MANIFESTO
In 2010 Stephanie Ifrah, a Parisian architect moved with her family to a village in Provence. She then realised small towns were places of warm and close exchanges between its residents whereas big cities had become void of meaning.
A few years later, inspired by this new life and her passion for fashion, she created The Rose with the simple aim of designing and making beautiful accessories. However, she quickly understood that it was necessary to introduce another dimension to this project.
She had met Olivier, a “Compagnon du Tour de France” and a great leather worker who helped her develop her first prototypes. She discovered how little he was earning from his wonderful trade. She already knew from her own experience as an architect how difficult it was to own a small business in France. Had she not met her husband at university, she might never have had a chance to build.
One of their teachers once said: “I can be in my students’ shoes for everything except one; you don’t know if you are ever going to build anything. I can’t imagine what it feels like”. Architecture students were undertaking 6 years of study without knowing if they would ever be able to fully exercise their profession - just crazy.
Luckily, they built dozens of buildings, being successful enough to have interesting projects to be proud of. However, every year became more financially challenging, and it eventually worsened to the point it became unbearable. In 2017, tired and upset, Stéphanie left France to join her sister who was living in Australia.
In 2021 The Rose was reborn as both an artistic and political project - individuals must be able to regain control of their lives and not be locked into a system that aims to reify them.
Manifesto
Our objectives are clear and multiple and namely to:
- Create beauty
- Perpetuate, transmit
- Maintain Control
- Foster Individual freedom
- Rediscover meaning
- Connect with clients
1. Beauty
By voluntarily leaving the system in place, we gain the possibility of no longer submitting to its dictates. We keep the beauty, the freshness, the originality of our designs without sacrificing quality or feeling forced to adopt a narrative that we no longer believe. Some businesses are mainly into sustainability, eco-friendly goods, we are more focused on a human dimension. As George Orwell would say: we want to bring back Common Decency. And if it is not yet very clear to everyone, it will become soon enough by following us.
2. Perpetuation
We plan to organise workshops, then set up trades schools in order to transmit skills and produce closer to the places from which the products leave and minimise shipping (note that new modes of transport of goods are under consideration; as an architect Stephanie has been asked to participate in their development).
We also intend to set up a luxury crafts school in Australia with the Italian craftsman who makes our bags. This cannot be done without you. If you like our products and find that their price is reasonable, talk about us, help us develop this system so that our projects, your projects can come to life. Transmission, perpetuation is paramount for Stéphanie who has suffered seeing that her children have not had the chance to learn the same things as her at school. The loss of literature, poetry, general culture is cruel and seems to foreshadow a world too dark to accept
3. Control
The saying goes: grow or perish.
We answer we want to stay small. By that we mean: to produce in small quantities, remain a small team while re-establishing a close link between creation and production. On the other hand, we want to have the possibility of undertaking research which will be facilitated through the courses and workshops that we plan to create (and thereby offer to these young people who seek to rediscover their values).
We are not against globalization; we are against madness. we believe we can change the world by restoring an equilibrium. When you buy from us, you help us to remain small.
We offer you, our customers-partners, exclusive offers that replace the physical experience and show you how you are valuable to us.
4. Individual freedom
We are for self-determination and entrepreneurship. Centuries of struggle just to reverse to a universal income? No thanks. People want to be able to enjoy work and feel empowered. It is part of our project to ensure that our partners are not pressured and are remunerated justly in order to be able to live decently from their work - all the more so as they produce objects of beauty that are essential to our well-being. This is an ambitious goal, but we are not alone, and we believe that it makes sense to use the new technologies available for this purpose. We need to connect people and shorten the commercial circuits. We cannot do this locally, but we can take back control and maintain values of decency
5. Rediscover meaning
We live on a wonderful planet that offers incredible resources. Things could continue to improve if it were not for those seeking to exercise control at all costs, whether it be politics or corporations. If everyone at their level were to decides to take back control of their lives, their sovereignty, the balance of power would be reversed.
Purchasing from us allows a whole network to exist and develop. Then we, at a humble level, compete, not financially, but in terms of beauty and meaning, with the mass-produced luxury that has become ubiquitous in every city and in every shopping centre, so that every city in the world looks the same, and its low-cost counterparts, also mass-produced creating generations of new slaves who manufacture products that are no longer products, but rather ersatz. Small brands must be able to exist fully again and have legitimacy. Designers must be able to emerge outside of this system. Craftsmen must be able to work with the joy of producing beautiful pieces and make a decent living. Thank you for helping us in this fight.
6. Create links
Although we sell online, we want to promote the human / personal element. We therefore offer you the possibility of participating in the choice of future production or buying from capsule collections that are made in very small quantities.
Our blog will soon be online in addition to Instagram, it will be another way for you to talk and share your experience with us.
We also organize private sales with our partners, and hope to be able to have them in several places around the world soon so that they become small events of rediscovered joy that promote the authenticity and elegance that drive us.
Many more items are being developed and we hope you will love them as much as you love the ones already on our site.
We must all regain control of our lives and our right to self-determination. We want to achieve this and inspire others to do so. It's time to take our destiny into our own hands.
Thank you for accompanying us on this journey.