Van Lathem

It was in 1901 that François Van Lathem left the Belgian Flanders to establish his trimmings workshop in Templeuve, a small village located in the green countryside outside Lille, the great European textile center.
When he started producing, he relied on only a couple human-driven frames and a very small number of workers, carefully trained on the premises to assemble the curtain loops.

When the first power looms appeared in the 1920s, workshops quickly sprouted up to house these new machines, and the manufacture by hand of curtain loops and fringes grew rapidly as well.

Michel Van Lathem, after taking over from his father Lucien in 1978, soon became aware of the need for growing the business in new ways, as years of easy expansion were over. He decided to join the ‘Club des 7′, to establish relationships with design studios, to develop the brand, to participate in professional fairs, and to actively pursue new customers overseas.