This season, Balzac Paris is committed to you, for others and forever. For each Ensemble sweatshirt purchased, €30 will be donated to Emmaüs France to support the development of their upcycling workshops.

In addition to the Ensemble sweatshirt, Balzac Paris wishes to get involved with Emmaüs France by setting up a collection of clothes at the Kiosk of its Parisian address at 82 rue d'Hauteville in Paris during the month of October. This lasting collaboration reinforces the position of the brand as a company with a mission and reaffirms its raison d'être, "To write together a world where the desirable is sustainable and the sustainable desirable."

Meeting with Valérie Fayard, Deputy Managing Director of Emmaüs France, and Together feedback on this partnership.

VALERIE FAYARD

Emmaus France is a movement founded by Abbé Pierre more than 73 years ago. Its objective is to fight against exclusion and find solutions to help people in precarious situations. Today there are more than 300 Emmaüs France structures throughout the territory and there are more than 30,000 volunteers , employees and people in integration who work together to fight against poverty.

We implement actions to fight against poverty, but we also denounce the causes and raise our voice to change things. For example, by raising citizens' awareness of issues surrounding poverty, and by trying to influence public policies. 

Emmaus France also has a whole action around sustainable development and the circular economy. Collection, sorting, repair, resale of second-hand products: we collect more than 300,000 tonnes of second-hand products per year. Historically, we also harvested a lot of textiles: around 160,000 tonnes per year.

VALERIE FAYARD

Balzac Paris wanted to meet us and offered us a partnership as part of his Ensemble project. We took the time to think about it because our partnership policy is quite selective! The project really has to make sense. In view of Balzac Paris' positioning in sustainable fashion, and the fact that the brand is a company with a mission, it seemed obvious to us that we shared common values. So we said, let's go! And we imagined the Together solidarity sweatshirt .

The idea of ​​creating an Ensemble product is very interesting, it makes it possible to concretely materialize our partnership with Balzac Paris. For each sweatshirt purchased, €30 will be donated to Emmaüs France to support the development of our upcycling workshops. It's more humanized and original than simple financial sponsorship.

VALERIE FAYARD

The funds raised through sales of the Together sweatshirt will be used to support Emmaüs France structures that do upcyling. Upcyling is the act of transforming a used object into a new object to give it a second life. For example, the funds donated to Emmaüs France thanks to the Together sweatshirt will contribute to welcoming 15 new seamstresses into integration in 2023 in one of our structures in order to create new upcycled products and raise awareness among the general public about a more responsible way.

Among the nine upcycling structures that are supported by Emmaüs France, we can cite, for example , Les Résilientes , which is an integration workshop in the Paris region. One of their first upcycled textile product was a nice project: they received a donation of cashmere sweaters that had flaws (rips, holes...), which they customized with embroidery, yokes, etc. In the end, the sweater was even better than new, with real originality. This was the start of the story with Les Résilientes. And there are plenty of stories like that!

VALERIE FAYARD

There are plenty of ways to support us. The first is by donating to Emmaüs France the products you no longer use: clothing, furniture, household appliances, decoration… The global model works mainly on the donation of all types of products by individuals. We have to keep giving! You can also show your support by coming to buy our second-hand products. There are 500 Emmaüs France sales spaces which are veritable Ali Baba's caves. Finally, you can also become volunteers, there is surely an Emmaüs near you. Don't hesitate to go there, Emmaus is also about meeting people who want to share... Together!