Thousands of individual threads loaded by hand are woven together to create one of the most intricate fabrics in the world levers Lace but making this lace isn't easy a new design can take three months to produce and depending on the materials one square meter can cost over five hundred dollars despite the premium price the lace industry in France is a fraction of its former size and it's hard to find new lace makers to continue the trade so how is lever's lace made and why is it so expensive this is a levers loom it's 6 meters long and over 100 years old these looms were invented to match the quality of handmade lace each design is translated from paper into these punch cards which are fed into the loom to create a pattern these looms are essential for making levers lace but there are only a few hundred left today forty of which are at this factory in the northern French city of cadre john brock has been making lace since 1889.
We are selling holes we are selling a fabrics with mainly horse so it's mainly empty but it is why it's so interesting because we have artistic possibility every day we are making something different compared to the other fabric unlike cheaper mass-produced lace designs aren't embroidered on top of fabric they're continuously woven creating a beautifully complex pattern the machine might do the weaving but it takes around 20 people to produce levers lace it all starts with a design john brock uses a library of old designs. Some from as far back as 1925 but it also creates new designs which can take three to five weeks to complete this is the most time consuming part of the process but the most delicate is threading the loom thousands of individual threads feed into the machine detail designs need more threads which raises the price workers load these small discs called bobbins by hand keeping each thread separate and taut workers place each bobbin into a carriage and check to ensure consistent weight and tension when we set up a machine we set up more than 15 000 yards into the machine we start from scratch we start from zero so we need to put every ant at the right position once the loom starts running lace makers are surrounded by an ocean of sound despite being such an old machine each room runs with extreme precision the loom weaves the design line by line as workers refill it with more thread loom experts called Tullis are in charge of overseeing the whole weaving process they watch each loom looking and listening for any tears a mistake at this step could seriously set back production if there's a break told us reach into the loom carefully repairing individual threads.
Frederik has been working on these looms for 26 years he checks to ensure that the original design is being recreated on the loom machine each step requires an expert but this makes finding new workers foreign it's a work of passion and it's for that reason that all the people who work with us most of them spend 15, 20, 25 years in the same company that's the main difficult things to find for the new generation but even after 20 or 25 years you still learn things it's so fascinating and it's a passion for people recommended Isabel is a lace inspector lace right off the loom is never perfect so it's the inspector's job to spot any mistakes. These highly skilled workers inspect every inch of the lace and repair each section by hand the repairs must be indistinguishable from the rest of the lease levers lays with no additions costs around 45 to 90 dollars per square meter that's over 10 times the price of mass-produced lace but laced with add-ons like pearls crystals or sequins can cost several hundred dollars more dresses or lingerie made with levers lace usually cost a few hundred dollars at minimum but some can cost a lot more for the old couture things it can go just no sky limits in addition to the materials and complicated manufacturing the looms themselves increase the price levers looms aren't made today companies have to maintain the looms that they have it's not impossible to build a lever's loom but the costs required to manufacture it would be more than the demand for the product because of that lace manufacturers rely on existing looms and even share spare parts between companies but the lace industry in France used to look a lot different in the early 20th century there were tens of thousands of lace related jobs but as production modernized and fashion trends shifted the industry consolidated to two main parts of France Cadre and Calais today only a few thousand jobs remain and only a handful of the traditional race producers are left competition from cheaper lace manufacturers has eliminated a lot of the industry many remaining producers focus on the high-end market i think our customers are really different but we still always looking what the mass production does our main advantage is to be ahead of the fashions we work with a creative trans office to know what the fashion will be and we need to anticipate the next fashion trends demand for jean brock's lace had actually been increasing for the last few years but the covet 19 pandemic hit the industry hard brands like Chanel and Ralph Lauren rely on companies that create levers lace but if demand doesn't increase it'll be difficult to maintain the industry i hope so it will be easier i hope so but I’m not sure we just spent two terrible years so i hope now it will be more comfortable to invest and to train the new generation of people you.
