Few people can boast of wearing jeans in their name. Julien and Myriam Tuffery, yes. This couple of entrepreneurs, fervent defenders of sustainable fashion, are the fourth generation to wear the colors of the Tuffery workshop. It was Julien’s great-grandfather, Célestin Tuffery, who founded this small jeans factory in 1892, in Florac (Lozère). If a good number of houses like this have closed, swept away by an increasingly globalized clothing market, the Florac workshop is still there, at the foot of the Cévennes.
And it even displays particularly generous curves: in 2022, the Tufferys achieved 3.5 million euros in turnover. They even dress more and more Japanese each year, who are certainly fond of this family history. If the sewing machines are still humming at Florac, it’s probably also because the jeans from Atelier Tuffery are exemplary. The employees of the small factory cut and sew all their parts. The materials used for their manufacture, cotton or hemp, are French, as close as possible to the Cévennes, so that the carbon footprint is as low as possible. The washes are also made in France, with green processes.
“A fashion that we want to be more responsible, more ethical, and more human”
“We are extremely committed to a fashion that we want to be more responsible, more ethical, and more human,” says Julien Tuffery. But that’s already what my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father and my uncles did. 15 years ago, they were still considered marginal in the Cévennes. Of the reboussaïres, as the saying goes. They were the last pairs of hands to make jeans in France. Who spoke, at that time, of Made in France, local craftsmanship, and respectful fashion? »
The success story of the Tufferys began at the end of the 19th century, when Célestin Tuffery, a master tailor with a hollow nose, aspired to dress the workers who had come en masse to the Cévennes to lay a railway line. He then bought Denim canvas, a fabric from Nîmes, which was then only used to design cart canvases, and gave life to the first Tuffery jeans. Even today, the pants of the house of Flora still have, at the back, a pocket, split into two parts. Useful, at the time, to store tools. At the same time, all over the world, tailors set their sights on denim, and little by little made jeans the trendy garment for workers.
“What are these guys still doing, making jeans by hand? »
It was only after the Second World War, when ready-to-wear exploded, that this futal became ultra-popular. The Atelier Tuffery then experienced considerable growth. “Volumes exploded, everyone wanted jeans! “says Julien Tuffery. And when women also adopted these workers’ trousers, the market doubled. “1970s, great. 1980s, great. And then… The big dive, says the entrepreneur. The Atelier Tuffery should have, like 90% of the textile workshops in France at the time, disappeared. It’s almost an anomaly that we’re still here today. The big houses that came to France to seek expertise realized that in the Maghreb or in the East, it is 10 to 100 times less expensive. At the time, French textiles were devastated. »
But in Florac, Julien Tuffery’s father and his brothers held firm. “When I left college and went to do my homework in the workshop, people asked themselves, ‘What are these guys still doing, making jeans by hand? ?” », recalls the entrepreneur. “My father’s dream was that I wouldn’t do this job. Today, he is proud of it. “Julien Tuffery and his wife Myriam, who met on the benches of the Polytech school, in Montpellier (Hérault), had not yet planned to take over the small family business. “Julien also took a long time to tell me that he was from a family of artisans,” smiles Myriam Tuffery. “When I flirted with her, I didn’t tell her that we made jeans at my house, no! “laughs his companion.
“We unleashed checks to make your head spin”
After years of lean cows, in the 2000s, a current against the globalized world emerged: Made in France. We increasingly want to buy local products that respect the environment and the human condition. Carried by this return to favor, the great-grandson of Célestin Tuffery and his wife, despite their careers as “well-paid executives”, then bet on taking the reins of the workshop. “We said to ourselves that it was time, that we had to go there,” recalls Myriam Tuffery. “At the time, the company was less than 80,000 euros in turnover, and two employees, confides her husband. It was the danger. The “great peril”, but the peril. Today, we post a little more than 3.5 million euros, and we have passed the 30 employees. »
But the growth, the couple wants it quiet. No question of doing anything of the family inheritance, under the pretext of filling out the order forms. Courted by many large investors, the Atelier Tuffery has, for the moment, turned them all away. “We declined, with great delicacy, checks to turn heads. We need great intellectual freedom,” says Julien Tuffery. The big luxury houses and the star fashion designers who knocked on the door of the Cévennes factory have also had a few refusals. “We don’t want to be the super little tree that’s going to hide all the shit behind it!” “, scolds the Florac entrepreneur.
Then the couple fights, to impose their jeans, certainly, more expensive (from 129 to 290 euros), but resulting from an ancestral know-how, and more ethical than the others. “Of course, Shein’s clients, it will probably take some time for them to become our clients, explains Myriam Tuffery. But, little by little… Young people are more and more attentive to who makes the parts, and how. The Atelier Tuffery, which only sells its jeans directly to its customers, without any intermediary, has opened a temporary store on the Place de la Comédie in Montpellier. A stone’s throw from Uniqlo and C&A, the Tufferys hope that wearers of Denim canvas don’t keep their hands in their pockets.