Journal

Before Chanel, before Lanvin, a woman from Saint-Denis built a couture empire with houses in Paris, London, Madrid, Buenos Aires and New York. Her name was Jeanne Paquin, and fashion almost forgot her.

How a scrap of gold sewn onto a royal robe became the sequin on your thread: a journey from ancient Egypt through Venice, the Tudor court and a small town in Lorraine to the plastics of the twentieth century.

Jeanne Lanvin kept three embroidery workshops in her Paris house, famous for layered sequins and beaded robes de style. This article tells her story and explains Lunéville embroidery for beginners.

Mollie Welch joined Norman Hartnell's Bruton Street workroom in January 1937 and stitched for the royal family through two coronation years. Here is her story and what her surviving beads and sequins are.

An unopened hank of Belgian sequins, still wearing its peacock tag, and the bright world that made it: lace makers, Brussels sequin factories, a sequin maker from Lunéville and the port of Antwerp.