At Home with Officine Générale’s Pierre Mahéo

The good-humoured designer describes his founding philosophy as "just trying to do the best we can." For Mahéo, that means creating wearable collections with high-quality fabrics using the best factories in Europe, all while being fair to his employees and suppliers. The result is a lasting garment that his customers can wear for years to come.

But let's rewind. Mahéo's first inspiration comes from his roots. Born and raised in Brittany on France's west coast, his father and grandfather worked the rocky shores as oystermen. "They were very dressed down, wearing chinos, Oxford shirts, Sebago dockside shoes, and one navy blazer when there was something important. The chinos would get pink from the sea salt and the sun."

On his mother’s side was his grandfather, a tailor. “I never saw him without a tie, except when he was tending his garden on Sunday afternoon. The rest of the time, even on Sunday morning, he was going to have his coffee and buy his newspaper in a three-piece suit and a tie.”

For Mahéo, Officine Générale is intentionally a seamless mix of both worlds—dressed-down tailoring meets workwear.

Apart from being inspired by his family, Maheéo's vision was also informed by the deep knowledge of fine fabrics that he absorbed while working for a master tailor and, later, a number of large French fashion labels. It was at these big houses that he witnessed some less than admirable production and labor methods. That was what inspired him to create a brand that would adhere to only the highest of standards—even if it meant lower profits for him.

"We are lucky to have some of the best mills [in the world]," he says, "so it was clear in my mind when I started the brand that we would produce everything in Europe using the best materials we could." That means Scottish Shetland wool, Portuguese cotton-jersey, Italian merino wool, and Swiss-made zippers, to name only a few important elements.

As another way of keeping his brand honest, Mahéo won't create anything that he himself wouldn't wear—and when it comes to quality, he insists that every product meets his own high standards. "I keep the same pants season after season, I have some jackets that are seven, eight, nine years old and I still wear them—I think most of my customers want the same.”

"We are not going with trends or with fashion," he asserts. "And yet, the evolution of each collection is something that is really important. I always say I have to reimagine a navy jacket every season. There is a lot of work behind the scenes to make a product look the same but slightly different... slightly looser on the pants, drop a shoulder a little, increase the volume slightly on a shirt—it's mostly playing with the fit."

It all adds up to a brand and a collection that's decidedly nonchalant, inspired by elegant French film legends such as Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, and Michel Piccoli. "Serge Gainsbourg had five pieces in his wardrobe: a pinstriped jacket, bleached denim, a bleached western shirt, a white T-shirt, a military shirt – that's it," Mahéo explains. "In fact, I collect a lot of vintage military jackets where you always find fantastic details. Everything was so well made that it's an endless source of inspiration."

Now with Officine Générale humming along and preparing to open stores in California, Maheéo sits at home (once owned by the Italian writer Italo Calvino) with his wife Nina and two children and seems a man at ease. Yet he's as ambitious and focused as when he started, drawing inspiration from the environments around him.

"I always sit outside and look at the people, I look at the street," he explains. "There is always something to glean from the attitude, from the way people are wearing things, from the way kids are mixing products together. There is always something interesting."