As a homage to the legendary artist Louise Bourgeois, Parisian label SANDRO has created a striking capsule collection nearly 25 years after the artist’s monumental Maman first captivated the world. This collection, however, moves beyond Bourgeois’ famed spider sculptures, drawing instead from her deep fascination with spirals and textiles.
While Bourgeois is best known for her striking sculptures — especially Maman, her iconic spider — this collection explores a more intimate side of her artistry, drawing on her fascination with spirals and textiles. To Bourgeois, spirals symbolized emotion, memory, and transformation, themes that subtly shape SANDRO’s latest designs. The collection translates these ideas into effortlessly elegant summer staples: breezy dresses, relaxed shirts and trousers, a striped patchwork parasol skirt, and a statement-making wide-brim hat. Crafted from airy linen voile, crisp cotton poplin, and luxurious silk twill in sun-washed Mediterranean blues, the pieces blend art and fashion in a way that feels both ethereal and utterly wearable — a nod to Bourgeois’ spirit, reimagined for today.
To celebrate the release of the collection, Schön! spoke with SANDRO’s founder and creative director Evelyne Chetrite to learn about bringing Louise Bourgeois’ work to life through clothing.
What drew you to Louise Bourgeois’ work for this collaboration? Was there a particular piece or theme of hers that resonated with you the most?
Art has always been one of Sandro’s key means of expression, an essential source of inspiration that nourishes us daily. It is a guiding thread in the brand’s creative process. In the past, we have collaborated with many artists — such as Japanese ceramicist Yuko Nishikawa and sculptor Stephen Ormandy in our boutiques or directly on our collections with artist Louis Barthelemy.
Louise Bourgeois is an iconic artist, yet perhaps somewhat unfairly overlooked by the general public. We find her fascinating as a woman. She fought to make art her primary means of expression — even though her parents were upholsterers, she initially pursued mathematics studies. In her time, this was far from an obvious path. We wanted to celebrate her and her work.
The collection highlights natural materials like linen and silk — how did you choose these fabrics and silhouettes to best reflect both Sandro’s style and Bourgeois’ artistic legacy?
The collection features over fifteen summer pieces: fluid shirts and trousers, light dresses, a parasol skirt in patchwork stripes, shorts, scrunchies, and a wide-brimmed hat — as if Louise Bourgeois herself had crafted them. Natural materials take center stage: silk twill, linen blended with viscose for added sheen, and cotton gabardine for denim trousers. The color palette revolves around shades of blue, reminiscent of the Mediterranean — a region close to my heart, as I was born and raised in Rabat, Morocco.
Beyond Maman, were there specific works that directly inspired pieces in the collection?
While researching inspiration for this collection, we discovered her textile work (Ode à l’oubli), her patchwork creations made from deconstructed and reconstructed garments, and we realized she was a pioneer of upcycling! We loved her approach — the idea of deconstructing existing forms to rebuild them. I was also particularly drawn to her use of spirals to depict the turmoil of human emotions. This graphic element provided a rich source of inspiration for the collection.
The spider motif, inspired by Bourgeois’ iconic Maman sculpture, is a bold choice. How did you balance the strength of this symbol with the light and delicate feel of the summer collection?
We didn’t take it literally. First, through material choices — Louise Bourgeois’ work is expressed on feminine fabrics, with 70% of the collection made from silk, which immediately brings softness. Then, through the season itself — summer. At times, Bourgeois’ motifs evoked parasols more than spiderwebs to us. This capsule is bright and summery. These elements balanced with the strength of Louise Bourgeois’ work, creating contrast — and at Sandro, we love playing with contrasts.
As a longtime admirer of Louise Bourgeois, was there anything new you discovered about her during the creative process?
Throughout the creative process, I discovered a lesser-known yet equally fascinating side of Louise Bourgeois: her approach to upcycling in her textile works. Though she is world-famous for her monumental bronze spiders, her work extends far beyond these sculptures. Her use of textiles — particularly recovered clothing and fabrics — reflects an intimate and deeply autobiographical dimension. By transforming pieces of linen, sheets, and worn garments — often her own or those of her family — she imbued materials with emotional depth and personal memory. This process of reusing fabric wasn’t just an ecological practice; it was a way of weaving the past into the present and symbolically mending inner wounds.
How important is it for Sandro to create collections that go beyond aesthetics and tell a deeper story — like this one with Bourgeois’ work?
Sandro was founded over 40 years ago, in 1984. It’s a family adventure, a story of style, and a journey enriched by our experiences and history. We have a deep connection with craftsmanship and art. Growing up in Rabat, Morocco, I carry vivid memories — my grandfather had a shirt-making workshop, and all our clothes were handmade. This collection celebrating an iconic artist is also a way for us to share our creative affinities and roots.
Fashion and art often share a common language of creativity and self-expression. How did you navigate between Louise Bourgeois’ symbolic universe and Sandro’s signature aesthetic?
We have always worked instinctively for 40 years now. A bit like in cooking, where you don’t always reveal the secret ingredients of a recipe. But we navigated between Louise Bourgeois’ world and Sandro’s with ease and passion. One of the challenges was that the artworks we drew inspiration from were rectangular in format, requiring significant adaptation from our pattern makers to both respect the original piece and achieve the best aesthetic result. One of Sandro’s strengths is that we have an in-house atelier at our Paris headquarters, allowing us to develop prototypes quickly and remain agile in fine-tuning our designs.
If Louise Bourgeois were still with us today, what kind of creative conversation do you think you would have had with her while designing this capsule?
If Louise Bourgeois were still here, our conversation would likely have been an inspiring exchange about the relationship between clothing, memory, and emotion. I would have loved to discuss with her the significance of textiles in her work — especially her use of repurposed fabrics and embroidery. Louise Bourgeois was a free, bold, and engaged woman. I would have also loved to hear her thoughts on the role of femininity in art and contemporary creation.
See the full collection at sandro.com.
words. Kelsey Barnes
