Paris, July 1997, the final preparations for a haute couture show. Velvet Napoleon III chairs, rolls of precious fabrics lining the walls, wisps of cigarette smoke float in the air. A familiar voice, slow and fragile, breaks the monastic silence that reigns in this place. A model with the face of a Madonna emerges from a room accompanied by two seamstresses helping her with the ruffles of a dress under construction. Barely concealed by a transparent black silk blouse, her breasts vibrate to the rhythm of her hurried steps. There’s something divine about this temple of beauty: the solemnity, the meditation, the fervour of the “Atelier faithful” around the Creator-Demiurge. Doubt and then the miracle: inspiration and the advent of creation.
To enter here, is like to enter a church… of velvet (église de Velours).

The memory of the smell of a Couture House, that “velvet church”.