Revillon Frères
| Revillon Frères
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1723 (Givelit), 1839 (Revillon) |
| resolution | 1982, with continued brand name |
| Seat | Paris |
| Branch | Furs and goods of high demand |
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Louis-Victor Revillon d'Appreval
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Victor Revillon
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Revillon Frères was a French, globally active trading company for high-end goods with the main item fur goods, which emerged from a Parisian furrier. The company operated one of the first fur factories in Europe.
history
The Revillon Frères company has its roots in the company founded by the furrier and fur trader François Givelet in Paris, 159, Rue Saint-Honoré , which soon became one of the most prominent shops in the French capital. Skinning passed on to the son, survived the French Revolution and flourished again under the Directoire , a time of exaggerated luxury in clothing.
In 1839 Victor Revillon (* 1806; † 1873) acquired the Givelit company , at 116 years of age one of the oldest and most successful fur companies in Paris. Before the revolution, his father, Comte Louis-Victor d'Appreval (* 1806), had taken the name Louis-Victor Revillon to a property he had bought in Boissy-Saint-Léger . He had eleven sons and a daughter from his marriage, and he adopted a thirteenth child. One of his sons had founded a fur business, which caused the sixth son Victor to start an apprenticeship with him.
In 1828, Victor Revillon took over the management of the fur house Moutier in Rouen (1828-1830) in place of the sick owner until 1830 . Back in Paris, he worked until 1835 in the house Kerkoff in the Rue Saint-Honoré .
After marrying the furrier's daughter Jancke , her parents soon left them with their business in rue des Fossés-Montmartre (later rue d'Aboukir ), to which Victor bought the Givelit house in 1839 .
This happened at a time when fur was reserved only for the wealthy because of its rarity and the resulting high price. The fur types mainly used at the time were sable , marten , polecat , beaver , ermine and feud . The extremely successful idea of the Revillon couple was to make furs cheaper by using previously less noticed types of fur. The project was favored by the fact that many large department stores were emerging at the time, which at first hesitantly, but very soon added the Revillon collections to their range and catalogs. In 1865 the Pouchard company was bought , where Victor Revillon had perfected his training since 1823. From this point on, the company continued to grow, and by 1855 sales had already reached a remarkable 400,000 francs.
Because of the radical redesign of the city by Georges-Eugène Haussmann , Victor Revillon had to give up his shop, now at 81 rue Saint-Honoré , and moved to 81 rue de Rivoli . In 1858, his two eldest sons, Theodore and Albert, joined the Companies that perfected their knowledge of goods and business in the major world trading centers for fur skins, above all London and that of the Leipziger Brühl . Her father's business idea was successful, and more and more it also sent sales representatives in the French provinces. In 1865 his sons had a share in the company, which was now called Revillon Père et Fils . After a fatal setback caused by the war and a fire in the commercial building that was contained, however, Revillon also took part in the general economic boom that followed after the war. Two other sons joined the company, Leon and Anatole . In 1873, when the mother was already dead, the father Victor Revillon also died.
The sons now realized another business idea. So far, hides have only been processed into fur linings , trimmings and small pieces of fur, such as sleeves , hats and scarves, largely unaffected by the change in fashion. The largest part of the bourgeois fur wardrobe was the palatine , a short shoulder collar . Revillon began to work fur and fabric, first into jackets and then into coats, each with the hair on the outside and in the latest fashion. This expansion of the range ultimately revolutionized the entire furrier trade. The new fashion was particularly enthusiastically received in England. As early as 1875 a branch was set up in London, which soon experienced a significant boom. After this first foreign branch, Theodore and Albert Revillon continued to expand with branches in Asia and especially, since 1878, in America. At the Leipziger Brühl they also opened a “Comptoire”, headed by Carl Grumbach , who already had experience with American skins through long stays in America; after his death his son continued to run the branch. For the year 1785 there was a report from the Leipzig Easter Fair: "With the costume of fur, which is becoming more and more general in France, a lot of all sorts have been sold there".
At the same time, the brothers began to introduce a type of fur in France that was previously only sold in England (since around 1847), the fur of the bear seal, which is traded internationally as seal or sealskin . These skins only become attractive when the stiffer upper hair is plucked out so that a very soft undercoat emerges. The sealskin paletots of the Revillons were very well received, the fashion spread so much that the population of the animal species was ultimately endangered and they had to be placed under international protection. For tanning and dyeing the skins, Revillon built the fur finishing shop Espérance (French: hope) in the Rue de la Butteaux-Cailles , and soon afterwards five other buildings in the Rue de la Fédération . Until after the Second World War (1939-1945) many skin types, especially were rabbit fur , colored like Sealskin black, also clipped and offered as Seal imitation (Sealkanin, Sealbisam etc.).
Shortly after the death of Albert, the most energetic and ingenious of the brothers, the eldest son Thédores joined the company. Under him there was a further expansion of the company. The number of travelers visiting not only all of Europe but also the smallest cities in France increased considerably. In addition to the warehouse next to the shop, rooms were set up on Rue du Pont-Neuf , Rue Bertin-Poirée and Rue de Bourdonnais . In 1890 the house in rue de Rivoli was extended to bring all parts of the company together.
By 1900 fur was already playing a very important role in fashion. In France alone there were around 3,000 furriers, around 1,000 of them in Paris. Large amounts of capital were required at Revillon for the very considerable expansions, especially for the purchase of the huge quantities of fur. In 1914, the Revillon Frères company was converted into a joint stock company, with a capital of 30,000,000 francs. President was Théodore Revillon , administrators were Leon , Anatole , Victor , Paul and Théodore Revillon jun.
After the first engagement in America, the young Victor Revillon began to set up branches in Russia in 1905 . By the beginning of the First World War (1914-1918), however, all plans were ruined, three quarters of the employees were drafted, the houses in London and New York were facing bankruptcy. At the beginning of 1915, Leon Revillon, who had then started to make furs with the hair facing out, also died. In October of the same year Albert Revillon Jr., doctor of law, who had been in charge of the company's financial affairs for several years, fell. Anatole Revillon died in January 1916.
There were renewed financial problems after the end of the war, when considerable quantities of new skins had been supplied before the price fell. By 1920, the company had recovered to such an extent that the finishing shop in the Rue de la Fédération was expanded considerably, now covering an area of 7,000 square meters. Another cold store was built in Rue de Presles to preserve hides and furs. Theodore Revillon, the last survivor of the four brothers, left the company that same year after 62 years of service.
The atelier of the Revillons was strongly influenced by German furriers for a few years until the outbreak of World War I. Paul Larisch , a native of Silesia , was the workshop master and head of sales . In 1900 the workshop employed 129 furrier assistants, 54 of whom were French, 47 German and 28 journeymen of other nationalities. In 1928, Larisch wrote of his former employers that they had succeeded in creating "the largest and most famous furrier house of their time with the best working equipment the world has ever known".
At the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 , Revillon Frères showed the first large pieces made from exuberant mink skins, including a floor-length coat made from 164 Canadian mink skins and an otter skin . The working technique of skipping , used for the first time in this radical form , was lengthened to evening coat length only by cutting and sewing, changed fur fashion and continues to influence it today.
- Many Revillon fur creations found acceptance into the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art :
Ermine jacket
(1902/03)
Mink evening coat
( ca.1926 )
Evening coat with fox trim
(1928)
Missing throat costume
(1967/1970)
Leopard coat
(around 1983)
Blue fox tail cape
( ca.1988 )
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Revillon in London
Léon Revillon, one of the proponents of international expansion, rented the company's first premises in London in 1869, a small shop in Red Lion Court in the heart of the city. The manager was a Mr. Archer , he employed a few office workers. Business did well and six years later the company moved to Queen Victoria Street . When Mr. Archer retired in 1886, HR Cross took over the management of the growing London branch. In the early days he was still touring the customers living in the country himself. In the winter of 1889, a huge fire ravaged the city district, which also destroyed the Revillons' office building. It was so cold that the extinguishing water hung on the building like icicles. The staff brought books and documents to safety at risk of death, but most of the camp fell victim to the flames. With the help of and in the premises of the fur wholesaler CW Martin & Sons , they survived the 18 months until the restoration of the business premises on Queen Victoria Street.
A highlight for Revillon in 1908 was the presentation at the Franco-British Exhibition in London with a remarkable pavilion with dioramas that were later shown in Copenhagen and New York. In the same year the branch was registered as Revillon Frères (London) . When the luxury trade shifted to the West End of London, the retail trade moved in the same direction, to the rented, five times larger building at 180 Regent Street (see photo); the wholesale trade took place in the rear area with access to Kingly Street . An important part of the skinning is the moth-proof storage of the furs in the summer months. The importance of electrification increased once more, when the big fur houses began to store the customer fur in the now called preservation fur store in a cooled condition and thus age-inhibiting. Revillon was one of the pioneers and from 1913 onwards offered fur preservation in its newly built cold store.
After the standstill caused by the First World War, in which the London branch stood by the financially particularly threatened parent company, the wholesale business was split in 1918 at 61 Queen Street under the name Revillon Trading Co (London) Ltd. a branch of the company. For centuries, London has been a trading center for raw materials such as leather, hides, skins, feathers, etc., especially those coming from America. After the large market in Nizhny Novgorod was closed and the second major world trading center, the Leipzig Brühl, had failed due to the war, these flows of goods also flowed via London to Europe; In the fur sector alone the goods were worth more than £ 20 million a year. With the founding of the new companies, the central location in London and the already existing worldwide connections, Revillon had created ideal conditions to operate on a large scale in the fur wholesale trade. It took Leipzig several years to recapture part of the London market - until it was lost forever due to the persecution of the Jews and the expulsion of the predominantly Jewish tobacco wholesalers and another world war.
Revillon in North America
The first branch of Revillon Frères was founded in 1978 in New York . Its first representative was PA Rockwell of Tradewell Fur Co. Albany . The fur models made in France quickly found considerable sales, the type of finishing and processing was completely unknown here, and the aura of the fashion metropolis Paris did not fail to have its effect. Rockwell's successor and New York co-director was MPA Majot , one of the directors of the Paris house. After initial problems, sales continued to grow, so that Broadway No. 731 was soon occupied three floors. In 1895 a large commercial building of its own was added on West 28th Street , a quarter of the luxury shops. In addition to private customers, orders came from the large dry goods stores as well as from women's and men's tailoring. Soon it became necessary to build another cold store. This gave rise to the fact that cold stores were also built in Paris in 1900, in London in 1913 and finally a fourth in Paris. Soon they moved to a new building near 34th and 35th Streets, opposite the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Under the direction of O'Toole , a Chicago headquarters was set up to collect the pelts bought in the West of America.
When trade in Europe came to a standstill with the outbreak of war in 1914, the decision was made there to expand business in America. At 670, elegant Fifth Avenue , the company moved again to larger business premises, to a building which the builder had built for himself as a reproduction of one of the Loire castles . The shop fittings were accordingly in the style of Franz I , "with such taste that it soon became an attraction for the" upper ten thousand "".
Victor Revillon came to New York in 1893. From here he traveled to Canada several times. He convinced his father Théodore and his uncles that there were undreamt-of opportunities for further expansion. It was decided that in future the raw hides would not only be sourced directly from Canada, but also from Siberia and Central Asia. In Canada it was in competition with the mighty Hudson's Bay Company , which maintained no less than 150 trading posts there. According to the plans of Victor Revillon, an organization similar to the Hudson's Bay Company was set up. With the use of all financial reserves, a start was made to set up a chain of trading posts; their hallmark were the red roofs with the large white initials HF. Victor created a harbor on the Churchill River ; he had 580 miles of roads built connecting Prince Albert to the west coast of Hudson Bay ; he had a farm built to supply the Canadian mounted police with fresh meat. In Edmonton he opened a supermarket for food, china and glassware, silk goods, drugstore items, books, farm supplies and even robes for missionaries, it is said to be the first of its kind in the world. The administrative offices were in Montreal and Edmonton.
In Canada the company was known as Revillon Frères Trading Company Ltd. registered. In 1926 the Hudson's Bay Company acquired 54 percent of the company's shares, in 1936 it was taken over entirely by Hudson's Bay. In 1938 the name was changed to Ruperts Land Trading Company .
Revillon in Russia
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Not only the valuable sable skins and skins of other predatory animal species came from Russia, also the beautifully curled Persian skins of the Karakul sheep from the province of Bukhara were an important trade and export item. Despite a number of problems, Revillon employees were able to establish “a solid base” in the city of Bukhara . Around 50,000 Persian pelts were exported to Paris as early as 1905. In 1906, the company founded its own Revillon house in Moscow, thereby avoiding the high duty of 50 kopecks that the Bukharian emir charged for every skin bought from strangers. The branch was soon relocated to the center of Moscow's luxury trade, Kuznetsky Most 15.
In addition to buying Persian pelts, contacts were made to buy sable, ermine, red and arctic foxes , Kolinsky and other types of fur directly. As in Canada, bases for direct business dealings with the hunters were set up, including in Krasnoyarsk . In the years 1908 to 1910 further trading posts were established in the Yenisei area ; they reached from Turukhansk on the Yenisei and from Narym on the Ob to the Arctic Circle. Although the majority of the skins were bartered, robbers stole 30,000 rubles in a raid on a branch, the perpetrators were caught and hanged, and the money disappeared. In the centuries-old trading centers of Nizhny Novgorod and Irbis , branches were set up to buy fur. The size of the business had grown to such an extent that in 1911 an autonomous company was founded, the Revillon Bratia , with a capital of 750,000 rubles. Its president was Léon Revillon, the directors were Victor and Albert Revillon, and the managing directors were Messrs. Budelot and Brandier.
Immediately afterwards, the company acquired a site in Bukhara on which a factory for dressing Persian pelts was built. The buildings covered an area of more than one hectare. 80,000 to 100,000 skins were processed here every year.
The branch in Krasnoyarsk had become the center of trade with Siberia in 1913. A larger, representative building was built, it was not only considered the most beautiful in the city, but also the greatest in all of Siberia. A branch was established in Omsk , the focus of which was the purchase of ermine furs . From here there were connections to Minusinsk - and Kuznetsk - to the Altai district and in the east to Lake Baikal . The First World War ruined plans to expand the organization to Yakutsk . Most of the employees, including senior officers, were drafted into the military. Mr. Zabieha, one of the executives, was killed in France just six weeks later, in September 1914. In spite of this, business in Russia continued, in Moscow under Mr. Brandier and in Siberia under Herbert Peacock. Until 1917 fur transports to France could still be carried out, albeit under difficult conditions.
The defeat in Siberia had to be given up in 1920, which meant a loss of over 10 million francs for the company. It was moved to Yokohama , Japan , and Messrs Brendler and the two Peacock brothers took over the management. One of the two brothers and his wife were victims of the Kanto earthquake that devastated Japan on September 1, 1923. The Revillon house also lost considerable financial values as a result of the earthquake. From Japan contacts were made to China and remained in contact with Vladivostok and Nikolayevsk in Siberia.
After the Second World War
_Revillon.jpg)
After the war ended in 1945, Revillon still had a good reputation as a Parisian fashion house. Perfumes from well-known brands have been added to the range. The retail shop was now staying in a very beautiful building with showrooms on the ground floor on Rue la Boétie. Jacques Revillon died early, the elderly father was now in charge of the business, in 1950 Madame Revillon had to continue running it alone. A reorganization and modernization occurred when the former director of the bank Louis Dreyfus, Max Mazerand , took over the business and financial affairs. He concentrated again on the development of his own creations for fur and organized fashion shows for which elegant Parisian society gathered. For young fashion there was a boutique on the left bank of the Seine , in rue de Dragon .
When the young Madame Jacques Revillon was presented with the gold cup for good French taste by the Minister of Labor in Paris in 1959 (Coupe d'or du bon goût francais), the company had 380 employees. At the time, the company was generating 78 billion francs in foreign currency, three quarters of the amount it was then making from exporting French cars.
In America, Revillon opened 20 fur boutiques in the larger department stores in the 1970s. The luxury furs were also supplied to large department stores in Europe, Japan and Mexico. Max Mazerand also put the company on a new basis, he bought companies and property and founded his own bank, the Compagnie Internationale de Banque . In America shares were acquired in important companies in the textile industry and other sectors.
In 1999, the Swiss Fond Fibalko took over the Revillon company, which had acquired it from the Cora supermarket chain , which in turn had taken it over from the family. Seven years later, he put the company up for sale. As the French newspaper Le Figaro reported at the time, the Revillon company was only “a shadow of itself”. It shone as a name for luxury furs until the 1960s, until the demise of this material in the 1970s. Dusanka Milicevic took over the management of the company for Fibalko . However, it did not succeed in stopping the decline in sales from EUR 20 million in 1996 to EUR 11 million in 1998, after all it was only EUR 5 million. The new owner sold the company's assets: the historic building in the 8th arrondissement, the store on Avenue Montaigne and the one on Fifth Avenue in New York, with the staff being replaced by freelancers. In 2003, the Californian designer Rick Owens, known for his creativity, was hired. In 2007 the Revillon brand was sold to Yves Salomon , a supplier to the major fashion houses. The previous company Revillon retained the evaluation of the Revillon brand for perfumes, cosmetics and accessories. The contract with the designer Rick Owens was terminated.
Nanuk, the Eskimo
For a long time, Revillon had the idea of producing a film about the life of the Eskimos, Eskimos and Indians were the main suppliers of the skins. A film that was supposed to be made about hunting scenes in Central Asia, Bukhara and Samarkand , home of the so-called fur lambs , was not made because of the upheaval in Russia .
In 1922 a Revillon funded expedition began, planned for two years, to study and film the life of the Inuit. The film Nanuk, the Eskimo (original title: Nanook of the North ) achieved world fame and is one of the most important documentaries of the silent film era and one of the first long feature films ever. Director Robert J. Flaherty shot the documentary about the everyday life of the Eskimo family of Nanuk and Nyla near the town of Inukjuaq in the Arctic of Quebec, Canada.
literature
- Thierry Mallet: Glimpses of the Barren Land . Hsgr. Revillon Frères New York, 1930 (English) (→ book cover, foreword and table of contents)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Johanna Kroll: A quarter of a millennium in the service of fur. Revillon Paris. 1723-1973 . Manuscript 1974, note: "To [Die] Pelzwirtschaft September 1, 1974". Primary sources: 1) Marcel Sexe: Histoire d'une Famille et d'une Industrie Pendent Deux Siecles - 1723 - 1923 . Plon (eds.), 1923. (French). 2) Revillon - 1723 - 1973 . (English).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Marcel Sexé: Two Centuries of Fur Trading 1723 - 1923. Romance of the Revillon Family . Printed by Draeger Frères, Paris December 1923 (English).
- ^ Karl Buddeus: Leipzigs tobacco trade and industry. Inaugural dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1891, p. 24.
- ↑ Anna Municchi: Ladies in Furs 1900-1940 . Zanfi Editori, Modena 1992, p. 28 (English) ISBN 88-85168-86-8
- ^ Rudolf Garbe: 80 years of Rudolf Garbe. That was my life. Fashion in fur, leather and knitwear . Self-published, Bad Kissingen approx. 1994, ISBN 3-925722-08-4 . See Franz Garbe .
- ↑ Paul Larisch : The furriers and their characters . Self-published, Berlin 1928, p. 176.
- ↑ Paul Larisch , Josef Schmid: The furrier craft. 1st year No. 1 + 2, October / November 1902, self-published, Paris, p. 4.
- ↑ Revillon Freres Trading Company (1926-1938) Archives of Manitoba . December 31 2013.
- Jump up ↑ No author's name ( reports from international journals ): High awards for Revillon Frères, Paris . In: Das Pelzgewerbe No. 2, 1959, Hermelin-Verlag Dr. Paul Schöps, Berlin et al., Pp. 88-89.
- ↑ Unspecified : Revillon is for sale . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 1811, Frankfurt am Main, November 17, 2006.
- ↑ Unspecified by the author: Revillon sold to Yves Salomon . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 1825, Frankfurt am Main, March 9, 2007; P. 3.