THE GENESIS
It all started 25 years ago…
CHILDHOOD…
From my earliest years, I experienced the joy of reinventing myself through play – candy or soap maker, ceramist, color explorer.
Alongside my mother, I worked on the material to bring it to life and then I proudly presented, at the age of 7, my works to my family.
How good these memories are…
On Sundays, the family day par excellence, we would meet with my sister and brothers around those famous colored bricks to build our sleeping dreams.
Bridges, castles, fairytale worlds came to life in our childish hands.
We were accompanied by our father looking with his engineer’s eye at the technical feasibility of our constructions.
What happiness!
In this connected world where everything is fading, I want us to learn how to do things again.
And the best way to do that is to return to this bubble of learning and serenity in which we knew so easily how to find ourselves as a child.
THE AWAKENINGOF A VOCATION
These colorful constructions got the better of me because I continued this family voice considering engineering as “the royal road”.
I even outbid a fundamental physical option.
To the scientific rigor and its demands, I decided to add the imagination of a sector that is also close to excellence.
Moving towards craftsmanship and the world of luxury, this choice was out of place given my background!
My first stint at Hermès made me discover the wonder of the nobility of materials…
From these silk fabrics sublimated by colors that never evaporate to this tanned, brushed, and marked leather with gold leaf, I choose to anchor this aesthete’s need to hunt down beauty.
A quest that led me first to Cartier and Richemont, then to Switzerland, to the small world of watchmaking, where the mechanics of the time are controlled as much by the reason as by the heart.
During my two years at Tag Heuer as a workshop manager, I never ceased to be impressed by the enthusiasm of watchmakers for their craft.
When you swing the pendulum down and the whole gear suddenly starts to come to life, it’s an extremely powerful emotion.
MATTERTOBE CONSIDERED
When I left Switzerland to follow my husband, Benoît, who had been transferred to Reims in Champagne, I decided to make my childhood dream come true, that of rethinking the luxury experience by doing it yourself at the top of the range.
I didn’t want to limit myself to a simple consumer approach consisting of buying a product and owning it, but rather to focus on the idea of having a very personal experience with the object created.
By putting my intelligence, my heart, my attention into it, this object will not be a simple object.
It will become my own masterpiece, a symbol of surpassing and fulfillment.
To bring these métiers d’art out of the shadows and make them known to as many people as possible, I had to surround myself with a renowned master watchmaker, Thierry Ducret.
A watchmaking teacher at the Lycée de Morteau, he was immediately seduced by his desire to pass on watchmaking know-how to all the curious.
Then, other professors, engineers and designers joined the adventure to accompany me in this journey of building a pretext to measure time or rather to understand it.
The team was created to move forward together towards a common vision: to transmit the beauty of the watchmaking art.
In order to restore all their lustre to the crafts, I have become a guide in the meanders of the assembly of objects with a racy aesthetic, aligning my horizons with those of the professions that I do not wish to see fade away.
Escaping into a manual practice, slipping into the shoes of a craftsman, is a nice way to preserve the richness of these crafts which do not always have the recognition they deserve.
Rather than castigating a heritage in decline, I wanted to try my hand at the work of a goldsmith.
When I launched Maison Alcée, it seemed logical to me that the first box set honored this know-how.
Everyone has the necessary equipment for experimentation, for the construction of a unique piece that can be appropriated from generation to generation.
It is by taking them out of their seraglio that they will find a new lease of life, that a wider public will see them in a new light.
Alcée
French
English