The Fashion Lie Nobody Warned You About

An interview with Alexandra and Ségolène, founders of Façon Jacmin

Ten years. A decade of collections, showrooms, factories, agents, pop-ups, a mobile boutique, upcycling ateliers in Portugal and Bulgaria, wholesale buyers in New York, and a brand built on the idea that clothes should last a lifetime. Ten years of doing it the right way, the honest way, the hard way.

And yet here is the moment that stayed with me after this conversation ended. Ségolène & Alex are standing in a showroom in Paris, setting the prices for a new collection. The samples are in front of her. The buyers are waiting. And she does not know what the clothes cost to make yet, because the atelier has not sent the confection price in time. So she guesses. She sets the price, hopes the margin works out, and moves on to the next buyer.

That is not a failure of management. That is fashion. That is the speed this industry runs at, the pressure it puts on every decision, and the reason so many brands are always one season away from a cash flow problem they did not see coming. Not because the founders are not smart. Because the wheel never stops long enough for anyone to think.

Alexandra and Ségolène started Façon Jacmin because they believed in building something real. Quality that lasts. Garments that earn their price. A business built on values they could stand behind. What this conversation is actually about is what happens when those values meet the reality of running a fashion business in 2024. And what it actually costs to keep going anyway.

Esteban: Take me back to the beginning. Was this planned or was it an impulse?

Ségolène: It was an impulse from me. I worked in strategic consulting for two years and realized it was not what I wanted. I wanted to build something from A to Z and see it grow. I tried something before without Alex, and I quickly realized I needed her creativity. You really need that creative input when you launch a business, even outside fashion. So I asked her if we could do it together.

Alexandra: For me it was not completely spontaneous either. I had studied fashion design and was working for a designer at the time. When she proposed the idea, I thought, maybe this is the moment. So I started thinking about what we could build together.

Esteban: And the name came from a party, if I understand correctly.

Ségolène: Yes. We were at a party with Alex's friends and after a glass or two, it came out. The breakthroughs always come when you try the least.

Esteban: You spent a year preparing before you launched. What was that year actually for?

Ségolène: Making sure we were aligned. Finding the factories, fine-tuning the concept, the vision. Choosing the name, which took longer than it should. We wanted to be sure before we started.

Esteban: Upcycling is one of those ideas that sounds perfect on paper. What does it actually look like at a production level when you try to scale it?

Ségolène: To be honest, it is really difficult. We are at the point now where we realize it is hard to continue upcycling at a B2B level. We have two ateliers, one in Portugal and one in Bulgaria, and they do incredible work. But it is piece by piece. There is no scalability. They source the second-hand clothes themselves, they make each piece individually. And the margins are smaller because of all that work.

Esteban: And on the selling side?

Ségolène: The buyers like the concept, but then when they receive the production it is not like the prototype from the showroom. We explain it every time. Of course it is not the same, it is upcycled. But they still do not fully accept it. And for online, you need to photograph every single piece individually. Everything is a variable that cannot be replicated.

Esteban: The honest business reality of upcycling is that it is very difficult to produce at scale, the margins are lower, and most customers do not actually make their purchasing decision based on sustainability. They want a great product.

Ségolène: Yes. And people do not like surprises. They pay a higher price and expect a more elevated result, but the nature of upcycling means the result is always different. That is a very hard thing to sell consistently.

Esteban: What is the main challenge running this business right now?

Ségolène: Margins. Fashion is already known for small margins and it has only gotten worse. Fabric prices have increased. Confection prices in Europe have increased. And we do not want to move production to China because quality is a core value for us. So the margins are always under pressure and you have significant fixed costs to cover regardless of how much you sell. If your margins are not strong enough, the whole structure becomes fragile very quickly.

Esteban: You went from direct to consumer to wholesale, which is usually the opposite direction. Why?

Ségolène: Because at a certain point you realize you cannot grow a brand by staying only in your own country and selling only online. Online is not a magic solution. No one knows your website exists unless you pay for traffic, and paid advertising is extremely expensive. Wholesale gave us physical presence in markets we could never reach alone. We have two good stores in New York now and around 50 percent of our online sales go to the US. So B2B is feeding the D2C side too. They work together.

Esteban: And the path to better margins from here?

Ségolène: Three things. Finding better agent partnerships to grow distribution without losing margin. Reducing the number of styles in the collection so each production run is bigger and the unit cost comes down. And continuing to grow the top line so the fixed costs become a smaller percentage of revenue.

Esteban: What is the thing you find yourselves in a daily mental battle with?

Ségolène: Time. Fashion moves so fast that you never stop to think. I am paying for fabrics without knowing which style they will go into. I am in Paris setting prices without knowing the confection cost yet because the atelier has not sent it in time. I am always forward, always action, always the next collection. And what I really want is to stop and ask: where are we going, and what is the best way to get there?

Esteban: The fashion hamster wheel.

Ségolène: Exactly. The hamster runs and runs and never gets off. And you realize you have not made a single strategic decision in months because you have been too busy executing.

Alexandra: And from a creative side, it is the same. You want to reduce the collection, you know it is the right business decision, but every season you are under pressure to surprise people, to make them dream. You cannot just sell the same pieces forever. So you keep adding and the collection keeps growing and the costs follow.

Esteban: Is it harder now than it was when you started?

Alexandra: I think it is harder now than ten years ago. Since COVID and everything that has happened in the world, it is just more difficult. People spend with more fear. The industry is more demanding. Every season you are starting from zero again, proving yourself completely, and the buyers are more demanding than ever.

Esteban: Ten years is a long time to do something this hard. What does Façon Jacmin look like in another ten years that makes all of this worth it?

Alexandra: Still there. Still with the same values we started with. That is the dream. To still be building something and not have compromised what we set out to do. When I see someone on the street wearing a piece and they tell me they feel empowered, that is the whole reason.

Ségolène: For me it is also about not prostituting the brand. You take business decisions along the way and sometimes you drift from your original values. The dream is to still be there, still aligned with what we built this for, still making women feel something when they wear it.

Esteban: And personally?

Ségolène: I am a civil engineer. I had no creative background when we started. And now I realize that being in contact with creativity every single day has made my life genuinely richer. I did not expect that. That alone makes everything worth it.

Closing Reflection

This conversation felt uncomfortable at times, and that was the point. Alexandra and Ségolène came into this interview prepared to be honest, and they were. The upcycling is beautiful in theory and brutal in practice. The margins are always under pressure. The wheel never stops long enough to think clearly. These are not unique problems. These are the actual conditions of running a fashion brand today.

But the moment I keep coming back to is Ségolène standing in a Paris showroom setting prices without knowing her costs yet. Not because she is careless. Because the atelier has not sent the numbers in time and the buyers are waiting and the season does not stop for anyone. That image captures the whole tension of this industry better than anything I could write. You are always making decisions faster than you have information. The founders who survive are the ones who build systems and partnerships strong enough to absorb that pressure, and who care enough about what they are building to keep going anyway.

What Alexandra said at the end is what I will carry from this conversation. The dream is not to be the biggest brand. It is still to be there in ten years with the original values intact. To have grown without compromising what made the brand worth building in the first place. In an industry that pressures you to move fast, copy what works, and sacrifice quality for margin, that is not a modest goal. That is the hardest one there is.