A former buyer and quality manager at Givenchy and then Kenzo, Romain Brabo is Co-Founder and Co-CEO – with Anne Prieur du Perray and – of Nona Source, the platform for revalorizing dormant stocks applied to the luxury sector. Now in its third year, this “creative resourcerie” integrates environmental issues from the perspective of the circular economy.
LP : How did you come up with the idea of revaluing the dormant stocks of the LVMH Group’s Houses ?
Romain Brabo : As materials buyer at Givenchy, I regularly visited the manufacturers and our warehouses. I was particularly struck by the amount of unused materials (dormant stocks) resulting from end-of-season surpluses. I realized that this was not an isolated problem, but one shared by all the LVMH Group’s Houses. At the same time, I knew of young designers who were unable to acquire beautiful materials, either because the minimum purchase price for materials was too high, or because of the extremely high cost of high-quality materials.
It was then that I had the idea of instilling this creative circularity approach within the Group, by connecting the dormant fabrics of the leading luxury Houses with fashion and design professionals. The Group’s creation of the DARE intrapreneurship program in 2017 kicked off the project. It started out as a side-project, before I got to know the other two co-founders through an internal move at Kenzo.
LP : What roles did these co-founders play in the development of Nona Source? How do they complement you ?
Romain Brabo : I first met Marie Falguera, materials expert, in charge of product compliance and environmental correspondent at Kenzo. As we talked about the project, we discovered that we shared a passion for design and environmental issues. We then joined forces on the DARE program, to support the project. A few months later, I met Anne Prieur du Perray who was working at LVMH and had a more cross-functional profile linked to project and financial management.
Today, Anne and I are Co-CEOs, and we’re committed to helping the start-up scale up with ever more ambitious projects. For her part, Marie is the link with all the Houses. This is a good way of not only supporting young designers, but also enabling our own Maisons to integrate circularity issues into their creative processes.
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Featured photo : © Press
