The Art of Leavers Lace: Inside France's Luxury Textile Tradition

Written by Tirsa Parrish

The heart of contemporary lace manufacturing is the juxtaposition of one of the most delicate and intricately constructed materials and the monstrously large Leavers lace machines creating an ocean of sound on which it is made. Each loom weighs about 10 tons. Originally used as part of vestments in religious ceremonies, this elegant material was first made out of gold, silver, and silk.

Perpetually viewed as a luxury item, wealthy people have used lace on their garments as a status symbol for centuries. Lace is an open textile with a design or motif connected by a background. It can be hand or machine made, and can be crafted with silk, linen, cotton, or even synthetic threads or yarns.  

The Luxury of French Leavers Lace

Solstiss is a French Leavers lace manufacturer whose history is tied with the story of lace in Europe. According to Francois Damide, President and CEO of Solstiss, it was around the Renaissance in the 1500s when people were discovering art of all kinds. Bobbin lacemaking descended from braiding as a garment trim. Ladies started to craft lace on a cushion with pins as posts and two threads as bobbins. They would cross or twist the yarns around the pins and knot, then remove and reset the pins to continue their design. This precise and labor intensive process created the intricate lace. It would take one day to create one yard of a narrow trim. Throughout Europe, each region developed its own styles of lacework.

Chantilly lace is a bobbin lace constructed with an interrupted pattern throughout the design surrounded by tulle and is a type of Leavers lace. It is named after the traditional manufacturing site in Chantilly, France. Chantilly lace is known for its fine ground, the regular small mesh filling the open spaces of continuous bobbin lace, as well as the outlined pattern, and abundant detail. The pattern is outlined in cordonnet, a flat untwisted strand. The lace is dyed as needed, clipped, and hand scalloped. This type of lace is often used in high-end luxury lingerie.

Artisanal Craftsmanship

Thousands of individual threads, loaded by hand onto a loom, are woven together to make Leavers lace, one of the world’s most intricate fabrics. Making this lace is a multistep process and each step requires skill and craftsmanship. 

Unlike other types of lace, Leavers lace designs aren't embroidered onto the top of fabric. The whole piece is woven, which creates intricately detailed and beautiful material. The processes are also carried out by hand by highly skilled workers and not automated.

Depending on the materials and embellishments, one yard can cost over $1,000. Despite the premium price, the lace industry in France is a fraction of its former size.

Traditionally, the skill in the different areas of lace manufacturing was taught through the generations as a family trade. There was no school to learn this trade.

Solstiss has recently developed an apprenticeship program to encourage more people to join the industry as it’s hard to find new artisans who want to become lacemakers to continue the trade. 

How the Jacquard Loom Transformed Lacemaking

Joseph Marie Jacquard developed a machine that kick-started the industrial revolution for the textile industry. In 1804-05, he introduced an attachment for looms so that they can be fed interchangeable punch cards that control the weaving of the materials, allowing for any design to automatically be added to a fabric. This was integrated in the Leavers loom when the looms made it to Leon, France in the mid 1700s. 

Leavers looms can be over 6 meters long and were originally made in 1813. The looms were invented in Nottingham, England by John Levers to match the quality of handmade lace. The loom was originally called a Leavers machine. The 'a' was added in the early to mid 1900s, reportedly to aid pronunciation, and that spelling was then standardized.

The looms were derived from Heathcoat’s Old Loughborough looms that produced bobbinet tulle, often called genuine tulle. France was already established with large lace making regions to supply the demand for the intricate material from the French royal courts during the 1700s. The economic blockade between France and England in the 1800s meant that looms had to be smuggled into France.

Saint-Pierre-lès-Calais was the first city to have a power loom in 1809, followed by Caudry in 1820. These cities became the foundation of the French leavers lace manufacturing centers. With the innovation of these looms and integrated Jacquard process, the cost of French Leavers lace decreased making this luxury fabric more affordable. It was still only accessible to the upper-middle class, however. 

Dentelle de Calais® Lace

The Dentelle de Calais® appellation is a registered and protected trademark, exclusively reserved for lace made on Leavers looms by master lacemakers of Calais and Caudry using a unique method of knotting between the warp and the weft, which dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. 90% of the remaining Leavers looms are concentrated in northern France, making Dentelle de Calais® synonymous with authentic French lace. 100 Leavers looms are owned by Solstiss, and they estimate that is about half of all Leavers looms left in the world!

Updating A Classic

New lace designs are drawn in a CAD program by a skilled drafter and are scaled to six times the desired size. The design is then translated into punch cards which are fed into the loom to create a pattern. Although Leavers looms are essential for producing Leavers lace, there are only about 200 of these looms left functioning today.  Unlike cheaper mass-produced lace, Leavers lace designs are not embroidered on top of fabric. The threads are continuously woven to create a beautifully complex pattern. The machine might do the weaving, but depending on the design, it can take around twenty artisans to produce Leavers lace. 

French lace manufacturer Solstiss started as a family business in Caudry in 1876 with one or two Leavers looms. The business grew and flourished as French Leavers lace became a staple in haute couture throughout the decades. However, the lace industry went into decline in the late 1930s with the onslaught of WWII and Leavers looms were no longer in production.

Today, Solstiss uses a library of designs with many dating back to its foundation in 1876. But they also create new designs which can take 5 weeks to complete. Their design library is now digitized for ease and efficiency as they have over 10,000 designs! Creating new designs is the most time consuming part of the lace manufacturing process. The most delicate part is threading the loom. Thousands of individual threads feed into the machine. Intricate designs require more threads, which raises the price of the finished product. 

Workers load small disks, called bobbins, by hand while keeping each thread separate and taut. It takes good vision and a lot of patience. Each bobbin is placed into a carriage and they are checked to ensure a consistent weight and tension on the threads. One loom will hold more than 15,000 individual threads or yarns. 

Once the loom starts running, lacemakers are surrounded by a cacophony of sound. Despite being such old machines, each loom runs with extreme precision. The loom weaves the design line by line as workers fill it with more thread. Lace master craftspersons called tullists are in charge of overseeing the whole weaving process. They oversee each loom, watching and listening for any tears. A mistake at this step can seriously set back production. If there is a break, the tullist reaches into the loom to carefully repair individual threads.

The Craftsman Behind Artisanal Lacemaking

There are experts who ensure the original design is being recreated properly on the loom. Each step requires its own expert, but finding new people to become artisans is challenging. Apprentices train for at least 3 - 4 years to be a highly skilled employee. It takes 5 - 6 years to be able to work independently on a specific step. Lace making is a work of passion. Most people who train to become tullists spend 15 years or more, up to their entire career, with the same company. These experts are still learning after 20 or 25 years. 

Once the lace comes off the loom, inspectors and menders perform as their title implies, by finding and mending any inconsistencies in the finished fabric. Lace right off the loom is never perfect. A tullist may put a small sticker on the fabric to point out a defect. The menders then repair and weave the lace pattern by hand. The repairs must be indistinguishable from the rest of the lace. 

After the lace has been inspected and mended, it is ready to be dyed. Each strip of lace is about 5 yards long because of the length of the loom. The width of the strip depends on the design and the manufacturer, but most are standardized at about 36 inches. These strips are hand dyed in large vats to achieve optimal color and quality. The dyed lace is again inspected for any defects and clipped. The threads connecting the design elements during the weaving process are cut off leaving just the motifs. All these threads are carefully trimmed to reveal the innate beauty of the lace.

Individualized Opulence

Basic Leavers lace can cost over 10 times as much as mass produced lace. Basic but gorgeous Leavers lace starts at around $60 per yard. Specialty lace with add-ons like pearls, sequins, or crystals can cost much more.

Dresses or lingerie made with Leavers lace usually cost a minimum of a few hundred dollars, but some are much more expensive. Haute couture items made with this exquisite fabric are exceptionally expensive.

Production is not continuous at the factories as it is intrinsically tied to the fashion industry. There are sample production periods when fashion designers ask for specific lace designs. However, at peak production, Solstiss can produce more than 20,000 yards of Leavers lace in a month! All this is done with a workforce of under 200.

In addition to the materials and complicated manufacturing process, the looms themselves make the lace more expensive. Leavers looms are no longer produced so companies have to be vigilant about maintaining the looms they have. It would be possible to build a new Leavers loom, but the cost to manufacture it outweighs the demand for the product. Because of this, lace manufacturers rely on existing looms and even share spare parts between themselves. Solstiss owns 100 Leavers looms, but not all are in working order. They have purchased many machines from closed lace factories just to use for parts. 

The lace industry in France used to look a lot different. In the early 1900s, there were tens of thousands of lace-related jobs. But as production modernized and fashion trends shifted, the industry consolidated to two main parts of France, in Caudry and Calais. Today, only a few thousand jobs remain and only a handful of the traditional lace producers are left.

There are only six lace factories left in northern France. Four are in Cialis and 2 in Caudry. Solstiss employs fewer than 200 of these artisans. Competition from cheaper lace manufacturers has eliminated a lot of the industry. Many remaining producers like Solstiss focus on the high-end market. They work to stay ahead of the creative trend to know what the fashion will be to anticipate the next fashion trends. They work hard to maintain a sense of urgency and accuracy within their team to give the highest level of service to their customers.

Moving Forward

Demand for some Leavers lace had been increasing pre-pandemic, but the Covid-19 crisis hit the world and the lace industry hard. Brands like Chanel and Ralph Lauren rely on companies that create Leavers lace, but all factories in France were required to completely close for about four months in 2020 due to government regulations trying to halt the spread of the virus. Not only could new products not be designed or manufactured, orders received for items in inventory could not be shipped.

Thankfully, production reopened and some trends from the pandemic helped the lace industry. Couture lingerie was very popular and Leavers lace orders came in to accentuate these pieces. Many weddings were postponed in 2020 and couples opted for the high-end Leavers lace accents on bridal gowns and veils to celebrate. Solstiss’ sales are now back to pre-pandemic levels and slowly increasing, which is a good sign for them and for the Leavers lace industry as a whole. 

Leavers Lace cannot be produced without the Leavers looms. However, every part of the manufacturing process has been updated and digitized outside the looms. Couture customers require traceability throughout their supply chains including sustainable fabrics and yarns, fairly treated and paid employees, as well as well managed dyeing processes. These fashion houses conduct spot checks on all of their suppliers, including their Leavers lace suppliers, to make sure their high standards are met or exceeded. This has helped to move the lace manufacturing towards transparency as couture is the largest customer for Leavers lace manufactures. 

* All Images courtesy Solstiss