Solène Lahitte
Paris
With Fabrique since 2024
About
Paris-based freelance designer for IRO, Rouje, Sandro. Decade-long knitwear specialist transforming French nonchalance into lightweight spring-summer pieces coveted by Parisian tastemakers.
Solène Lahitte operates from Paris as a freelance designer, providing services to French brands including IRO, Rouje, and Sandro. She's built her expertise in knitwear over more than ten years, understanding exactly how to weave French nonchalance into the very spaces between yarn fibers. While traditional knitwear emphasizes thick autumn-winter pieces, Lahitte breaks that mold entirely. Her specialty lies in thin, translucent spring-summer knits—those seemingly casual draped wrap dresses and airy cardigans that feel like ocean breeze against skin. These pieces have become the definition of "effortless chic" in Parisian women's wardrobes.
Coastal imagery runs through her design DNA like a constant current. Her sketches draw from southern French coastal scenery: conch shells and starfish scattered on beaches, as if celestial bodies had tumbled down overnight, enchanted by the rhythm of lapping waves. These elements translate into precise details—mirror-finish metal starfish imprints, crocheted shell textures spreading along necklines. Even winter cable-knit sweaters shed their expected heaviness through her clever proportional design. This integration of vacation atmosphere into daily wear captures the essence of French style, that ability to look put-together without trying too hard.
Her approach to color reads like a master colorist working from a Parisian street corner. Apple green striped knits create wavelike patterns that echo distant hills shrouded in morning mist; sunset orange builds natural depth through carefully graduated yarns. She harnesses the inherent color language of different fibers—the soft blush that comes from alpaca's plush texture, the vintage warmth that crisp cotton-linen naturally carries. The interplay of light and shadow in her work reveals something enduring: pure vitality, romanticism, and ultimately, Paris itself. Her latest Fabrique collaboration captures summer's lingering spell—a woman fresh from Mediterranean shores, bronze skin still holding traces of salt air, where vacation treasures become urban talismans. There's something wistful yet exhilarating in this narrative, caught between seaside reverie and city reality, still wrapped in summer's enchantment but ready to resurface into the everyday.