Meet Julie, a creative entrepreneur who started L’envers Fashion, a small batch made knitwear brand, making quality knitwear pieces that are crafted with care & attention to detail, in a small family workshop in Julie’s hometown in Spain.
The knitwear material is selected exclusively from French and Spanish spinning mills, and Julie strives to use only yarn that is ethically made, respectful of the environment from where it comes.
I love Lenvers cardigans, they are the perfect match to my dresses, and I am in love with the new line of Organic cotton cardigans that Julie just added to the line!
You can visit Lenvers here, or take a look at their Instagram, or pop on over to Facebook!
Tell us who you are, what you do, and a little background info about yourself.
I’m Julie, the happy mum of 2 lovely girls aged 9 and 7, and a 10 month-old boy. I’ve been married with my dear husband who I met at school when I was 20 years old, a very creative person that accompanies me in every aspect of my life. I’m French but I have now been living out of my country for over 12 years.
After living in Spain, Argentina and Norway, I began my professional life in Paris and moved after to swinging London. 7 years ago we settled in Madrid, looking for a slower pace and sunnier daily to fully enjoy life with our 3 kids.
I’ve always loved very much to hunt for antiques and the best day of the year for me when I was younger was the clearance day in my small village in North of France, when we were selling all our old stuff with my sister, earning little money and spending it in buying second hand clothes and furniture. I’ve always wanted to be an interior designer but I ended up studying marketing in a business school.
I started working at Habitat, one of the most famous European decoration brands.
After working in design I’ve worked in the jewellery world and then fashion. And this is when I realized I should start my own company and launch my own fashion brand, when understanding how the fast fashion industry works and its huge social and environment impact.
My family has been in the textile industry for centuries. It’s the desire to perpetuate a family legacy of the French Northern textile industry, and a realization of the flaws of today’s fashion industry that are at the heart of the creation of L’Envers, my knitwear fashion brand. It’s a childhood story, a wish to awaken a lost sentimental heritage that I was keen bringing back to life. L’Envers is about well-made pieces entirely crafted by highly skilled artisans in Spain where I live so I can visit them regularly and build strong and very close relationships. In a country where the textile industry suffered a lot from off-shoring in Asia I am very keen to defend the «Made in Spain» and revitalize local production again.
What’s a typical day in the life for you?
I can´t really define what a typical day is, everyday is always full of surprises. One thing for sure is that I work many hours everyday as running one’s own business is quite intense and it takes days, months and years of very hard work! But this is so exciting and rewarding to see one’s brand slowly growing, employing a team of like-minded people and working everyday with our artisans!
The alarm goes off at 7.00, I go straight to wake up my two girls and have breakfast the three of us. I stay home with my baby boy, a 30 min moment just the two of us while my husband goes to school with the girls. I love to take him on our roof top overlooking all Madrid and observe the olive trees growing. Then I cycle to work and join the team. Always start the day with a coffee and launching a good music playlist. Days are intense, filled with meetings, a quick lunch break.
I am off on Wednesday afternoon and stay at home with the kids. This is the only moment when I put my cell phone in an other room and step away from the computer. Not easy but I really try to stop and enjoy these moments with them. One thing I always do is going to yoga and run once a week, and when I can’t go I feel really less energized!
Everynight we have dinner together if I am not going out for meetings, catching up with friends or dining out with my husband. And if it is not too late I always try to read a magazine or a book before falling asleep and be ready for the day after!
https://www.instagram.com/lenvers_fashion/
https://www.facebook.com/lenversfashion/
