26 May 2010 that Lemaire would succeed Jean Paul Gaultier as creative director of women's ready-to-wear, a surprising choice at the time: Gaultier's Hermès had been overtly sexual and corseted, and Lemaire's own work was neither. (Pursuitist) He took over after Gaultier's final show that October, showing his own debut collection, for Fall 2011, the following March. His stated approach was to make "clothes that suggest, rather than show, the body" — straight lines, oversized sleeves and pockets, a wardrobe of essentials rather than seasonal statements. The debut collection included a felted Mongolian cashmere jacket cut from a single piece of cloth with no seams or darts, made using traditional techniques adapted for Hermès's ready-to-wear. (W Magazine)

Lemaire announced his departure from Hermès on 21 July 2014, saying he wanted to devote more time to his own label, and presented his final collection, for Spring 2015, on 1 October 2014. He was succeeded by Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski, then a relatively low-profile designer who had worked at Maison Martin Margiela, Céline and The Row. (Hollywood Reporter) Four years is a short tenure by Hermès's standards, and it sits between two much longer runs — Jean Paul Gaultier's seven years before him and Vanhée-Cybulski's, which has now passed a decade.

Rebuilding under one name

Lemaire relaunched his own label around 2007, this time with a clearer, narrower focus than the business he had closed down years earlier. Sarah-Linh Tran, who had trained as a literary publisher before moving into fashion, joined as co-creative director in 2010, while Lemaire was still at Hermès. (Lemaire) In February 2015 the house quietly dropped "Christophe" from its name and branding at its Paris menswear show, a change read at the time as a coming-of-age for the label rather than a conventional rebrand: it signalled that Tran was now a full co-author of the collections rather than a supporting designer. (Complex)

The house since renamed has become known for a small number of recurring, sculptural accessories rather than seasonal logo-driven pieces. Its Croissant bag family — soft, curved panels assembled to follow the body, named for their resemblance to the pastry — has become the house's most recognisable object, worn widely enough by 2023 to draw celebrity attention without any change in the brand's low-key marketing. (Lemaire; L'Officiel Singapore)

Taking the wardrobe to Uniqlo

Lemaire and Tran's first project with Uniqlo was a one-off capsule, released in autumn 2015 under the joint name Uniqlo and Lemaire. (Malaymail) On 9 June 2016, Fast Retailing named Lemaire creative director of its newly created Uniqlo Paris R&D Centre, and put him in charge of developing Uniqlo U, an ongoing, higher-design line sold at Uniqlo prices. (Malaymail) The arrangement deepened in 2018, when Fast Retailing took a minority stake in the Lemaire brand and renewed his Uniqlo contract for a further five years. (Fast Retailing)

Uniqlo U grew into a genuinely large business under Lemaire and Tran, reportedly generating close to a billion dollars in annual retail sales by 2025 — roughly five per cent of Uniqlo's total revenue. (Hypebeast) In August 2026, Fast Retailing and the pair announced that their autumn/winter 2026 collection, on sale from 11 September, would be their last: after ten years, Lemaire and Tran are stepping back to concentrate on their own house, whose sales have grown from roughly €10 million in 2019 to more than €103 million in 2024. Uniqlo said the line would continue without them, describing the departure as the close of "a first chapter" rather than an ending. (Hypebeast)

By 2026 Lemaire had grown well beyond its small-studio beginnings. Reporting that July described a reduced Fast Retailing stake and a change of chief executive, while projecting sales of €160 million for the year. The scale helps explain why Lemaire and Tran chose to return their attention to the house they design together. (Puck, via 36Kr)

Labels, dating and how to read the work

A garment or bag stamped simply "Christophe Lemaire" predates 2015 and is solo work; it also predates 2007 if it comes from his brief 1990s run, since nothing was produced under his name for roughly seven years in between. A piece labelled "Lemaire" without the first name was made in 2015 or later and should be read as a joint design by Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran, not his work alone — the house has been explicit that this is a shared creative direction, not a solo label with a co-signature.

Separately, nothing carrying a Lacoste or Hermès label can be assumed to be his: both houses have had other creative directors before and since, so only pieces from Lacoste's runway lines between 2001 and 2010, or Hermès womenswear collections shown between Fall 2011 and Spring 2015, fall inside his tenure. Uniqlo U pieces sit in a separate category again — mass-produced, unsigned in the way a runway collection is, and the product of Lemaire and Tran's design direction at the Paris R&D Centre from the 2016 launch through the autumn/winter 2026 collection, after which the line continues under different creative leadership. None of these four bodies of work should be read as continuous with one another; each belongs to a specific house, a specific set of years, and in Lemaire's case, sometimes a specific co-designer.

References

• Wikidata. "Christophe Lemaire." Structured biographical record.
• ANDAM. "Christophe Lemaire." Laureate profile.
• Lemaire. "About Lemaire." Official house history.
• Lemaire. "Croissant Bags." Product collection page.
• Complex. "Christophe Lemaire Rebrands As 'Lemaire' (And A Bunch Of Other Fun Stuff)." 5 February 2015.
• Pursuitist. "Christophe Lemaire Replaces Jean-Paul Gaultier as Creative Director of Hermes." 26 May 2010.
• Meenal Mistry. "House Proud." W Magazine, 1 August 2011.
• The Hollywood Reporter. "Hermes Hires Nadege Vanhee-Cybulski to Replace Christophe Lemaire." 2014.
• Malay Mail. "Uniqlo appoints Lemaire as artistic director of its Paris research centre." 9 June 2016.
• Fast Retailing. "Fast Retailing Announces New Phase of Partnership with LEMAIRE." 24 July 2018.
• Hypebeast. "Christophe Lemaire & Sarah-Linh Tran Exit Uniqlo U." 27 August 2026.
• Lauren Sherman, "Line Sheet," Puck, as reported by 36Kr. "UNIQLO Loses Another Key Executive: What It Means for the Brand's Global Retail Strategy." 15 July 2026.
• L'Officiel Singapore. "Get to Know LEMAIRE and Their Viral 'Croissant' Handbag." 5 March 2024.