Jacques Marie Mage and the Transformative Power of Sunglasses

0:04Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. a welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, July 18th. Jérôme Mage is the founder and creative force behind Jacques-Marie Mage, the luxury eyewear brand known for its distinctive silhouettes, limited production runs, and deep-rooted storytelling. Originally from the Auvergne region in France, Jérôme relocated to Los Angeles in pursuit of creative freedom and with a deep passion for California's action sport culture. The brand he has created comes from a personal mission to reimagine luxury through the lens of collectability, history and craft, starting with an obsession for sunglasses that began at a young age.

0:51When I was 10 years old, my brother was 15. He came back with a pair of Viornay at my house. And I remember looking at that pair of Viornay and I've never really seen my brother with glasses before. And I was like, wow, it looks so cool. My brother looks, wow, this is how you look cool. You put glasses on. I think for a lot of people, it's transformative. We live in a modern world that can be quite intrusive. And people, all day long, their life are on display. And I think it's very nice to hide behind a pair of sunglasses. With each design, Jérôme channels his vast array of influences, from American mythologies to Napoleonic tailoring and iconic personalities and transforms them into expressive objects with enduring emotional power.

1:37This week on the BOF podcast, hot on the heels of the brand's latest retail opening in Paris, I sat down with Jérôme at his new gallery on Rue de la Paix to explore how he built a cult luxury eyewear brand rooted in rarity, storytelling, and craftsmanship, and why having an outsider's perspective is his greatest creative strength. Here's Jérôme Mage on the BOF podcast. Jérôme. Oui. Welcome to the BOF podcast. Thank you. We're here in this very special place today in Paris. Just opened your latest gallery. and I want to talk all about the rollout of these new special retail experiences. But we need to start with your story.

2:29I mean, there's a song by Sting, which is like an Englishman in New York, but you're a Frenchman in Los Angeles. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey? You went to design school and then you moved to Los Angeles. Tell us a little bit about how you ended up in L.A. and why you've stayed there. Yeah, you know, my journey started simply with a love of sketching and drawing since a very young age. And when I was... How young were you when you started sketching? I can't really remember. I was with a pencil in my hand forever, since a very, very early age. That was my passion. I spent all my day, all my weekends drawing, drawing, drawing, drawing.

3:10That's how I got into everything else that followed design, you know. And around 15-year-old, I made the decision, and I forced my parents to relocate me to Paris. Where had you grown up? I grew up in Auvergne. It's the center of France, you know. So it's a bit like, I guess, the Midwest. Lots of farms? A lot of farms. it's a rolling hill some mountains you can snowboard you can ski very cold in the winter very hot during the summer as a it has a bit it's a it's a in the middle of beautiful volcanoes it's the largest chain of volcanoes in the world in the middle of france yeah yeah yeah yeah it's gorgeous where i come from it's a bit of a french wyoming if you want to compare it to to something that you can find in america obviously we don't have cowboys we we just of simple farmers but he had a very very similar spirit Coco Chanel he's from yeah yeah Jean Cocteau famously said that if you want to understand Coco the first thing you have to understand is she's from Auvergne so it's a volcanic place and it's a very tough place so I think it forged very strong characters in general.

4:31So I moved to Paris at 15, live by myself. I did all my studies, my high school, and then my college there and my design school in Paris. And I always felt very much like an outsider in France. It's hard to explain that feeling, but I was at the same time very passionate about the Californian lifestyle. I grew up really loving action sport, surf, snowboard, skate, motocross, dirt bikes. And so from a very early age, I was very motivated and made the decision that I would move to Los Angeles because the entire action sport industry was in Los Angeles. Had you been to LA before? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

5:21I did a formative trip to America when I was 17-year-old where we visited with a friend of mine the entire West Coast. Like a road trip. Like a road trip, yeah. And it was very, it left a very powerful impression on me, especially the nature, actually. You know, my base memories are Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon, Monument Valley, Death Valley. I, of course, really like San Francisco more than Los Angeles during my first trip. Went to Las Vegas, but really the national parks, the space, it felt like it was a place where I could express myself fully. What prevented you from having that feeling of self-expression in France?

6:10I don't know, I never really felt welcome. I felt people in France, I was too loud, I dressed too crazily, my ideas were too controversial. In design school, I felt like always a problematic subject, not to my teachers or my professors that really adore me, but I think the students in general, they were very divided around my personality, my character. And yeah, I felt under a microscope at all times because I think I was not very much your typical Frenchman in the way I dress, carry myself, in maybe how loud I was about my dream, my vision, my ambition. It was not something that really resonated very well with my French colleague as a student.

7:11So I drove everyone crazy. And when I would come to America, I felt that people very much welcomed Mad Madness. It was the opposite. There was, you know, at 21, I got offered a creative director job for SPY, which was at the time an upcoming eyewear action sport company. You know, it was Oakley, there was Arnett and Spy. We were the smallest of the three, but we were one of the leading eyewear companies in that field. And at the time, Arnett, especially when the Beastie Boys made the cover of the Face magazine in 1995, I think Action Sport and the design that happened within Action Sport with, I think, sneakers and eyewear at the time was the strongest fashion force, design force across the field.

8:03Were you drawn to eyewear yourself or was it just through the experience of having that professional opportunity that you kind of... Yeah, at first it was just an opportunity. I grabbed the first opportunity to get the hell out of France and that was a job and it was a fantastic job. I had a crazy salary as a 21-year-old kid. coming out of school. The crazier I was, the better it was for my boss. So it was just a great opportunity. And after that, I stayed at SPY for two and a half years. Then I moved to Los Angeles to start my product design studio. And then we expanded for many years. What kind of products were you designing?

8:50Everything. We did so many things. We did footwear, we did watches, we did technical, garments for snowboarding for motocross i i designed uh burn outerwear from 2006 to 2021 oh wow so i spent 15 years working with my friend greg dacashan and jake burden and i love that experience slopes basically yeah i love the i really love designing outerwear i love how it was merging functionality, fashion, graphics, colors. We designed the Olympic uniform that Sean White wore for two of his gold medals. They were very fun things. It's fun to do fashion, but that has that specific performance aspect. So with Greg and Jake, the idea for the U.S.

9:47Olympics was to always be as bold and as extravagant and crazy as we could. Obviously, have an American theme, but at the same time, he had to be functional so Sean could pull the amazing tricks that he did and win the Olympics. So it's a fun place to design, you know, when there's an intersection of different things that can be actually opposite or contradictory, right? Yeah. Because fashion and performance, they don't really go well together. But trying to put it together, and you see it now more across fashion, whether it's in running, it's in tennis, any sports now as an aspect of fashion.

10:32So I did a lot of things like that. We grew the studio at about 15 employees. And yeah, my life has been in California since 1996. And I love the Rockies. I love the West of the Rockies. I'm a lover of the American West, from Ed Ruscha to Antares Thompson to Dennis Hopper to New Mexico to, you know, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Los Angeles to the desert. I love the West Coast. I love what it represents as that last frontier of the expansion of Western civilization. It's like sort of the place where it comes and dies. It dies off there. That's it. There's a barrier. It cannot go any further. So it's an interesting place.

11:29There's a, I think, mysterious force about that place. Also, Los Angeles has some sort of mythology that is hard to put really your finger on. But most of the people come to Los Angeles like me without a family, without friends. But with dreams, right? With dreams. Yeah. And you can sort of reinvent yourself or shape yourself to try to attain that dream. It's also a very desolate place. It can be very ugly. It is very lonely in your SUV, in your air conditioning all day long. You can spend days without seeing anyone. But for a character like mine who likes also his solitude to create, it's also a great place to be.

12:15So yeah, I mean, everything, I mean, I think it was my destiny. My path was to end up in California. and obviously it didn't lead me to fashion or luxury right away. I loved fashion and luxury growing up. I was highly exposed to it when I was in Paris. But yeah, for many years I did something else because you don't work for Chanel from Los Angeles. You work for the clients I had, Burton, Quicksilver, DC Shoes, Fox, you know, all those mega big brands that were either streetwear or action sport that were based in California. Those were my clients. I had every one of these brands wanted to work with me.

12:56And so it was a very neat experience. So how do you go from this world of like performance, sports, intersecting with fashion and design? How did you identify this opportunity around really beautiful handcrafted eyewear? Because it seems like a different universe. How did that happen? Where did you get the idea? Yes and no. I mean, it was very simple. In the early 2010, I could see a very quick shift from investing into design, product design, into investing in influencers and social media. The budgets dried off, I don't want to say overnight, but very quickly. Then the attitude really changed from, Jerome, you got to do something creative to, you know what, Jerome, we have that great person.

13:55Just do something that looks like this. Just knock it off and we'll just put it on that person and they'll sell. This is what your clients were saying to you? Not directly, but indirectly. In a way, yeah. It was very, very clear. Also, around that time, kind of starting a chase to the bottom line. So, every dollar started to get really squeezed in the product, in the margins, in the quality. So, I really didn't like the directions that business started to take. And I think it was the same time that really social media started to explode. And I saw the money was moving away from product into more marketing, influencers, social media.

14:41And that was obviously some things that I was not doing. And me, I'm very terrible at copying things. That's not my talent. There's designers, other designers that are much better than that. It's actually a talent. There's people that are talented at taking something and tweaking it. And then making it, yeah, you know, like, yeah. It's a talent too, you know. And me, that was not my talent. And I didn't want to do that. At the same time, I was approaching my 40s. and I felt I've been around the action sport world for 15 years and I wanted to go back to fashion, to luxury. I wanted to return maybe a little bit more to my French roots, you know, rekindle that passion of mine that I felt because I was living in California, I left dormant a bit.

15:32And it led me to start considering doing my project and also because for so many years, for 15 years, I always heard, wow, Jerome, you're crazy. Wow, Jerome, we can never do that. Wow, Jerome, yes, this is great, but this will never sell. And there was also, I was worrying. I was like, am I crazy or are they crazy? Someone must be wrong here. And I was like, I'd be very interested to find out, you know, who's wrong. Am I wrong? Am I that crazy? And so that's it. I started thinking about making my own project, basically. But why did you choose this project? You could have chosen any project. How did eyewear become the focus?

16:13Well, the focus, I think my number one focus at the beginning when I started it was not necessarily eyewear. I wanted to create a new American luxury house. That was my first focus and my first book that I printed to investors that had many things in it. Eyewear was the original focus just because Eyewear was a category I knew the best. I had very limited phone to start. I didn't have a lot of money. I actually had no investor when I started. And Eyewear was a place that I knew I could ask the biggest amount of favors because some of the atelier I work with, some of the factory I work with, I made them a lot of money.

16:59indirectly, indirectly, by designing good products for other brands and bringing them to their atelier. So they knew my value. So I knew I could go see those ateliers in Japan. And let's say the minimum order was 500 pairs. I knew I could be, hey guys, can you help me? And they would have been here to run for you, we'll do 100 pairs. So I knew it would allow me to get going and do a little bit of a proof of concept because when you don't have a lot of money, obviously, every door count. And when you start, our first year was, I think we ordered maybe 500 pairs of glasses, not even, it was just proof of concept.

17:42There was five styles or six styles and it was just trying to see if people would even like it. You can have a great idea, you can have a great product, but you don't know how people are going to react to it. People might not like it for maybe the timing is off or maybe it can be a million things. So the first year, year and a half was just proof of concept. And we started very, very slowly. And we started to be with a very product specific driven kind of mentality. And then the last thing I wear because I wanted to go to Japan every three months. So now I had a great excuse with my family to say every 90 days, sorry, I got to go to Japan.

18:24I got to visit the atelier. I have to see my suppliers. I have to work with them. We need to work on some samples. That's right. So that was my excuse in 2015, 10 years ago to say, sorry, every 90 days, I got to go to Japan. So it was all these things combined. And we started in a very humble, simple way, no marketing, no branding, 100 % focused on product. I always say I'm at the service of my sunglasses right i heard that from cubrick stanley you say i'm at the service of my films but i'm still at the service of my sunglasses or any of the other collectible objects we're designing or creating those days and um it's it's important to know that they don't serve me i serve them so we we haven't changed that philosophy i don't want to change it and we still are very focus on that.

19:16I still go to Japan every 90 days. I'm going to have to get some Japan tips from you because I'm going in a few weeks. And I still, I think I'm one of the only one who goes to the atelier every three or four months. I don't think there's a lot of other designers that show up in the atelier, but I feel so much happened there. And I feel it's so important for the people in the atelier to know who they work for who they create the glasses for. Because then they do not work the same way. I can tell you that. We'll be right back with more on the BOF podcast.

19:56I discovered Jacques Marimage long before anyone on your team had contacted me. I discovered it in an optician in London, yeah a small one in Soho it was a tiny little case I was with my partner he had found some for his mom he's like this brand is really interesting so we went and we looked and this optician they had very few pairs available but the thing that really stood out to me was it just instantly looked different from everything else there was a certain design aspect to it if you look at the space around sunglasses. There's kind of like the brands change, but everyone kind of does kind of the same thing.

20:41And yours had really interesting silhouettes. And instantly when you pick it up, you can feel the quality. It was very apparent right away. So I think what you, you know, maybe you had all of those very pragmatic reasons to enter because you had the connections, you had the experience, you had the personal desire to go to Japan, but also there was a gap in the market for something of that level of quality design, craftsmanship, and attentiveness, which you don't see in that world of opticals. But secondly, I think sunglasses in particular, they represent something for people. And I was curious to hear, you know, you meet so many people clearly who wear your sunglasses and it's become quite a phenomenon with like lots of celebrities who've like made it part of their identity.

21:35People who use sunglasses as a way of almost like a form of armor. But what do you think it is about people and sunglasses and in particular Jacques-Marie Maje's sunglasses? It's maybe a bit difficult to say because I think it might be different for each person or everyone has a bit of a different sensibility. But I know when my brother, when I was 10 years old, my brother was 15, he came back with a pair of Viorne at my house. And I remember like looking at that pair of Viorne and because my brother would put them on and I've never really seen my brother with glasses before. And I was like, wow, it looks so cool.

22:14My brother looks, wow, this is how you look cool. You put glasses on. I think for a lot of people, it's transformative. First of all, the transformative aspect is very important i think the protective aspect means the functional aspect obviously to protect you from from the uvs and the arm of the sun but beyond that you you use the word uh armor right so we live in a more in a modern world that can be quite abrasive intrusive i was going to say that and people all day long their life are on display and i think it's very nice to hide behind a pair of sunglasses. You know, it feels good to have your own private space behind those dark lenses.

23:01And then also, I think sunglasses have a sort of archetype qualities that is associated with it. You know, if you think Winston Churchill, if you think GFK or Jackie O or Onassis or James Dean, James Dean, Antares Thompson, who is a pilot, or even now, Johnny Depp, I can see the type of glasses he's wearing with the type of lens color. Think about Top Gun and Tom Cruise. So there's archetype you associate it with. And I think it's an easy way also for people to recognize themselves as tribes, as partners, as opposites. And it's, yeah, it's transformative. And it goes on your face. I mean, it's pretty important.

23:49There's a sensual aspect, too. It touches your skin. It's the first thing people see. It's an object that can take many forms, and that is an extension of yourself, but that can be put on, put out, changed. Yeah, I think people in general really, really love eyewear. And if you think also what it represents in terms of, you were just mentioning, moviemaking. So the mythology behind it, the aspect of dreaming, the aspect of being transported in another character or someone else. Jacques Marimage, one of our strengths from the beginning is to very much associate each pair of sunglasses with a deep human storytelling, with a storytelling.

24:45right? So when I did the first pair, the Dylan that was inspired by the frame that Bob was wearing during his UK tour in 1968. Bob Dylan. Yeah. When he went electric, you know, and the concert in London where people are screaming at him, Judas, and he turns around to the band and said, play louder. I dream about that pair of sunglasses for 10, 20 years. There's such an admirer of Bob Dylan. I could never find it. I don't know what type of glasses it was. It was not a Beaux-Chainlons, not an American optical. It was, I don't know, like a no-branded glasses, but I always thought, ah, I'd love to have that pair of glasses.

25:27And I had a massive, I have a massive eyewear collection, over 3 ,000 pieces of vintage eyewear. And so I was like, that's the first glasses I wanted to do. And I didn't do a copy. You idea is not you're doing a copy you're doing a modern interpretation of this frame and trying to capture the the mystic the essence of that sunglasses and what it represented at the time and what the glasses becomes when you wear a pair of Dylan what what people tells me a lot of time is like Jerome yeah we buy the pair of glasses but beyond that we buy the mystic behind it they buy that frame that allows them to be transported in time and space to maybe a bit in the 60s or to have a bit of that mysterious character or mischievous character that Bob had at the time in the late 60s.

26:20Just by putting a pair of sunglasses on your face, you can achieve all of that transformative potential, right? You can feel connected to some iconic person. You can feel protected. You can have a piece of armor on. You can feel cool when you put it on. You can be like your brother putting on those Varney shades at the age of 10. It's like sunglasses have so much power in a way. Yeah, they're very transformative and they really represent archetypes. And society is still, you know, I mean, we still are. We kind of organize and recognize each other, right? Yeah. So I think somehow we achieve to do that.

27:04And people don't just buy the glasses. They also buy the story. And I think because I put absolutely 100 % of myself and 100 % of my inspiration in that moment, it's almost like the glasses are charged up with that story. because in my mind, I never really designed for now. I designed for the second or third generation that will discover those glasses. And I always had, from the beginning, I had that in the back of my mind. I was like, if someone will discover those glasses in 100 years, I want him to have almost a complete story. So that's why in each box, there's the inspiration, the story behind each design because I came to this project as a collector of eyewear.

27:54I collect many things, Napoleonic things, and I collect Native American moccasins. I collect BMX from the 80s. I collect vintage car jewelry. I came as a collector, and my story is one of collectability. And that's why I think people collect those glasses because I didn't know how to express it any differently than as a collector. But a collectible object, the difference between a collectible object and a regular object or a dispensable object is really the story that comes with the object. So for me, from the beginning, I was like, each glassy needs to be charged up, infused with a story. You know, a story of the past, but that is told in a modern way for a new generation.

28:50And I also felt that at the time, society was so flat, people were losing curiosity. And I felt one of my calling was to make people curious again. You know, the project we did with Glenn Gold just two months ago. That's a perfect example. Tell me about it. We did that project with the estate of Glengold, the pianist, the genius. And I think most of the people nowadays don't know Glengold. But through those glasses, it becomes a vehicle to tell his story and for a lot of people to discover the genius of Glengold. And I took inspiration from old photos of him, from old glasses he wore. and obviously again the idea is not to copy them the idea is to extract the essence of the glasses the essence of what those glasses how they looked on him and how they portrayed his style and his physicality and his mood and his sensibility and do it in a modern way that makes that story relevant now and I think those projects are For me, they're always the most feel-good stories about this project.

30:13And I see all these people that are discovering Glengold through those two pair of sunglasses, through eyewear. It's really beautiful. We did like a limited edition of a vinyl, too. And yeah, certainly people are rediscovering his music, and that's so many, you know, it's very touching. But it's very important. The idea of curiosity and taking people places where they have not been is so important, you know, because at the end, the common friends in between all our culture and all of us is that common human history, whether it's tragic, it's beautiful, it's sad, it's funny. So I'm just trying to connect the dots and try to connect people on an emotional level and tell those beautiful stories that have happened of those amazing people or amazing places or amazing events through collectible objects.

31:19And I think then they do become collectible objects because people know the name of the glasses and they know what they represent. They know the time, the inspiration, the places, the personalities that are hiding behind them. And then it becomes a piece of conversation. It's not eyewear anymore. They're not eyewear. Yeah, I started with eyewear, but I don't think eyewear is really eyewear. It's something else. A collectible object. I mean, part of that comes down to how qualitative it is, how well it's made, which is what I alluded to earlier. And we're in this moment in fashion and luxury where the consumer or the customer value proposition is broken.

32:00Quality has declined. Prices have increased. And products are ubiquitous. And your model is completely opposite of that. Your quality is high. Your prices are high too, but it's worth the quality. Correct. And it's also made in very limited numbers. You only make something like 500 pairs. 20 sometimes. sometimes 20. So this model, like, I'm curious about your commentary and thoughts on how your model sits within this larger fashion ecosystem, which is obviously you're still operating at a smaller scale. Correct. But, you know, the business is growing. So like, how are you thinking about this model in the context of a wider industry and in the context of a growing business that now has investors and there's rolling out stores?

32:48Yeah. Galleries. I think it's not a new problem. I remember a little bit before I started in 2013 or 12, I went to the Champs -Élysées to see the Louis Vuitton flagship and it was huge. I remember coming back of it, calling my mom. I was like, wow, I went to Louis Vuitton, but it felt like a supermarket. I think already the idea of what I call globalized luxury was started. That's what it is. Nowadays, it's globalized luxury. And by the way, they're making products in the hundreds of thousands, the millions of units, right? So it's globalized and it's kind of mass luxury. It's mass. And okay, it's made in Italy or made in France, but I don't want to say where all the parts are coming from.

33:41but some of the parts on certain bags are surely not done in France or in Italy. Some of the hardware is done in the far east in China and things like that. It's very, you don't really see it, but I mean, it's the same with many things those days. So yeah, for me, when I started in 2015, luxury had become very suspicious already. and I really wanted to return to a sense of rarity because I think for me there's no luxury without rarity. It's impossible and the worst example of luxury for me is airport stores. I don't think you can seriously call you luxury if you have a store in an airport. It's the ultimate contradiction.

34:30It's not a place to shop, it's a place to travel. It's not a place where I don't understand how candy has expanded so far that in between candies, Apple headphones, and Advil, there's, I'm sorry to say, like an Hermes store, even Hermes. Why in hell Hermes needs to have a store, Terminal 2E in Roissy-Charles-de-Gueaux? I'm sorry, they don't. They don't. I mean, for me, I don't understand it. I don't understand. And I don't understand what I'm about to go fly where I have to walk in front of 10, 20, 25 luxury company filled with products that actually don't even represent them because they don't really sell like the more high-end or beautiful pieces, right?

35:28It's commodity. It's like hundreds of scarves or a hundred of canvas bags. I don't know where the model goes to, right? Because the idea that it will always continue to grow, I think it's not sustainable. The model right now in luxury is not sustainable. So I 100 % didn't want to do that. And I did everything limited edition because it was almost guaranteeing me that I wouldn't fall in that trap because our model is so complicated. It's so problematic. The effort we have to do to do what we do at our level is impossible. I mean, even when I started after two or three years, people were like, okay, what time?

36:19So, okay, it's all limited edition. When do you stop? When do you start? I'm like, I'll never stop. And it's very difficult. But sometimes you'll bring something back, right? So I was admiring the Pasolini last night. Never in the same way. Okay. Right. The Pasolini, we did a batch in 2016. And then we did a batch for the five years in 2021. But the second batch was, the frame was modified, different colorways, different finishes. Then we did it in a horn. this year in Buffalo Horn. So we do bring it back, but in an authentic and different way and for a different reason. And still in very limited quantities.

37:03Still. But that's the beauty. The Pasolini is probably the rarest and the most expensive GMM frames. And if you have one that was in 2016, I think it's$5 ,000,$6 ,000,$7 ,000. They're - On resale. Yeah. They're incredible frames. I mean, I just saw a pair downstairs. And they'll never be made again. And I'm glad. You know, I'm glad for the people that got it. It should be special. It should age well. And that was really my idea, the collectibles. They'll pass it on. Sometimes we have all groups of collectors on Facebook, and they resell frames, exchange frames. It's an incredible thing to see.

37:47That was really always the idea. And I'm humbled. And yeah, it's humbling to see that it actually happened. It's hard to explain. And I just try to accept it to the best I can without really quite knowing why it happened. And I don't really want to understand exactly why it happened because in life, there's a certain magic to things. And sometimes you have to be careful not to understand it completely because if you dig too deep in it, you will break maybe that intuitive touch or magic touch. And so sometimes you don't want to go too far and try to understand too well what you're doing. Yeah, we've been talking a little bit about a lot about intuition on this podcast recently, actually.

38:42And I think you can call it intuition, or you can call it wisdom, or you can call it creative judgment, or you can call it taste, or you can call it creativity. but the marriage between the kind of creative essence of something and then the analytical execution, like all of the operational stuff, to make a business like this work is exceptional. And when it works, when it clicks, it's amazing. But you're right, you can't analyze it to death, right? You cannot, no. I have around me a lot of people that talk in numbers all day long. They look at numbers all day long to understand things. My job has nothing to do with numbers.

39:25You cannot explain my job with numbers. But that's what being artistic is, you know? So, yeah, you're right. It can be intuition, can be creative, can be tasty. You can put many words on it. But those are things that are inexplicable. So I don't spend too much time dwelling on it. because at the end of the day, you want to let it be free. And being free, the idea of freedom, freedom costs a lot of money in general. People in society, especially in our society, they don't really appreciate freedom. They say they do, but people are very jealous of freedom because it's a thing that is very hard to achieve.

40:13So creative freedom also comes as a price. We're independent. It's not easy. Fashion is very consolidated, right? But there's a beauty in freedom and I don't want to lose my freedom. I'm very attached to it. And that's also a reason why I started this project after doing freelance for so many big companies for so long. I really wanted my freedom. Well, you've earned it. Before we wrap up, I just, you know, we're in this incredible space that you've just opened in Paris, Rue de la Paix, around us are some of the greatest, biggest watches, jewelry brands in the world. When you're conceiving of this, you don't like to call it retail, but let's call it like brand experience spaces where, you know, someone can come into the world of the Jacques Mariemage world.

41:08How do you see this retail expansion in in terms of sustaining and building the growth of your business while also keeping what has made it so tactile and special? Well, I mean, for us, obviously retail became very important. We did our first store in Venice. It was just really an opportunity that I couldn't say no. It was just kind of a - That's Abbott Kinney. Yeah, kind of a rent-free, just paying a percentage on sales. like oh let's it was almost like a improvisized pop-up at first you know and the way we did it right away people said wow it's incredible that it doesn't feel like a retail space feels like a gallery and i realized yeah that's actually what i did this is a gallery and it was it just became the blueprint for for what we were doing it's not easy because every one of our gallery is a very personal expression.

42:09It's not a formula. It's not something we repeat. Some people today were asking me, oh, wait, so how many of the details in Paris are in the gallery in Milan? And I said, zero. There's not one thing, piece of wood, detail that is in the gallery of Paris that you can find in Milan, that you will find also in Tokyo that we're opening in August, that you'll find in London. Everything is different. And their personal journey, they're like mini mise-en-scene movies, script, each gallery. They're a bit of an alter ego experience, you know. Obviously, the name of the brand is Jacques-Marie Mage, but Jacques-Marie is my middle name.

42:58My full name is Jérôme Mage. So I use Jacques as that alter ego, that fantasy person that live in another world, in another space. And for me, each gallery is Jacques' experience in a different place and culture and a different point of his life. So Milan, for example, was Jacques that spent two and a half years in the Southwest with Georgia O 'Keeffe at the Ghost Ranch, living in New Mexico and going to see Georgia painting and collecting moccasins. and suddenly has to come back to Milan. He has a big job in Milan, and he rents that fantastic Milanias apartment with marble and high ceilings and those huge double windows that are opening on the courtyard.

44:03But he's been completely transformed by his experience in the Southwest. He's a different man. He dresses half in beautiful Italian cashmere, but he has Western boots and silver jewelry with Armani pants from the 90s that is collected too. And that's a beginning of the space. It's a movie, like it's creating characters. And Paris was a different experience. And Milan was almost in opposition of the city and the culture, right? I worked with, in contrast. Where in Paris, actually, sometimes I feel, especially in France, there's been a lack of, especially lately, especially since I've been a kid, there's been almost like a fear of assuming sometimes its historical heritage and the beauty we've created.

45:07and I've always been a big fan and passionate, devoted to the first and second empire. I arrived to that old Napoleonic era by collecting uniforms. I started collecting uniform in my 30s. From my 30s to 40s, I collected an enormous amount of Napoleonic uniforms because for me, it's the golden age of military tailoring. Never before men went into battle wearing such beautiful, lavish, decorated jackets or trousers or helmets. And for me, it's fascinating. There's a, call me crazy, such a romantic idea of facing death. Well, dressed so impeccably. Exactly. And it's not new, right? the Japanese perfumed themselves before going to battle.

46:04The Greeks would always cleanly shave before battle. So I had that passion for the first empire that grew and grew. And it was a bit of a return home for me. And during the first and second empire, there were literature salons that were very, very famous, like Madame de Stal, who had all the philosophers and all the famous painters that would come to our salon, Chateaubriand, and was actually, you know, a place that was in opposition to Napoleon. So maybe the free thinkers that didn't like the empire or some of his so-called maybe two police regimes would go there and exchange ideas. And I always dream about those salons, you know, under the first and second empires of the literature salon where you would go and you would meet the most incredible philosopher, romancier, painter.

47:03And that's what I wanted to create. I wanted to recreate a salon under the first or the second empire with this sort of like all the lavish detail. And at the end with Monsieur Jacques Garcia, who's the architect, it's almost like a neo-empire style. You know, there was a neoclassical style under the first empire. That's what it was. And now 200 years ago, it's a neo-empire style. So here the story is simply, yeah, Jacques was that crazy collector of Napoleon. And we're Rue de la Paix near Place Vendôme with the Napoleon columns. And he wants to create a space to invite his friends, a space where all the artists, the free thinker, the philosopher can come and share a glass of whiskey, brandy, and exchange stories and, you know, debate about, you know, their vision on art and fashion.

48:03And that was the point of departure. And here, it's almost created like also a sort of a museum that you can stroll through. And And it's all these different small intimate rooms, like little salons. And you move from one salon to another one and you can hide in one and have that really personal intimate conversation. You can even, if you want, whisper. And it's a bit darker. And then the next room is a bit lighter. And then here we're in the Wyoming room. So at the end, all these rooms lead you to a room that reconnects with my passion for the West. So it's offering all these different little salons under that very, very, I would say, stylistic of the first empire.

48:50And it's almost an American view on my country, on my historical heritage. heritage. And I think I can only do, you can only do that store as an outsider, as someone who lived in America in 30 years, because otherwise I don't even think any French person would have given himself the artistic license to do such a space. So it was very interesting because I recreated a bit of a French mythology that I don't know if it ever existed or if it's only in my dream while he's in Los Angeles that you can see it. You know what I mean? Because it doesn't really exist. It's, it's a foreigner view, but as a Frenchman, you know, so.

49:40This is back to this like Frenchman in LA. And I mean, I really appreciate all of the layers of storytelling and thinking and feeling and emotion that goes into everything I do. You can really sense it. Last question very quickly, because I have to catch my Eurostar. That's right. But for anyone who feels like an outsider, wherever they're growing up, what advice do you have for them about sticking to their guns and maintaining the essence of who they are in the face of objection and rejection and confrontation? Yeah, it's a very good question. And we talked about it with Lou Doyon last night.

50:20I think when you feel wherever you go, you end up being a little bit of an outsider. in your younger years, I think, can be very challenging because you feel you're behind a little bit in terms of building a group of friends, popularity, etc., etc. But I think if you don't let go of that, then I don't know if it's a weakness, but this point of difference becomes a strength. If you accept that role of outsider, then you're able to have a point of view or create something that is more tangible, more unique, and that has more value. Because obviously you look at things from a different point of view than others.

51:09And that's a true quality in being an outsider. So for everyone who thinks like they are, I would say don't be discouraged. If you stick long enough with it, it'll become a great asset in life. Merci, Jérôme. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Such a pleasure. The BOF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria.