November 24, 2007
Emanual Ungaro, the French luxury and fashion house renowned for its luxurious and elegant women’s wear line, recently appointed a new chief designer to design and develop a menswear line.
The fashion house is reaching out to fashion-conscious men and wants a men’s line to rival the existing, widely acclaimed line for women.
The man recruited by Emanuel Ungaro to do the job is Franck Boclet, and after no more than six month in his new position, Franck Boclet recently flew to Copenhagen for an inspirational visit to Kopenhagen Studio, the creative fur laboratory run by Kopenhagen Fur in downtown Copenhagen.
Before being headhunted to become chief designer at Emanuel Ungaro, Franck Boclet worked as product manager at the fashion labels Kenzo and Courregès prior to working for a full 16 years as chief designer for the menswear label Smalto.
A technical engineer of profession, Franck Boclet never considered himself a designer and persistently shied away from suggestions he should move from management into the creative field.
I always felt that becoming a designer was something you should qualify for through formal training at design schools so I always turned down proposals from employers that I should start designing.
I felt I couldn’t possibly be a real designer, says Franck Boclet during at coffee break at the Kopenhagen Studio, where he is working with his assistant and the acclaimed Parisian furrier Phillipe Beaulieu, who has previously produced furs for some of the world’s leading fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Chloé and Marc Jacobs. For the coming Ungaro men’s collection by Franck Boclet, the fur will be produced by Phillipe Beaulieu.
