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A former buyer and quality manager at Givenchy and then Kenzo, Romain Brabo is Co-Founder and Co-CEO – with Anne Prieur du Perray and – of Nona Source, the platform for revalorizing dormant stocks applied to the luxury sector. Now in its third year, this “creative resourcerie” integrates environmental issues from the perspective of the circular economy.
LP : How did you come up with the idea of revaluing the dormant stocks of the LVMH Group’s Houses ?
Romain Brabo : As materials buyer at Givenchy, I regularly visited the manufacturers and our warehouses. I was particularly struck by the amount of unused materials (dormant stocks) resulting from end-of-season surpluses. I realized that this was not an isolated problem, but one shared by all the LVMH Group’s Houses. At the same time, I knew of young designers who were unable to acquire beautiful materials, either because the minimum purchase price for materials was too high, or because of the extremely high cost of high-quality materials.
It was then that I had the idea of instilling this creative circularity approach within the Group, by connecting the dormant fabrics of the leading luxury Houses with fashion and design professionals. The Group’s creation of the DARE intrapreneurship program in 2017 kicked off the project. It started out as a side-project, before I got to know the other two co-founders through an internal move at Kenzo.
LP : What roles did these co-founders play in the development of Nona Source? How do they complement you ?
Romain Brabo : I first met Marie Falguera, materials expert, in charge of product compliance and environmental correspondent at Kenzo. As we talked about the project, we discovered that we shared a passion for design and environmental issues. We then joined forces on the DARE program, to support the project. A few months later, I met Anne Prieur du Perray who was working at LVMH and had a more cross-functional profile linked to project and financial management.
Today, Anne and I are Co-CEOs, and we’re committed to helping the start-up scale up with ever more ambitious projects. For her part, Marie is the link with all the Houses. This is a good way of not only supporting young designers, but also enabling our own Maisons to integrate circularity issues into their creative processes.
LP : You benefited from an incubation period of just fourteen months! How did the involvement of the DARE program contribute to the success and acceleration of the project ?
Romain Brabo : This LVMH intrapreneurship program helped us with our mission as well as with the start-up budgets. This support was crucial in transforming the idea into a solution. It also enabled us to more serenely carry out our Proof of Concept (POC), in other words, to be able to demonstrate, within a given timeframe, the tangible benefits of the solution, still under development. DARE is also a cross-functional program connected to the entire LVMH ecosystem. It introduced us to the right sponsors, mentors and business experts within the Group. In fact, the program enabled us to considerably shorten our start-up’s incubation period and accelerate its launch. As a result, the Nona Source brand was officially launched in April 2021, and we have become part of its steering.
LP : Beyond its environmental approach, Nona Source is also a singular digital experience. Can you tell us more about it ?
Romain Brabo : When we launched Nona Source, we wanted to be much more than just a partner for designers, supplying quality materials. We also wanted to bring innovation to our proposition, through digital. So we asked ourselves how, despite the distance, we could convey the sensation of touching and draping fabric. We analyzed all the codes, watching designers at work to understand the repeated movements from one material to another. Then we tried to transcribe the whole experience online.
LP : An all-digital ambition that has nevertheless shown its limits…
Romain Brabo : It’s extremely complicated for advanced designers to be inspired and to look at materials through a screen, without being able to touch them. When we decided to open our first showroom in Paris, it was precisely to facilitate this connection with materials, but not in just any way. We wanted to offer an experience in line with luxury standards. As a result, we only receive private sessions, by appointment. For one hour, the designer is accompanied by a materials expert, who guides him in his choice, as well as in the sourcing of his next collection. In addition, our location at La Caserne – Paris’s Mecca of circular fashion – sends a strong message about our responsible positioning.
LP : A circular mission that deserves to be better known. In fact, this concept of creative reuse was recently embodied for the first time by ambassadors in your “Mindful Creatives” collective…
Romain Brabo: For almost two years now, we’ve been working with the creative community to encourage more creative reuse, in order to create a dynamic around circularity. For a designer, this means embracing what is for me the challenge of tomorrow’s fashion: to create from pre-existing resources, rather than with on-demand fabrics.
To raise the profile of our approach, we’ve just launched our “Mindful Creative Collective” program. Each year, we will appoint ambassadors from among the designer customers who inspire us to embody this movement. For this first season, we’ve appointed Frenchman Victor Weinsanto, a talented designer who has already worked alongside Jean-Paul Gaultier. We’ve also chosen Nensi Dojaka, an Albanian designer based in London, with a strong commitment to transparency and responsible fashion, and winner of the LVMH Prize 2021. We also included Karoline Vitto, a London-based Brazilian designer who celebrates curves and places the body at the center of her sustainable creative process. Finally, we’ve appointed Cecilie Bahnsen, an established Danish designer who believes, like Stella McCartney, that fashion can be both couture and desirable, as well as responsible.
LP : You’ve just celebrated your third anniversary. How would you sum up these years, and what are Nona Source’s future projects for the coming years ?
Romain Brabo : We’ve been hugely supported by Hélène Valade, the Group’s Director of Environmental Development, who wanted to accelerate the circularity agenda within LVMH.
In the space of three years, we’ve managed to convince major brands such as jeweller Zenith to revisit the surplus materials of a fashion house in order to create interchangeable watch straps for one of its best-sellers: the DEFY Midnight watch. A sign of success, the operation is being repeated this season. Le Bon Marché now produces almost all its own-brand collection using surplus from the Group’s Houses, and doesn’t hesitate to display this on its labels. In addition, our eternal supporter, Stella McCartney, incorporates Nona Source fabrics into its collections every year.
In terms of distribution, Nona Source has opened two physical showrooms in London and Paris, and has met with great success in France. We’ve decided to stay in Europe to remain true to our values. In terms of development, the great success of our Paris showroom at La Caserne has led us to triple its surface area to add wider resources such as leather skins and yarns for knitwear. We’re also thinking of offering other types of products.
In terms of experience, we’re thinking about 3D presentation, to enable a designer to model the fabric on our site on a garment.
But most of all, we want to become a kind of inspiring creative resource center. A place where any young designer, in any profession, can come for inspiration and find existing materials.
Read also > Dior Cruise 2023 fashion show: a vibrant tribute to Frida Kahlo
Featured photo : © Press[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row njt-role=”not-logged-in”][vc_column][vc_column_text]
A former buyer and quality manager at Givenchy and then Kenzo, Romain Brabo is Co-Founder and Co-CEO – with Anne Prieur du Perray and – of Nona Source, the platform for revalorizing dormant stocks applied to the luxury sector. Now in its third year, this “creative resourcerie” integrates environmental issues from the perspective of the circular economy.
LP : How did you come up with the idea of revaluing the dormant stocks of the LVMH Group’s Houses ?
Romain Brabo : As materials buyer at Givenchy, I regularly visited the manufacturers and our warehouses. I was particularly struck by the amount of unused materials (dormant stocks) resulting from end-of-season surpluses. I realized that this was not an isolated problem, but one shared by all the LVMH Group’s Houses. At the same time, I knew of young designers who were unable to acquire beautiful materials, either because the minimum purchase price for materials was too high, or because of the extremely high cost of high-quality materials.
It was then that I had the idea of instilling this creative circularity approach within the Group, by connecting the dormant fabrics of the leading luxury Houses with fashion and design professionals. The Group’s creation of the DARE intrapreneurship program in 2017 kicked off the project. It started out as a side-project, before I got to know the other two co-founders through an internal move at Kenzo.
LP : What roles did these co-founders play in the development of Nona Source? How do they complement you ?
Romain Brabo : I first met Marie Falguera, materials expert, in charge of product compliance and environmental correspondent at Kenzo. As we talked about the project, we discovered that we shared a passion for design and environmental issues. We then joined forces on the DARE program, to support the project. A few months later, I met Anne Prieur du Perray who was working at LVMH and had a more cross-functional profile linked to project and financial management.
Today, Anne and I are Co-CEOs, and we’re committed to helping the start-up scale up with ever more ambitious projects. For her part, Marie is the link with all the Houses. This is a good way of not only supporting young designers, but also enabling our own Maisons to integrate circularity issues into their creative processes.
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A former buyer and quality manager at Givenchy and then Kenzo, Romain Brabo is Co-Founder and Co-CEO – with Anne Prieur du Perray and – of Nona Source, the platform for revalorizing dormant stocks applied to the luxury sector. Now in its third year, this “creative resourcerie” integrates environmental issues from the perspective of the circular economy.
LP : How did you come up with the idea of revaluing the dormant stocks of the LVMH Group’s Houses ?
Romain Brabo : As materials buyer at Givenchy, I regularly visited the manufacturers and our warehouses. I was particularly struck by the amount of unused materials (dormant stocks) resulting from end-of-season surpluses. I realized that this was not an isolated problem, but one shared by all the LVMH Group’s Houses. At the same time, I knew of young designers who were unable to acquire beautiful materials, either because the minimum purchase price for materials was too high, or because of the extremely high cost of high-quality materials.
It was then that I had the idea of instilling this creative circularity approach within the Group, by connecting the dormant fabrics of the leading luxury Houses with fashion and design professionals. The Group’s creation of the DARE intrapreneurship program in 2017 kicked off the project. It started out as a side-project, before I got to know the other two co-founders through an internal move at Kenzo.
LP : What roles did these co-founders play in the development of Nona Source? How do they complement you ?
Romain Brabo : I first met Marie Falguera, materials expert, in charge of product compliance and environmental correspondent at Kenzo. As we talked about the project, we discovered that we shared a passion for design and environmental issues. We then joined forces on the DARE program, to support the project. A few months later, I met Anne Prieur du Perray who was working at LVMH and had a more cross-functional profile linked to project and financial management.
Today, Anne and I are Co-CEOs, and we’re committed to helping the start-up scale up with ever more ambitious projects. For her part, Marie is the link with all the Houses. This is a good way of not only supporting young designers, but also enabling our own Maisons to integrate circularity issues into their creative processes.
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