To be an apprentice is to be a courier. I’m exaggerating but I’m not far from the truth. When you become an arpette, you run around making deliveries. I remember one impossible day. I had started shopping just after a coffee and I hadn’t stopped all day. “You go to Pierre’s, he’s on the sixth floor; then you go to Jean’s, he’s on the fifth floor; I think Yves has some parts for us, it’s on the eighth floor…”. I would go back to the workshop on the fourth floor, put the folds on and leave. I didn’t have a mobile phone at that time, but I had legs! And there were hardly any lifts in the buildings on the 9th floor. That day, I counted, I climbed a hundred floors… Memorable!
J, almost retired crimper
This is Basel!
"You have to realise what the Basel fair looked like in the 1970s and even 1980s. It was crazy. There were people, buyers. And we were selling. We prepared the show religiously, creating new collections and especially presenting one or more exceptional pieces. That's what it took! I remember...