Couture

A stitching and drawing project

led by artist Françoise Dupré

*Red knots,* 2019, wall piece detail. Stitch: French knot/*Point d’armes noué*.

Couture brings together concerns about identity, materiality and memory.

Began in late 2016 with a series of drawings based on lace and embroideries from her mother’s collection, Couture is an evolving project of drawing and stitching installations where the artist explores her memory of the family’s home through objects and textiles. Reconfiguring plain sewing and favourite popular printed fabrics, Françoise Dupré combines the personal with textiles’ social history and transnational connections.

This website documents the artist’s ongoing project. Main installations Tracing Lace, Paulette et Jacques, Courtepointe and distinct elements of the project abécédaire, plain sewing, loops, knots…, Broderie anglaise, vichy normand are discussed on separate pages.

The project’s title is borrowed from the front cover of two school exercise books/cahiers de couture that belonged to the artist’s mother Paulette Dupré (née Berthelot, 1924-2011).

The cahiers contain samplers, hand-stitched exercises done between 1934 and 1938. Examples of Paulette’s stitching exercises are shown on La couturière‘s page.