What Longchamp is known for
Le Pliage — the folding nylon tote of global ubiquity, family-owned Paris leather since 1948.
Jean Cassegrain's Paris tobacco shop began wrapping pipes in fine leather in 1948 — the company he named Longchamp after the racecourse grew from that sliver of craft into France's great accessible-luxury house, still wholly owned and run by the Cassegrain family three generations on.
Le Pliage is the twentieth century's most democratic French design object: the folding nylon-and-leather tote, created in 1993 by Philippe Cassegrain and inspired by origami, packs to paperback size and has sold in the tens of millions — carried by students, duchesses and everyone between, customizable, repairable, unkillable. The leather Le Pliage lines, the Roseau's bamboo-toggle elegance and equestrian-tinged ready-to-wear build the maison around it.
The Champs-Élysées flagship anchors a global retail estate the family expanded without ever selling out — no conglomerate, no licensing sprawl. Longchamp holds a position rarer than prestige: the luxury brand an entire country actually uses, priced for real life, French to the stitching.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — The Le Pliage and Parisian leather
Made in France, Italy and Portugal
More in Paris
- Balenciaga — Paris
- Bourrienne Paris X — Paris
- Cartier — Paris
- Céline — Paris
- Chanel — Paris
- Charvet — Paris
- Creed — Paris
- Dior — Paris
Where next
- The Kooples — Paris
- Perrin — Paris
- Tauro Cuer — Argentina
Hand-curated for ORBIS · no paid placement