Redefining Legacy

Without Charlotte de Fayet, the Parisian brand Molli would have disappeared. She transformed the renowned garter stitch for babies into a coveted womenswear label.

It happened one afternoon in 2015 when Charlotte de Fayet visited a Molli boutique to exchange a gift. A conversation with the lady behind the counter revealed that the brand was breathing its last. Thanks to Charlotte’s entrepreneurial instinct, she was convinced of its potential, and she decided to buy it. Once the baby collection took off the same year, the idea to bring unique expertise of the House to the forefront hit home. She launched a ready-to-wear line for women. And it was just the beginning.

“In 1886, Molli started as a manufacturer of delicate undergarments for adults. It was only in the 1950s that it moved to making only infant clothing,” Charlotte says. She, thus, went headlong into the archives, spent hours at the workshops to familiarise herself with techniques and machinery that makes garter stitch mesh. She followed it up with a spinning training at Institut Français de la Mode in Paris. The first collection of basics that she put together caught the eyes of Sofia Coppola, Léa Seydoux and Natalia Vodianova. “The objective was to create pieces that I would like to wear and would not find anywhere else but at Molli,” she says.