Patrick Frey, President
PIERRE FREY HOUSE (PIERRE FREY) IS A FAMILY ENTERPRISE. LUXURY AND DREAMS COMPANY, WITH RICH TRADITIONS AND GREAT PLANS FOR THE FUTURE PIERRE FREY, WAS FOUNDED IN 1935. SHE DEVELOPES AND PRODUCES LUXURY FABRICS AND WALLPAPERS IN TRUE FRENCH TRADITIONS. In COLLECTIONS home today means more than 7,000 types of products, including not only what has been created under the brand PIERRE FREY, but also under the other three belong to him prestigious brands: BRAQUENIE (Braquenié), FADINI BORGHI (Fadini Borghi) and Boussac (Boussac). MASTERS OF THE COMPANY DO NOT HAVE EQUAL EQUALS IN CREATING THE SMALLEST PAINT PICTURES: THE LITTLE PARK FABRIC MAY BE TAKEN FOR ONE OF THE CLOTHES FROM THE WALL OF ANY CASTLE OR CHATO. THE PICTURE OF JUY'S AGAIN IS REPRESENTED IN A “TRAVEL TO CHINA”, AND THE EMPIRE MOTIVES IN THE SPIRIT OF 40 YEARS WITH EASY TRANSFER TO THE ATLAS WEAVING FABRIC. HERE ART, AWAKING DREAMS AND FANTASIES, MIMES LIFE ...
I talked with Patrick Frey, the only son of the founder of the House and his current president, about the past and present days in the history of the development of the company, whose fabrics and interior items are also presented for connoisseurs in Dubai, meeting with him at the Bloomingdale department store's Pierre Frey brand department.
Patrick, please tell us how your fascination with fabrics and home decor began?
Since childhood. My parents raised me like that. Before talking about me, you need to talk about how our family business appeared. My father was born in 1903 into a bourgeois family in northern France. He, like me later, was brought up in an exquisite atmosphere of love for music and antiques. Due to serious financial difficulties that befell the family, Pierre as a senior was forced to quit school and start working. Misfortune was a turning point in his biography. At the age of 16, he became an assistant in an antique shop on Place de Madeleine, and at 23 he already worked for Bürger, then the Sales Director for Loe (Bürger and Loe are interior textile companies - ed.). The textile house Pierre Frey was opened by him on January 1, 1935. Then there was a war, but my father continued to work hard, he went on a bicycle to clients ... The situation changed radically in 1945: the situation suddenly gained momentum, since in post-war France people wanted to forget about the horrors of war as soon as possible and equip their houses, creating they have cosiness and comfort.
I am the only son of Pierre Frey. And fortunately, I shared my father's passion for fabrics. In my opinion, this is a whole world that cannot be expressed in words. From my mother, a beautiful fabric artist, and from my maternal grandfather, a famous decorator of the 1930s, I inherited a sense of beauty. And at the age of 22, he began working at a family business. I wanted to know all the subtleties, to touch everything with my own hands. My training in the profession began in 1969, in 1975 I became responsible for the development of fabrics and a year later the president of Pierre Frey House.
What is unusual and surprising about your company for today's Pierre Frey customers?
The best decorators, artists, decorators all over the world work for the success of our House. We rarely work directly with end users, we offer them to turn to professionals: designers and decorators who will fully select a textile solution for their home. And if historically our company worked only on the production of fabrics and interior items, then, in accordance with the requirements of today, we are also engaged in decoration and furniture. Today we create new products that harmoniously complement our textiles. Carpets and interior items were added to the elegant furniture. All of them - lamps, pillows, bedspreads, rugs or scented candles - are made in the signature colors of Pierre Frey. The courage and innovation of our company is manifested not only in activity, but also in tastes: we draw ideas in the art of imperial China, and France of the 18th century, and modern Africa. I believe that creating is daring, and the source is not important to me, it is necessary to preserve the essence - the seal of exquisite refinement. Continuing the traditions of French masters, Pierre Frey House is inherently deeply eclectic. The latter is manifested both in drawings and in the types of fabric weaving: traditional damask, jacquard or moire are adjacent to the most modern fabrics today. Eclecticism is also found in the materials used: sensuality of silk, coolness of cotton, elegance of linen, warmth of woolen fabric or sophistication of cashmere. It can be traced in color. Our palette, which has no equal in wealth and poetry, has more than 5,000 shades. Among them are colors such as Pomegranate, Impatience, Cardinal Red, Tea Green, Absinthe, Foliage, Prairie, Mint and Moss. What sonorous names. I see, almost your fabrics are richly decorated with embroidery ....
Yes, and this is also Pierre Frey's calling card, as it is a historical heritage. All our fabrics are embroidered almost by hand, that is, part of the embroidery is applied by machines, and then manual finishing is done on silk. This is a very painstaking work, requiring some perseverance and patience.
I believe that sketches and ornaments for new types of fabrics are collected by you everywhere, right?
The source of our inspiration is the whole world, its past, present and future. Today, our clients have at their disposal a wonderful archive collection. Since 2003, we have collected in Paris more than 30,000 documents - tablets with drawings, fabrics and sketches of carpets of the 16th-21st centuries. They are distributed by eras, colors, motifs and techniques. This amazing collection includes the works of all four brands of the House: Braquenie, Fadini Borghi and Boussac, as well as rare items purchased at auctions, from antique dealers or from private collectors. Each House represents a special world: for Braquenie, it is represented by cotton and silk fabrics of the 18th and 19th centuries, for Pierre Frey fabrics of the 20th century, in which a mixture of traditional and modern trends is traced, for Fadini Borghi Italian silk fabrics from the Renaissance to the present day. In addition to artists and decorators, luxury hotels are also our preferred clients. They value both an individual approach and a wide selection of fire-resistant fabrics - we have more than 700 of them. In addition, we cooperate with museums and are members of the French club of connoisseurs and connoisseurs of luxury Comie Colbert.
Patrick, when you talk about your business, you often use the word home rather than company. What does home mean to you personally? And what is a cozy house in your understanding?
For me, a house is, first of all, a family. And since Pierre Frey is also a 100% family-owned company, in which the third generation of the Frey family has been working, I often talk about it “home”. We are all my wife Lorren, who helps me in the international development of the brand, and our three sons, Pierre, Vincent and Mathieu, are united by a common passion for beautiful products, a cult of detail and creativity ... We are a family that is sensitive to our past, thinks about the future . The eldest son, Pierre, full of his grandfather's namesake, is responsible for the work of our American branch, and the average Vincent is engaged in marketing.
A cozy house is a house in which there is a lot of fabric - in furniture upholstery, tablecloths, napkins, curtains. So go into a new empty room without curtains and furniture. In it, even your voice will echo from the walls. And where there are curtains, rugs, cushions, where table lamps and candles burn, a person immediately has a feeling of complete comfort and real home comfort.
Moreover, I believe that the role of fabric should not be underestimated: it indicates the evolution of taste in the decoration of residential premises. For example, our oldest “document” in the collection is patterned Italian velvet, which dates back to the 16th century. Today we recreated its ornaments in a new quality. And what’s interesting - even then people were thinking about how to ennoble the echoing halls of huge castles and palaces. Without fabric - tapestries, carpets, canopies, they could not have done this. And today this is impossible, because a beautiful interior plays a big role in the life of a modern person, wherever he is - in the south or north, in the west or in the east. Therefore, I am convinced that our products will be favorably received in the UAE, because the East has been famous for its fabrics for centuries. We give the region our vision of the beautiful, conveyed in silk and velvet, cotton and linen, wool and cashmere. Thank you for talking and demonstrating your new collection, Patrick. We will wait in the Emirates for your new collections.
