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 comes up: why does it cost more than a mass-market garment? The answer has nothing to do with marketing. It lies in the materials, the hours of work and the choices of a workshop that refuses to compromise.
Since 1918, the Coulange workshop has made coats and jackets in the purest French tradition. We have no factory, no assembly line and no offshore subcontracting. We have a workshop, seamstresses and tailors, and an obsessive demand for quality. Here, with full transparency, is what makes up the price of a garment made in France, in our workshop.
1. Materials: the first investment
A mass-market garment is often cut from a synthetic fabric or a cheap blend, at a few euros per meter. In a French workshop, the reality is quite different.
The cashmere we use for our coats and our pea coats comes from long fibers, selected for their softness and resilience. The French linen we use 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 for years, not seasons.
For example, one meter of quality cashmere costs between €80 and €150. A coat uses about 2.5 meters. The material alone already accounts for a significant share of the final price, before the scissors even come into play.
2. Making time: irreplaceable savoir-faire
In a factory, a coat can be assembled in less than an hour. In our workshop, the same coat requires between 8 and 15 hours of work. Each piece is cut one by one, each seam is checked, each button is sewn on with care.
Take our M47 safari jacket, one of our signature pieces. It has more than 40 different pieces of fabric, assembled with French seams, a technique that doubles assembly time but ensures an impeccable finish and unrivaled longevity. The buttonholes are worked one by one. The pockets are lined with cotton. Every detail takes time, and that time has a cost.
A qualified tailor in France earns between €15 and €25 per hour, including social charges. For 10 hours of work, that represents €150 to €250 of labor per garment. It is the price of dignity: that of the person who makes it and that of the garment.
3. Social charges: the French reality
Employing a seamstress or a tailor in France means bearing some of the highest social charges in Europe. For a net salary of €2,000, a workshop pays about €3,500, nearly double once contributions are added. These contributions fund social security, 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 moves its production to Bangladesh or Vietnam, it escapes these charges and pays wages that bear no comparison. The choice to make in France is a political, social and economic choice. It has a cost. We embrace it.
4. Small runs: an anti-industrial logic
A large ready-to-wear brand produces its designs by the thousands. Fixed costs, pattern development, cutting, machine setup, are spread over immense volumes. In a workshop like ours, each design is produced in limited runs: 20, 30, sometimes 50 pieces.
This small scale has a direct impact on the price. Developing a unique pattern, adjusting the cut, carrying out toile fittings: all of this costs the same whether 50 or 5,000 pieces follow. But it also has an advantage: every garment is rare. You will never cross paths with someone wearing the same coat.
5. Durability: the real cost of “cheap”
A €150 coat bought from a chain store will last two, perhaps three seasons. The seams will give way, the fabric will lose its shape, the lining will tear. It will end up in the trash and you will have 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 more. We have customers who still wear their grandfather’s coat, bought in the 1950s. The lining is intact, the wool broadcloth has taken on a superb patina, the buttons still hold. Spread over 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 cost half as much to buy. Quality is the long-term economy.
6. The 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 trims to raw materials. This short supply chain has a cost: there are fewer intermediaries, but each link is paid its fair value.
Conversely, a globalized supply chain crosses continents: cotton from India, weaving in China, sewing in Bangladesh, distribution in Europe. Sea freight 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 the short supply chain means choosing to know where every component comes from. It is demanding traceability, and it has a price.
What you are really buying
When you buy a garment made in France, in our workshop, you are not buying a product. You are buying:
- Noble materials, sourced with care
- Hours of workshop labor, fairly paid
- Savoir-faire passed down since 1918
- A garment that will stand the test of time
- The independence of a workshop that belongs to no group
The price of a coat made 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 more than a century, women and men have continued to entrust us with their wardrobe.
Discover our men’s collection and our women’s collection, made entirely in France, in our workshop, since 1918.