We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Orelie Varnier. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Orelie below.

Hi Orelie, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I was 5 years old when I started to think about coming to California and dress Celebrities. I dreamed about making the most beautiful dresses for the “Princesses” I saw on TV.
30 years after, this dream became a reality.
So the mission of my company is my lifetime dream and everything I’ve done in my life was to accomplish this mission.

I’m born in a modest family. My father is a carpenter and a kitchen installer. My mother is a social worker.
I’m more like my father: I’m passionate about my work, I work with my hand and have been working hard even for a small wage.
I hated school. I had difficulties in school and nobody at home helped me. On the contrary, my parents used to remind me that I was a bummer and useless. Despite this I still love my parents 😇.

I tried to escape mentally from this society that didn’t understand me by drawing. I’ve always loved to draw. I never took drawing class. However, I suppose I’m pretty good at it: the director of the “Art College” told me that I have nothing to learn in his school because I know perfectly how to draw !

All my schooling was an ordeal. On top of that I was an only child for 11 years and when my sister is born, my mother asked me to take care of her because she was “tired”. I didn’t have to time to play with my friends: I had to take care (totally) of my sister all the time.
My mother wanted me to be a hairdresser 😕 and used to told me that designers don’t earn money and are drug addicts.
No need to tell that I wanted to leave my parents home as fast as possible.

I was sixteen when I went to Paris to show my drawings to famous fashion houses. After Dior, Lanvin and Hermes, because I knew I will not have an other chance (the travel ticket was very expensive for me), I insisted when I met by accident Pierre Cardin’s assistant and told her that I need an appointment right away. She finally received me in her office and, after looking at my drawings, offered me to work for Mr Cardin during the next school breaks. I did it !

He liked my work and I’ve been able to come back during every school breaks until I was 21. I was not paid (during this 5 years) but Pierre Cardin himself taught me everything and told me: “if you want to succeed in this field, you need to know how to make a garment from start to finish”. So he asked me to learn sewing and pattern making.
He even paid for a fashion school, so I get an educational background. One year later only (2007) he hired me (he liked people who learn fast).
I used to work directly with Mr Cardin, my mentor. In 2013, I wanted to change and to discover new horizons. Mr Cardin supported me in this change. We still had great relations until he passed away 😢.

Then I began temporary work in several houses to learn as much as I can.
Each time I arrived in a studio, after few days, they wanted to hire me (permanent contract) thanks to the accuracy and the speed of my work.
The temporary employment agency even told me that I was recognized as one of the “Top 5 best French sewers”.
Between 2014 and 2018, I worked as designer and pattern maker for Sunfed (Chinese brand, in Beijing), and as seamstress at Vuitton, Dior Haute Couture and the ultimate one: Chanel Haute Couture.

Besides, I met Guillaume in October 2014, the day I should have moved to L.A (a minor health concern prevented me from flying).
Now we are married and got 2 kids (Victoria born in France in 2018 and Henry born in the US in 2022).

While I was still working for others, I had the idea of founding my own company that I would develop in L.A with the investor’s visa.
Guillaume made the business plan and developed the website and I began to draw my first collection while I get pregnant: we had to postpone our move to L.A.
We finally moved to L.A in July 2019 to develop my young brand and finally accomplish my mission.

Our mission statement: Thanks to our Haute Couture expertise, we are proud to promote French handicraft of excellence by hand-making in Los Angeles and delivering refined and very high-end luxury apparels and accessories to our costumers and providing them a memorable and sharable experience and an irreproachable quality of service

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Thanks to my Haute Couture expertise and experience, thanks to everything my Mentor Pierre Cardin taught me and because I work with the best suppliers (the same as the most famous brands) I can provide the highest level of service and make the highest-end garments, for less than 1/3 of the famous brands’ price. For example, if I spend 100 hours on a couture gown or wedding dress made at the precise client’s measurements with some enbroidery, I will sell it $6,000. It’s not cheap, but it’s way less expensive than any Couture brands.

Since people who work in Haute Couture stay in Paris, I’m probably the only one in L.A with this kind of expertise.
Because of that, I face incredulity of many people: it doesn’t occur to them that I quit Chanel and left Paris to develop my own brand in L.A. Most of them think I was earning good money at Chanel Haute Couture, which is far from the reality.

To summarize, I can make anything my client dream of with the highest standards they can expect.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The only effective way I found to get new clients who can afford this kind of expenses and who can appreciate my work is the word-of-mouth. And it started to work when I begged each person of my personal and business network for help because I was completely broke and needed to get more clients to survive.

I’ve tried influencers but either they ask for a huge amount of money I absolutely can not afford, or their followers are not my target, or they can’t afford my creations, or they don’t believe my story.
They start to believe my story when they come to my studio and see my work.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

To fund our business, we sold everything we had, including our house in France. We put everything we had in our business. The bet was a little bit risky but we were confident that we were doing the right thing at the right place. Covid hit us very hard but we kept our confidence.
We’ve been scammed also in 2022 and lost a big part of what we had left. But we stayed positive.
Thanks to good introductions, we’ve been able to survive.
We still have a lot to accomplish to live comfortably but we’ll succeed.

Contact Info:

• Website: ovparis.com
• Instagram: ovpariscouture
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ovparis