Christelle Lavaure

A considerable and largely untapped potential! According to Christelle Lavaure (former Director General of Papillon Ribbon & Bow) and Marine Forlini-Crouzet (founder of the agency Les Belles Choses, and former Executive Director of Raison Pure) textile isn’t given the place it deserves in the packaging world. “Currently, textile is used mainly as a ribbon, always more or less the same way,” underlined Christelle Lavaure.

Technical barriers

And most of all, techniques used for fitting the ribbon are often hand-done. However, for packaging designers to be able to use textile as a material of its own, its use must be automated. This is what have clearly understood the two young women, who partnered with Lambert Henckens, the creator of the company Lembart in Saint-Étienne, to develop a set of solutions for the processing of textile materials to offer ready to use patterns. This is how the Orimono project emerged in 2013.

Lambert Henckens

Technical barriers are important because textile is a delicate and difficult material to work, the strength of Orimono lies in the mastery of this new know-how, based on an industrial network of exclusive partners: material suppliers and converters,” explained Lavaure, Associate Director. However, many difficulties have already been overcome.

At the last Luxe Pack in Monaco, Orimono presented an “Écrin des Matières” in partnership with the Italian paper and cardboard manufacturer Fedrigoni, the French company, MR Cartonnage Numérique specialized in the printing of mock-ups and small series, and Dwain, a graphic design studio. “This allowed us to illustrate the potential behind the different technical solutions that we have developed,” emphasised Marine Forlini-Crouzet, Marketing Director. This “Écrin des Matières” contains a booklet decorated with a multi-component label, which is cut, glued and then fitted on the cover, two samplers (paper and textiles), a folding case adorned with a non-removable ribbon, automatically laid, the whole of it in a cardboard box decorated with a textile surface on the back cover.

A great graphic variety

Marine Forlini-Crouzet

For the perfume and cosmetic market, Orimono already offers four decorative techniques: Etoff a solution enabling to lay textile solids on bottles and cases, Pliss, to decorate a bottle or any other type of packaging (glass or cardboard) with a woven sheath, Damask, to fit a non-removable textile ribbon on a cardboard box, before folding and Reverso, a solution which consists in laying a piece of fabric at the back of a open-worked cardboard.

Most of these solutions enable to create a wide variety of graphic worlds,” detailed Forlini-Crouzet. They are, in any case, definitely part of the trend to always bring more value to packaging, particularly through the addition of a material of its own and of an always more diversified sensuality.