L’Art de Vivre: Where the Women’s Line Began
Until 2024, Poelle was known for men’s pieces: belts, wallets, document holders, key holders and glasses cases. In the summer of 2024 we showed our first women’s collection. It is called L’Art de Vivre, and the Poelle you know today began with it.
The art of living, every day
L’Art de Vivre is French for “the art of living.” “At its heart is a wish for harmony, attention to small things and beauty in all its forms. French culture asks us not only to look at beauty in museums but to create it in everyday life,” Poelle’s creative director Pavlo Popko said at the time. So the collection is about a simple skill: noticing beauty close at hand, and making it.
What was on the moodboard
Pavlo and I gathered the references together. The board held paintings by Mark Rothko, the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and photographs by Caroline Bissett-Kennedy and Cecilie Thorsmark.
We wanted something modern that was not tied to trends. Mies van der Rohe’s buildings were designed in the first half of the twentieth century, and they still look like the architecture of the future. That is how we wanted the bags to read: modern now, and still right many years from now.
Six pieces
The first collection had six pieces in leather. All of them are minimal, yet each has an unusual shape or a detail you notice only on a second look. The range was wide: from a cosmetic pouch and an evening clutch to a roomy tote and an everyday bag. The pieces came in suede and in smooth leather: suede is softer to the touch, smooth leather more graphic.
They are the kind of things French aesthetes and Bauhaus admirers both like: a clean line with character. For this collection we brought in a fashion photographer for the first time, and frames from that shoot still open our About page.
Some of those shapes are still with us. Cecilie is a shoulder bag with a clean silhouette. Josefine is a soft hobo. Carolyn Tote holds your whole day. And the make-up pouch lives inside any of them.
A few well-chosen things
L’Art de Vivre is for building a wardrobe around a few well-chosen things rather than around changing trends. One bag for the day, one for the evening, and both work with jeans as well as a suit. That is how we still think about the collection.
Why it starts here
L’Art de Vivre set the tone for everything that followed. Each new collection still begins with a painting, a film or a mood, and each bag with a shape that serves the rhythm of a day. Since then we count 15 August as Poelle’s birthday as a women’s brand.
Like every Poelle bag, the pieces in this collection are made by hand in our own atelier in Horodok, Ukraine. See every model in the L’Art de Vivre collection.
