“As far as I can recollect, I have always had a fan…” says the 30 year old Parisian, Raphaëlle de Panafieu: when she was a child, her father always brought fans back from his frequent travels to Asia for her and both her sisters. One day she wanted to buy a fan with her own money, but she didn’t like the Asian and the Spanish ones sold on the seafront. They fulfilled indeed their requested basic function, but were too “Asian”, or too “Spanish” according to her taste: they weren’t fashionable.
Raphaëlle wanted something better. This is how her marvellous adventure begun.
In 2009, Raphaëlle started working for Ventilo – a high-end woman’s prêt-à-porter brand – as research manager for Department Stores in Asia, Northern America and the Middle East.
Eloïse Gilles had previously worked for Louis Vuitton and was then dealing with luxury brands and their identity.
Both were just thirty years old. Together, they decided to give the fan another chance. This was something very easy to decide, but much harder to implement, because fan making specialists had almost disappeared in Paris.