Who are les petites mains?

Meet the incredibly skilled creators behind every fantastical couture collection...

If you have even a passing interest in haute couture you’ll likely have come across the term ‘les petites main’. Literally translated from the French as ‘the little hands’ - as a signifier of their incredible dexterity and the light and elegance of their work - the term actually refers to the highly skilled craftspeople who execute haute couture designs.

Accordingly, these are not your average seamstresses. It takes around ten years of study and professional practice to meet the standards required and there are currently only around 2,200 petites mains working across the 41 houses with Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture recognition. And, while this may sound like a high number, with every piece of couture clothing taking hundreds of hours to create - both for the initial haute couture show and then for every resulting order - every petite main must be both quick and precise. Haute couture clients, after all, demand nothing less than perfection.

​Like many traditional trades, les petites mains often pass their craft down the family line, with many generations from one family of seamstresses staying loyal to a particular house for decades. A firm fixture of couture fashion houses for centuries, this fierce loyalty has earned les petites mains a cherished place within fashion, and they often make appearances at the end of runway shows and in fashion documentaries, as well as being some of the few employees to nurture personal relationships with VIP clients. Over the years their work has been heralded by many high profile designers, most recently in June 2016 when Karl Lagerfeld showed an entire Chanel couture collection honouring their skill.

​So what exactly do the petites mains do? Based largely in a fashion house’s Paris atelier, the work of the petites mains is typically split into two categories: tailoring and flou (specialists in working with soft fabrics).

Dior's petites mains at work

Before a show the heads of each department will work with the house’s creative director to bring their vision for the collection to life, using their expertise to suggest techniques for achieving specific effects, deciphering sketches to determine the best fabrics and construction methods to create a desired silhouette and, in many cases, pushing the boundaries of their time-honoured craft to create new ways of working and achieving that rarest of all things in fashion: true innovation.

Credit: Paolo Sebastian

And, while they are skilled cutters and tailors, it is in the embellishment that the truly show stopping work takes places. Trained in a wide array of embroidery and decorative arts, the petites mains may find themselves working with anything from sequins and beads to real flowers and feathers.

The SS20 couture season alone, for example, saw Valentino present dresses with bodices made entirely from enormous pink feathers, Elie Saab offer up a voluminous ballgown covered from top to bottom in delicate beading and the incredible savoir faire of Guo Pei’s Beijing atelier transform layers of organza into fluffy clouds and the snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas.

With haute couture often presenting a loss making element of a fashion house retained simply to show what designers and craftsmen are capable of, the work of the petites mains has been under threat for some time. There are now just 16 French haute couture houses - down from 106 in 1946. And with simple daywear pieces starting at around £8,000, it is hardly surprising that this most elite of fashion practices often struggles to find new clientele.

However, with a renewed interest in slow fashion, and with more and more wealthy clients viewing couture as an investment (in 2019 an Yves Saint Laurent couture gown owned by Catherine Deneuve fetched €33,700 at auction - it’s estimate was €2-3,000), there is light on the horizon.

​Fashion, after all, is all about fantasy - and nothing celebrates that quite like haute couture.

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