In conversation with Rémi de Laquintane
Meet Rémi de Laquintane – Paris-based founder of Tricot, a unisex cashmere brand made in Italy.
Founded with a focus on exceptional materials, timeless silhouettes, and everyday wearability, Tricot creates considered knitwear designed to last. With its pieces crafted in Venice, Italy, the brand brings together Parisian sensibility and Italian craftsmanship.
In connection with our collaboration with Tricot, we caught up with Rémi to talk about his journey, his approach to design and craftsmanship, and his perspective on creating pieces made to be lived in.
What first inspired you to create Tricot, and what has your journey looked like until now?
Tricot literally means 'knitwear' in French, and the name really is the whole concept. It used to be the word people used for a sweater passed down from one generation to the next, so it already carries this idea of transmission, of timelessness, of quality that holds over time. It's also a word tied to community, to something shared. When I started the brand, all the ingredients of what Tricot is today were already sitting inside that one word. I've been almost obsessive about staying true to that same identity since the very beginning, making sure it's expressed properly in everything we do. The brand was born in Paris, and that's stayed the anchor throughout.
What synergies between Tricot and LIÉ STUDIO made it interesting to develop a capsule together?
What drew me to LIÉ STUDIO is how much we already had in common before we ever spoke about a collaboration: the aesthetic, this idea of timelessness, a cool, genuine community around the brand, and an obsession for quality that borders on the excessive. Those are exactly the things Tricot is built on too. So a capsule with LIÉ STUDIO didn't feel like stretching to meet in the middle, it felt like two brands that already speak the same language deciding to say something together.
How would you describe the Tricot aesthetic in three words?
Quiet, tactile, timeless.
What was it about cashmere that made you want to build a brand around it?
Cashmere is one of the few materials that does the work for you, it moves, it softens, it ages well if you treat it right. What interested me wasn't just the fiber itself but what it lets you do with cut: because it drapes the way it does, it made sense to design pieces that move between bodies rather than around them. That's really where the unisex silhouette came from. And once you're paying that much attention to the material, you start asking harder questions about where it comes from, that's what eventually led us to rethinking the fiber itself with recycled cashmere.
How do you define success - personally and professionally?
For me success is less a destination than a feeling of being stimulated, enjoying the challenge and letting the definition of success shift as you go. It's not really the goal, it's the mean that gets you there. Of course it feels stronger when you get a genuine, positive reaction from people, that always matters. But honestly, I don't think I can separate personal and professional success, at this point it's less two categories than one way of life.
You're also a photographer and shot the campaign for the collaboration. How do you juggle the different roles within a small, growing business?
Being small means the vision doesn't get diluted passing through five hands. When I shoot the campaign myself, what's in the image is exactly what's in my head for the brand, there's no translation happening in between. The trade-off is obvious, there's no such thing as being off duty, but I'd rather carry that than lose control of what the brand actually looks like.
Having your own brand, how do you maintain the right work-life balance?
This isn't my first brand, I'd already built two before Tricot, so by the time I started this one I knew exactly what kind of life I wanted around it. I built Tricot on measure to fit that life, rather than the other way around. That's part of why the brand is seasonless, no collections, no sales, made to be timeless. The rhythm of the brand and the rhythm of my life were designed together from day one."
Outside of fashion, where do you find inspiration?
Inspiration for me almost never comes from fashion, it comes from traveling. The clearest example is probably my last trip, crossing from Hong Kong to Paris entirely over land, fourteen days crossing the earth. That trip actually became a photographic series, and the exhibition is currently showing in Arles. That's really where I find things, moving through places slowly enough to actually see them.
Is there an object in your home or atelier you could never part with, and why?
Honestly, I'm not someone who gets attached to objects. If I had to name one, it would probably be my Pentax film camera. Not for any sentimental story, more because it's the tool through which I actually look at things closely.
What are you currently most excited about - both personally and with Tricot?
Personally, I'm really excited about starting a new photographic series, this time between the Arctic and Africa. For Tricot, it's this collaboration with LIÉ STUDIO, we share the same vision, and that alignment makes the whole thing feel exciting rather than like a compromise.
