Hervé Léger

Hervé Léger was founded in 1985 by the designer Hervé Peugnet (1957-2017). That same year, Karl Lagerfeld Peugnet advised that his surname Peugnet would be too difficult to pronounce for Americans, the target market, and suggested the surname Léger instead. After losing the rights to the name Hervé Léger, Peugnet later adopted a third 'brand name' as Hervé L. Leroux in 2000.

Peugnet was a pioneer in the creation of so-called bandage dresses, so-called "body-con" (body-conscious) garments made with materials traditionally associated with foundation garments to create bandage dresses that would form and shape the figure of the wearer with its distinctive bandage-like strips.

One of the peculiarities of Hervé Léger garments is that they are knitted, not woven.

In September 1998, Hervé Léger was taken over from the Seagram's Group by the BCBG Max Azria Group. This was the very first acquisition of a French couturier by an American designer, although Azria is Tunisian and grew up in France. Ohana & Co., a boutique investment bank, advised Seagram's on the sale.

In April 2007, Max Azria relaunched the Hervé Léger brand under his own design direction with a capsule summer collection offered in selected department shops and specialty shops. In August 2007, the revamped Hervé Léger boutique opened at Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. In February 2008, Max Azria presented the Hervé Léger by Max Azria collection in Bryant Park during New York Fashion Week in the autumn of 2008.

"After this wonderful 17 year adventure, I have to think and soak my style with a fresh look. I feel that I need to develop my creativity along new paths, working together with other players in the luxury industry, and coming up with a new project for my label," he wrote in a press release at the time.

As a fashion designer, Peugnet was self-taught, after having been a hairdresser and milliner, until he met Karl Lagerfeld and became his assistant at Fendi and Chanel. In 1985, after also working as a designer for Lanvin, he started a solo career with his own women's clothing brand Hervé Léger. It was an instant success. The label attracted the attention of the Canadian group Seagram, which became a financial partner. With Seagram as an investor, Hervé Léger grew quickly and gained worldwide fame, employing 60 people.

The fairy tale ended abruptly in 1998, when Seagram sold the Hervé Léger label to BCBG Max Azria. A year later, Peugnet was fired and lost the rights to the name. However, he did not give up and in 2000 he created a new label called Hervé L. Leroux and opened a shop in Paris at 32 Rue Jacob.

Hervé Peugnet starts working again with a small staff and in this second venture concentrates mainly on his couture and dress work, concentrating on draped, sculpted silhouettes. His ready-to-wear line, which was distributed by several retailers, was left behind in the aftermath of the crisis of 9/11 and 2008, as Peugnet himself told the AFP agency a few years ago.

In 2013, the designer was back in the limelight with his clothes on the official calendar of the Haute Couture in Paris.

Shop Hervé Léger

No items matched your search criteria. To continue, try a more generalized search or check your spelling.

Instagram