Updating the Traditional Atelier Model: The Innovative Experiment of the Leather Goods Brand Laperruque

An intensive fieldwork was held since 2021 in Laperruque, a handicraft leather goods company, and provided the opportunity of noting the innovative vision of its two co-founders. Leading players of the fashion accessory market, the luxury groups, bet on new materials development and on one-off designs. Laperruque differs from such brands with a critical approach on the fashion industry’s functioning, which is unusual and innovating. Implementing this vision rests on a socio-technic entanglement exemplified by three observed and encountered situations drawn from the fieldwork : designing of an open source line ; improving a tool thanks to 3D printing ; enhancing an ethnographic inquiry in the company. This contribution results in new insights on the acceptance of the term « innovation », and moreover of « entrepreneurship ».