The Price of a Garment: A Legitimate Question
When you discover the price of a coat or jacket made in a French workshop, one question often arises: why is it more expensive than a mass-market garment? The answer is not in the marketing — it is in the materials, the hours of craftsmanship, and the choices of a workshop that refuse to compromise.
Since 1918, the Coulange workshop has been making coats and jackets in the purest French tradition. We have no factory, no assembly line, no offshore subcontracting. We have a workshop, artisans, and an obsession with quality. Here, in full transparency, is what makes up the price of a handmade garment in France.
1. Materials: The First Investment
A mass-market garment is often cut from synthetic fabric or a low-cost blend — a few euros per meter. In a French workshop, the reality is entirely different.
The cashmere we use for our coats and peacoats comes from long fibers, selected for their softness and resilience. The French linen we work with for our summer jackets is grown and woven in France — a rarity that comes at a cost. A water-repellent cotton gabardine, an exceptional wool broadcloth: every material is chosen to last years, not seasons.
By way of example, a meter of quality cashmere costs between €80 and €150. A coat uses approximately 2.5 meters. The material alone already represents a significant portion of the final price — before an artisan has even picked up their scissors.
2. Manufacturing Time: The Irreplaceable Hand
In a factory, a coat can be assembled in under an hour. In an artisanal workshop, the same coat requires between 8 and 15 hours of work. Each piece is cut one by one, every seam is checked, every button is sewn by hand.
Take our M47 safari jacket, one of our signature pieces. It includes over 40 different fabric pieces, assembled with French seams — a technique that doubles assembly time but guarantees impeccable finishing and unparalleled longevity. The buttonholes are done by hand. The pockets are lined with cotton. Every detail takes time, and that time has a cost.
A master tailor in France is paid between €15 and €25 per hour, including social charges. For 10 hours of work, that represents €150 to €250 in labor per garment. That is the price of dignity — the dignity of the artisan and the dignity of the garment.
3. Social Charges: The French Elephant in the Room
Employing an artisan in France means bearing some of the highest social charges in Europe. For a net salary of €2,000, a workshop pays approximately €3,500 — nearly double, once social contributions are added. These contributions fund the social security system, pensions, and health insurance. They are the foundation of the French social model, and they weigh on the price of every piece.
When a brand offshores its production to Bangladesh or Vietnam, it escapes these charges — and pays wages that bear no comparison. The choice to manufacture in France is a political, social, and economic choice. It has a cost. We embrace it.
4. Small Batches: The Anti-Industrial Logic
A major ready-to-wear brand produces its models by the thousands. Fixed costs — pattern development, cutting, machine set-up — are spread across immense volumes. In a workshop like ours, each model is produced in limited runs: 20, 30, sometimes 50 pieces.
This small scale has a direct impact on price. Developing a unique pattern, adjusting the cut, canvas trials — all of this costs the same whether there are 50 or 5,000 pieces afterwards. But it also has an advantage: each garment is rare. You will never cross paths with someone wearing the same coat.
5. Sustainability: The True Cost of “Cheap”
A €150 coat bought at a chain store will last two, maybe three seasons. The seams will give way, the fabric will lose its shape, the lining will tear. It will end up in the bin, and you will need to buy another. Over ten years, you will have spent €600 to €750 on disposable coats — without ever having worn a beautiful piece.
A Coulange coat is designed to last twenty years, thirty years, sometimes longer. We have clients who still wear their grandfather's coat, bought in the 1950s. The lining is intact, the wool broadcloth has developed a superb patina, the buttons still hold. Spread across the years, the price becomes remarkably low.
This is the logic of "cost per wear." A garment worn 500 times costs less than a garment worn 20 times, even if it was half the price to buy. Quality is the economy of the long term.
6. Short Supply Chain: A Geography of Quality
Our workshop is in France. Our fabric suppliers are French or European. Coulange favors French suppliers for its components, from haberdashery to raw materials. This short supply chain has a cost — there are fewer intermediaries, but every link is paid at its fair value.
By contrast, a globalized supply chain crosses continents: cotton from India, weaving in China, manufacturing in Bangladesh, distribution in Europe. Maritime shipping costs a few cents per garment. Margins are taken from wages, not from materials. The final price is low — but the human and environmental cost is colossal.
Choosing a short supply chain means choosing to know where every component comes from. It is a high end of traceability — and it has a price.
What You Are Really Buying
When you buy a handmade garment in France, you are not buying a product. You are buying:
- Noble materials, sourced with exacting standards
- Hours of artisanal work, fairly paid
- Craftsmanship handed down since 1918
- A garment that will endure through the years
- The independence of a workshop that answers to no group
The price of a handmade coat in France is not a premium — it is a fair price. The fair price of materials, labor, and time. And that is perhaps the deepest reason why, for over a century, women and men have continued to entrust us with their wardrobes.
Discover our men's collection and our women's collection, entirely crafted in our French workshop since 1918.