Arpenteur Is The Future Of Fancy French Workwear

Every new collection from Arpenteur arrives with its own Tintin-esque cartoon strip. There’s the explorer and the elephant, yellow-hued and lost in the city, created as part of a Paraboot shoe collaboration. The DJ rushing to make a late-night set in a neon-bathed downtown New York. A private eye tails a bank robber, closing the net, and two space travellers find themselves confused and lost on a lonely white planet. Before you even get to the clothes (more on them in a minute) you are drawn, quite literally, into the Arpenteur universe.

"We don’t do mood boards," says Marc Aseilly, one of the brand's founders, over the phone from Lyon, "every season we put together a comic, which serves as our inspiration. The clothes then become the answer to the story and the images."

"It’s an old idea," adds Laurent Bourven, Arpenteur's other founder (Marc and Laurent are cousins). "Even French gas stations in the Eighties and Nineties were using classic comics on their walls. You know Asterix and Tintin, right? When we first started the brand we were looking for something expressive to tell the story and these kinds of comics, the French / Belgian style from our childhoods, made sense to us."

In 2011 the cousins founded Arpenteur – an archaic French word for surveyor, now more commonly used to describe an explorer – in their hometown of Lyon. In the decade since they've crafted clothes that are part classic French work- and naval-wear, part tech-adjacent outdoor gear, with a hint of Japanese fabrication obsession. Then they throw in some grown-up skate style. There are lots of shades of blue and lots of coats with multiple pockets and zips. "When we were creating Arpenteur, it was really important that we were making a full silhouette," says Laurent, "down to the belt and the shoes. It had to be a proper look."

Though rooted in workwear, it's not limited by it. "It can easily be worn by someone that normally wouldn’t think workwear is for them," says Mats Klingberg, owner of the destination menswear store Trunk Clothiers on Chiltern Street, a stockist of the brand. "It's all made in France and is run by a couple of really nice down-to-earth French guys, so that ticked all the boxes for me."

In a pleasingly DIY touch, Laurent often acts as the lookbook model for each new collection, which looks like it's been shot on a phone in front of the desks and sewing machines inside the company's workshop. Everything is, as Klingberg said, made in France, down to the acetate in the sunglasses and the pastel blue dye, derived from the Asatis Tinctoria plant found in the south west of the country, which is then used to colour its chore coats. By hand, of course.

The pair will sketch out the seasonal comic ideas, before passing them on to the French artist Régric to finalise. Limited-edition prints (made and printed in Lyon, where else?) are then sold on its web shop. There are plans for a brick and mortar store "within the next two years" and a "printed product, maybe a magazine or a little book" to celebrate a decade in business next year.

"At first glance our clothes might look classic," says Marc, "but if you look at the details, you get a sense of the shapes and the materials and it’s more like 'fashion'. We believe the clothes have to be functional and comfortable. The shapes are always quite boxy and I think we have a subtle approach to colours and accessories."

Over the last few years a host of young designers, especially on the men's side of things, have brought fresh vigour to French style. Casablanca has caused a stir with its silky, navel-flashing shirts and celebrity-laden FROWS, while Simone Porte Jacquemeus has become a young star and an Instagram sensation with his glamorous depiction of lavender fields-turned runways, tiny bags and giant floral prints, selling fantasy Provencal clothing and a fantasy Provencal lifestyle to a global community of models, buyers, fans and famous friends. AMI, founded by former Marc Jacobs and Givenchy designer Alexandre Matuissi, has become a commercial and critical juggernaut with a laissez faire take on Parisian luxury at a (relatively) accessible price point. Husbands, another Parisian label, has risen to prominence with its own, very French, view on Ivy style and elegant tailoring.