meeting la fille d’O (daughter of ‘O) is an encounter of a different kind.

at first, it will be the striking features of the undressed avant garde. genetically blessed with an energetic overload.

(la fille d’O designs the new, the modern, the bold. sans compromise.)

then there will be the hypnotic talks, revealing the inspiration, the manifest, the love of life’s senses and what they can do to you.

(la fille d’O creates a world of aspirational energy for variations of beauty. supporting not just the self but the esteem driving you through whatever challenges you face. a feminine story of personal development whilst pleasing the ones you crave.)

whilst sharing life with her, you will find she is caring and responsible. common sense for an uncommon sensuality.

(la fille d’O designs, sources and produces an internationally appreciated product in a local environment. based in Belgium, all items are handmade by local petites mains, thus adding their personal craftmanship, allowing la fille d’O to bring you superior design and clever eco-logical making of luxury goods for your skin.)

la fille d’O. good-looking, cause it’s so hard to see.

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about the brand:

la fille d’O is a Belgian based independent lingerie brand, founded by Murielle Victorine Scherre in 2003. Dissatisfied as she was with the then current lingerie market, she decided to create her own vision on underwear. A brand freed of esthetical, technical or economical compromise. Throughout the years, la fille d’O established itself as a luxurious yet straight forward brand, marching to the beat of a whole different drum

• designing: la fille d’O mainly stands out because of the unique avant-garde way of designing. Where other brands see lingerie separate from garments, we see a much more dynamic overview: all the pieces are created inspired by the body, eager to create a flexible and merged look with your garments. As a result la fille d’O constantly delivers surprising designs, seamlessly embellishing women in a timeless way.
• positioning: More than just a lingerie and/or swimwear brand, la fille d’O effortlessly makes the transition to a fashion label. Where the lingerie sector is a rather invariable rigid branch (considering it’s high use of flexible material et al) mainly because of it’s technical demands, the fashion industry is constantly in motion, looking for progress and innovation. la fille d’O is proud to be in the vanguard of this cross-over movement and delivers pieces merging between under- and upper garments, that serve multiple purposes in your wardrobe. Solution wear is out of the picture when underwear ceases to cause problems.
• considering: Not only focussed on aesthetics, la fille d’O is ethic to the bone. From the drawing table to the manufacturing process, the production is 100% honest and 100% Belgian. From the ateliers in the far end of Belgium under the ever watchful eye of the creative director herself to the hand selected French, Austrian and German fabrics and details. At la fille d’O “handmade” is more than merely “made by hand”, it means every piece bears witness to an enormous technical skill and results in a multi-layered final product.

Each and every one of these products have that distinct la fille d’O touch. It is not to be defined by one term – call it alchemy for sensuality, a feast for the visually hungry. la fille d’O brings satisfaction to the urge you never really acknowledged.

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about murielle Victorine scherre:

And what if it were magic? Nothing is ever innocent with la fille d’O, nor is it with Murielle Victorine Scherre either. She laughs when she says that she might almost have invented a religion, she is aware of it, and it is no boast. When you are visionary, generous, loving, respectful of a woman’s body and of women, and a feminist, it cannot be otherwise. All around her are clear signs of what she has started.

Often, perhaps always, she says “we” when talking about her work. Although she is the only designer at la fille d’O, she uses the collective pronoun because she knows that it’s about women and that it serves no purpose for her to make lingerie just for herself. “I’m not an artist, it’s really important for me to know what women want to wear. So I say we; I am something of a medium; I am the voice of many women.”

But first of all the name: it is the legacy of a film she saw although she can’t remember when; she must have been about sixteen, or twenty. What is certain is that it moved her deeply, like a great earthquake beneath her feet, with its attendant stream of questions. It’s the Story of O, a woman, a photographer, who agrees to give up her freedom and become an object of desire without any free will. The writer Pauline Réage had invented her and Just Jaeckin brought her into cinematic reality in 1975, two years before Murielle was born.

And la fille d’O, because it is not O, it is her progeny, a new generation which is the product of all that – the 20s flapper, the 50s pin-up, the seventies feminist, the power woman of the end of the millennium, then the androgynous woman of the early 21st century… In short, a woman who wants both to live her life and to please, which is not a contradiction. Giving nothing away, Murielle Victorine Scherre advocates balance and, as something of a guru, she shows the way.

She didn’t need to rack her brains to find her destiny. She had already tried out lingerie at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. She had then called her final-year collection A Maze, using the verb “amaze”, which also suggests the noun “a maze”. With Murielle, words matter. She had imagined the combination of a Lolita and a Betty Page, an innocent girl and a woman aware of her sex appeal, she already loved this contradiction. It had been necessary to add lingerie to her clothes, and this came naturally to her, “it’s from that theme that the whole process began.” It was 2001.

But if you look closely at her career path, her wardrobes, you will find that it was already under way a long time before. She has always bought lingerie, unusually, and accessories, but only those that are beautifully made, by hand and with a subtlety that she puts across with this truism: “I’d rather wear a pair of ordinary jeans and a white t-shirt with shoes and a “gorgeous” handbag, than an evening dress and cheap knickers underneath.”

With such a past, there’s no need to tell you that Murielle Victorine Scherre very soon grew tired of what she found in the shops; nothing really suited her. And as she is pretty obstinate and on top of that pretty practical (“when I think I can improve something, I want to do it”), she got down to work. “I immediately realised that there was a gap in the market, and that you couldn’t find super sexy, avant-garde lingerie that was practical to wear, it was either one thing or the other. And as I want it all, I like to try everything; I think that you have to have lingerie that demands and gives in the same way if you want to be perfect as a lover, housewife and mother, I don’t want lingerie that chafes or looks like something a whore might wear, I want the perfect balance between class, style, sexiness and quality of product. This is what I want to achieve with my collection.” Add to this the finest materials, and you will have a truly superior piece of lingerie.

As she is a designer who has as her secret weapon technique, she doesn’t know the meaning of the word “impossible”, she looks for a solution until she finds it. Did I already say that Murielle is stubborn? All her design is evidence of her technological sophistication. And if this is where it is original, it’s because she is a “nerd of lingerie technology”. Her incomparable knowledge allows her to invent, to take things further and to innovate. As a result she is often copied, but inevitably with less talent. She immediately recognises her lines, her research, her side seams and she notes down the financial or technical decisions that have been taken with these pale imitations, which wound her invention in a negative way, and kill her original design. She laughs about it, she who laughs at all obstacles, who makes her own materials and can get away with anything. Not for nothing is she a Virgo – whose commonly acknowledged traits are stubbornness, rigidity and flexibility at the same time. And with Scorpio rising, she knows where all her contradictions come from. “I do as I am”.

Since the devil is in the detail, Murielle Victorine Scherre chooses the finishes of her buckles, clasps, elastics and materials with great care. They are Belgian, without lace or any fripperies. The only thing that matters (to her) is the sensation, the feel must be close to perfection, because this little scrap of fabric is being readied to clothe the skin of les filles d’O, to be touched lightly by a lover, and that matters. This is also the reason why she favours the handmade; it’s about being human, it’s self-evident for her that each set in her collection should be made by seamstresses proud of their profession, whom she knows and whom she integrates into the process. “It’s their handwork that you find in the final product”. In Ghent, Wevelgem and Ypres, the women who make la fille d’O are part of its story. And this has been so since the beginning, eleven years ago. Murielle insists on it.

Similarly, she insists on the idea of “expanding her horizons”. The basis of la fille d’O is identity and difference, “the thing that is most attractive in humanity”. She loves everything that is personal and intimate – how our lips move when we talk, how our hands twirl around, the way our teeth line our mouths, in short, the wonderful mechanics of the body and everything that is out of the ordinary, that belongs only to one person, that marks out our difference and uniqueness. As a result, unsurprisingly, her lingerie is like no other and the same is true of her models. Down with uniformity, Murielle is wont to say.

And as she fears nothing, as she uses the side of the brain that lends itself to audacity, she has launched her label by throwing off all constraints, by growing slowly, with this well-constructed atypical profile and this great freedom of expression that give it such brilliant power. She has always been open and transparent, so that those who wear the label know her values, her honesty at each chapter of her life, in the manufacturing process, in the management and in her relationship with others.

One last detail: Murielle Victorine Scherre practices automatic writing, as a true freedom. When she has to give a name to her lingerie, she does not care about the codes that are so convenient for production. She closes one eye, plays with her depth of field, looks at the list of her pieces of music that scroll through her telephone memory, picks out the words that work well with the atmosphere of the collection she is working on, notes them down, and then has fun sticking them together, until it makes sense – Wood veil, Slow hands, Different suit… Consonants and vowels that inspire her and that, she believes, inspire those women who become self-confident with la fille d’O. Sometimes, when these women meet they murmur the name of the day like a secret password, “I’m wearing Sushi Baby, how about you?”