Goyard

Goyard grew out of Maison Morel, a Paris box maker, trunk maker and packer that counted the Duchess of Berry among its patrons. François Goyard joined as a 17-year-old apprentice in 1845, and after Louis-Henri Morel's death in 1852 the business became Goyard. The house settled at 233 rue Saint-Honoré, near the Place Vendôme, where it still trades.

François's son Edmond Goyard ran the business from 1885 to 1937 and made it an international luxury name: he created its first advertisements, showed at world expositions, opened branches and introduced the Goyardine canvas, a coated cloth of hemp, linen and cotton whose dots form chevrons spelling a Y. Its first public outing was the 1900 World Exposition. Robert Goyard succeeded him, patenting a woven chevron-and-stripe canvas in 1965, and ran the house until his death in 1979, after which Isabelle Goyard took over.

In 1998 the collector Jean-Michel Signoles bought the house from the Goyard family. Without the backing of a luxury group, he built workshops in Carcassonne, in former wine warehouses, and opened stores around the world. In 2002 the Signoles family added twelve colours to the historic black Goyardine.