Maison Standards, the clothing brand at fair prices
The Maison Standards manifesto? "You have the right to know." Since 2013, the brand has been offering basics made in an ethical and responsible way, at a totally transparent price. Existing only on the web, the brand explains on its site each step in the manufacture of a garment and its associated cost, to put an end to the astronomical margins. On the occasion of the inauguration of the store – one and only of the brand – redesigned by the decorator Mathias Kiss, meeting with its founder Uriel Karsenti.
You have a rich career in fashion at different levels: general management, product development or distribution network development with brands such as Barbara Bui (women's fashion), Jean Bourget (children's fashion) or Pierre Hardy (accessories). It was while working at various levels within a fashion company that you realized the problems that inhabited it?
Uriel Karsenti – These very different experiences allowed me to draw conclusions about fashion and the dysfunctions of the industry. The philosophy that I had of fashion was very contradictory with what I lived. We are talking about waste, the rhythm of collections, the way of considering a product so that it best speaks to a customer. I wanted to launch Maison Standards in response to all of this: the brand has a very strong product territory, with permanent collections and a distribution method that suits it. I focused my efforts on the “standard”: a classic, permanent, fair, beautiful, very simple, refined, consensual product, with the idea that this product could be sold in a privileged way, directly with the customer. I believe the relationship between brands and customers has changed, people have been noticing that for a long time. Maison Standards recently participated in “anti-fashion” conferences, we saw many artistic directors within fashion and luxury speaking out on the dysfunctions of fashion. I think that many of us share a certain observation.
What is difficult for many brands is to manage to get out of it! Because there is a pattern that works, that is hard to break. When you launch a start-up or a new project, it's the moment when you have to put everything flat and tell yourself what the good bases are. With Maison Standards, I wanted to have a virtuous project in a brand that is vertically integrated. All the professions are present in our project: we create our products, but we also try to create our own distribution model, a language with the customer that is different.
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Is this new language digital?
Brands that have something else to say are very present on digital. It is a way to access the customer directly. We only have one store that has existed for a year and a half, which is our showroom. Otherwise, all transactions take place on the website, where we also explain our manifesto and how we operate.
We try to go to the essential. This sentence is very short and can say anything and everything, but it means: both in the product and in the way of working on the project and communication, we try to go to the essentials of a product. We want to work on a product that will sell. It is out of the question for us to consider products that do not sell and add to the mess generated by fashion. If we want to offer an accessible price, we have to cut certain costs: intermediaries, distributors, stock areas.
It's also very important for us to edit: that's why we have collections that grow gradually, with very few products at the beginning (at the start the brand only had 5 products: an oxford shirt, a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a jumper, a t-shirt, Editor's note), then we widened to the entire silhouette, by introducing pants and accessories.
You display total price transparency, a rarity in the fashion industry. During the sales period, you even offered your customers the choice between three types of prices corresponding to three levels of cost coverage. This honesty contributes to discrediting the rest of the industry: if you know the price of an ethically produced shirt, comparisons with other brands – and detection of abuse – are easy. Did you know that you were going to launch such a questioning?
From the moment we existed on digital, we said to ourselves that it was important to address the customer in a transparent way: as the customer is directly with us, he has different requirements. He expects us to be able to explain the fair price. There were two reasons for this transparency: first, to meet the expectation of customers who ask for information. I don't know if he absolutely wants to know how much his product cost, but in any case he wants to know under what conditions it was made and why the price was set.
The second reason is that indeed there is perhaps in the idea of transparency the desire to justify its quality: our clothes are manufactured in factories which manufacture high-end brands and from which the same pants that are sold three times more expensive next door. It was important to show us whether in China, Morocco or Portugal, our products are made with beautiful materials by workers who have real know-how. That was the idea of transparency, it wasn't so much about provoking the market.
Are we taking a risk in revealing the “underside” of textile production?
Fashion is a job that should make you dream, it's important. I think that by saying all this we are necessarily taking risks. When we speak on social networks about our values, our client absolutely adheres to what we do. Now I believe that the strength and the pride of the project today are still its products above all. If you make very good products at a justified price, there's no reason it shouldn't work. Communicating on this price is an additional element for us. Strategically, it was important for us to anchor ourselves in our differences.
Do you think the increased interest in manufacturing conditions is just a trend in line with the times, or do you feel like it's really changing fashion?
That's a very good question. People want to be reassured about the conditions in which the product was worked, and so that's why we want to show the factories, in order to reassure themselves about the manufacturing conditions and the human working conditions. after the dramas that happened in Asia or India. On the web, the path we have chosen, people talk a lot and exchange a lot. You can't be smart. When you open a door you have to go all the way. This is our big question: should we be systematic in transparency, does it not tire the customer, is it essential at each level?
It's an obvious underlying trend, which will obviously continue, and I believe that even luxury brands will get started. There are luxury brands today that are "made in Italy" on products made in India. It can't last any longer, at some point, there is a disaffection of the customer. I think that in France customers are sometimes a little reluctant to too much information, and we have to skim it, make it accessible. This is our great challenge: to find the right word and the right way to do it.
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Maison Standards, 25 rue de Poitou, Paris III.
