Moynat launches first Nicholas Knightly designs

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 16, 2021

Following its appointment of British designer Nicholas Knightly as its Creative Director last year, French label Moynat has launched the first designs under his control, along with a campaign that focuses on the bags as the stars of the show.

The company is calling it a “fresh page in the beautiful story of our house” and said Knightly “has stepped over the threshold of the Maison to write a new chapter into the feminine, hand-crafted savoir-faire tradition that have been part of the brand since 1849”.

The ultra-luxe brand that evolved from creating hand-made trunks to luxe handbags as well as luggage, has come up with a colourful collection that it says is “a modern exploration of the authentic inheritance of a Parisian luxury Maison, which has been discreetly producing its delightful treasury of bespoke products for modern travellers”. 

The new campaign features individual bags appearing to be giant-sized in the miniature surround of Parisian interiors.

As far as the new products are concerned, Knightly and the team have used the rich brand archive to inspire a series of bags that mix the old with the new. They include Le Flori, a curved cross-body bag with a removable leather strap. It contains a tribute to Maison Moynat’s origins as a Parisian trunk-maker. The “detail of the top-handle, and the sensual engineering of the lock mechanism are inspired by studying the details of trunks made for women in the 1900s,” it said. 

There’s also Le Limousine, a top-handle bag named in honour of a landmark in Moynat history when in 1902 it made trunks to fit the curves of early automobiles. It comes in pale beige leather.

Meanwhile the top-handle Voyage and bucket-shaped Le Baluchon bags make the most of the “inventiveness of our specialist house lock-masters” with palladium or gold-plated lock centres that are the “Moynat stamp of authenticity, which was first signalled in circular metal stamps hammered onto luggage in the 1930s”. The company said the “tactile button mechanism of the silver-plated Medallion Lock opens and shuts at the push of a finger, a mini-piece of engineering made for modern women on the go”.

And the La Toile 1920 pair of bags feature the monogram design originally rendered by painter Henri Rapin in 1920s by contorting the lines of the letter M. The renewed monogram now has a 3D effect, “which is the closest industrial practice to hand painting,” the company said. The spirit of the Art Deco lettering is “written into the stylistic codes through colourful hand-painted stripes and initials newly imagined for the owner,” we’re told. The two bags in this material are La Wheel, a small cylindrical minaudière, and La Little Suitcase, a scaled-down piece of luggage now functioning as a handbag.