Fauré Le Page

I met Augustin de Buffévent during my creative direction residency at BVBA 32 in Antwerp.

Alongside a group of investors, he had acquired Fauré Le Page, a historic French brand founded in 1717 by master gunsmith Louis Pigny. Their goal was to revive it as a luxury accessories house offering weapons of seduction.

I had experience preserving a heritage brand at Alfred Dunhill, but I had never brought one back from the ashes. I was intrigued, but also hesitant—my personal history with gun violence in my birth country made the project emotionally charged. Still, the more I learned about the revolutionary heritage of FLP, the more cathartic it felt to transform a symbol of personal fear into one of beauty, desire, and strength.

Founded under the reign of Louis XV, Fauré Le Page is one of Europe’s oldest luxury houses. Originally named Pigny after the founder, the brand evolved over generations through the union of master gunsmith families—becoming Le Page, then Le Page Moutier, and finally Fauré Le Page in 1865.

The FLP dynasty became renowned for its mastery in gunsmithing, goldsmithing, sculpture, engraving, and leatherwork—recognized with numerous honorary medals at international exhibitions.

As a family of inventors, they patented a wide range of innovations and even supported early scientific research alongside pioneers such as Adrien Thilorier and Dupuis Delcourt. The house served royal courts—including those of Louis XV, Napoleon, and the Russian Imperial Court—and counted figures like Murat, Ferdinand VII of Spain, General Dumas, and Sarah Bernhardt among its clientele.

Beyond craftsmanship, Fauré Le Page played a bold role in history, distributing arms and ammunition during the French Revolution and the July Revolution of 1830, and earning literary mentions from Dumas, Balzac, Pushkin, and Chateaubriand.

With a legacy rooted in innovation, craftsmanship, and audacity, my mission was to guide FLP's team in authentically awakening the dormant brand through leather goods—reconnecting it to its roots while reimagining its future and reclaiming its rightful place in the world of heritage luxury.

As part of our rebranding research, I recommended preserving the historic brass signage from the 8, Rue de Richelieu store, in place since 1909, and using it as the foundation for the new logo and monogram. We also collaborated with French artisans to create a three-dimensional version of the house’s heraldic armory, prominent in archival documents, which became the emblem of the brand’s first revived store.

To give life to the concept of weapons of seduction, we created a custom Toile (canvas) inspired by the intricate fish-scale pattern—quadrillage poisson—hand-carved into Le Page firearms between 1870 and 1930, at the height of the founder’s influence.

Originally designed to improve grip, this motif blended function and ornament, becoming a central element in our first collection of timeless handbags and small leather goods—crafted for daily battles and night hunting.

Throughout this process, I developed a deeper understanding of the strategic role of logo placement—not only as a visual element, but as a structural one. It informs the design of jewelry-like metal components that serve both decorative and functional purposes. In patterned canvas products, it guides decisions around volume, proportions, and cutting, ultimately shaping the product’s branding, form, and function.

Later, I learned that Fauré Le Page would be taking over 21 Rue Cambon—the very location where Gabrielle Chanel opened her first millinery store in 1910.

I contributed to the architectural concept, proposing an expansion of the retail floor into an elevated unused backspace. I also suggested restoring the façade’s original floor-to-ceiling windows and breaking the classical interior with a bold ceiling installation made of perforated cable trays—a subtle nod to the modern innovation beneath FLP’s timeless craftsmanship.

My role expanded into communications, where I worked closely with the team to develop and produce multiple ad campaigns.

For our first photoshoot, titled Fauré Le Page Reprend Les Armes (Fauré Le Page Takes Up Arms Again), I invited longtime collaborator and photographer Dominik Von Schulthess, a member of my artist collective, to bring the vision to life.

FLP also gave me Carte Blanche to write, produce, and direct a short film titled Awakening of a Myth, which tells the story of a rare and exotic game bird who after centuries of hibernation, unfurls her vibrant wings and loads her weapons of seduction to enter a sensual duel with the hunter who has long tracked her scent.

Just as the project was gaining momentum, destiny intervened. After almost 20 formative years studying the European Luxury Industry, my father’s untimely passing forced me to urgently return to my birth country and place my creative practice on indefinite pause.

FLP was the final chapter of my foundational journey in Paris. It taught me that leading a heritage brand entails shaping creative decisions as much by instinct as by archival research.

A purely marketing-driven approach often weaves past, present, and future into out-of-sync, nostalgic, monolithic, and disjointed copy-paste narratives. Conversely, rupture substitutes legacy with the fleeting vision of transient visionaries, thereby depriving longevity-driven creative processes of the full potential of a brand’s DNA. In contrast, a disruptive and critical revival methodology ritualizes relevance and rarity through storytelling—decoding legacy, layering temporal identities, and excavating the brand’s core narrative while recontextualizing it through today’s cultural lens and technologies.

As I see it, the future of heritage luxury does not lie in the hands of traditional Creative Directors, but in those of Creative Researchers—individuals who are not only visual dreamers and storytellers, but who also thrive in the intellectual rigor of unearthing legacy and challenging craftsmanship in a process of archaeological re-engineering.

Looking back, I carry a deep sense of pride in having helped reignite the soul of a storied French luxury brand—one that has since flourished into a global network of 14 boutiques. Yet, returning to the basic needs of both my family and my developing birth country became a humbling, life-altering experience.

After 20 years of absence, now a foreigner in my own land, I joined a family-owned company with a 30-year legacy in urban planning to help develop a 40-hectare project that would shift the dynamic of my hometown.

There, I discovered the collaborative process behind city-building, driven by a cross-functional urban development team—a whole new creative frontier for my ever-curious mind. Although my role was primarily administrative, I worked closely with civil engineers operating within a broader urban planning framework, gaining valuable insight into the complex systems that shape urban life. The experience strengthened my foundation and expanded my creative practice in entirely new dimensions.