'Sewing is in our blood.'
In 1968, 'Bobonne' Simone Vrebos founded the alteration shop Rode Schaar. In 1988, daughter-in-law Beatrijs De Rauw joined, and they worked together until 1997. After that, Beatrijs continued the business independently. Back then, they did not yet sell wedding dresses but customised them for other bridal shops.
In 2009, Guanita entered the business as an independent helper, and in 2011, at just 19 years old, she became the new business manager.
Guanita Lesage is the 3rd generation in the family. For 15 years, she has devoted herself to the craft with passion. "From childhood, we used to help my mother and Bobonne with the retouches in the evenings as we proudly sewed along on those beautiful dresses, among others, while they taught us the intricacies of the trade. My sister has gone in a different direction in 2019, but I would love nothing more."
Besides her work, Guanita always wanted to keep up her education. Specialised fashion training was therefore a logical choice.
Thanks to a grant for 'Young talented people in heritage professions' from Sofina Boël and the King Baudouin Foundation, Guanita started studying Haute-Couture techniques in the only real tailoring school in the Benelux in 2015 in Amsterdam, to make corsets and wedding dresses in an artisanal way like Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.
In 2016, she also underwent training in Baltimore, USA with a lady who had previously worked at Chanel and specialised in sheath suits. She taught her the fine sewing techniques that are also useful for fitting wedding dresses perfectly.
"In fact, I wouldn't have made much difference if I had gone to work in a couture house in the US. Unfortunately, being self-employed, I could not get an internship visa," says Guanita
In 2017, she attended another master class in Oxford, UK where the very best corset makers in the world teach. These classes mainly focused on creating sufficient support for corsets and dresses with a deeper back cut, mainly aimed at ladies with fuller bosoms.
Guanita is proud of what she has created from scratch: she transformed the retouch shop Rode Schaar into a successful bridal shop: 'Lesage Bridal' with customers from all over Flanders and the Netherlands. "The craft I practise is unique and will always find its way to the public," she says.
Guanita works with two fantastic colleagues. Jolien, who has been working at Lesage Bridal since 2019, is a familiar face to almost all customers. She helps them choose the perfect wedding dress, spells out the retouches and adjusts the dresses. Miassar, on the other hand, is less familiar to customers but has golden hands. She prefers to work quietly in the studio, where she puts her perfectionism into every dress. Miassar is a huge asset to our team. "Together, the three of us form a rock-solid team!".
She also recently opened a 2nd shop on Graaf van Egmontstraat where you can see Guanita and her colleagues at work in the studio.
What really sets us apart from other bridal shops is the complete package we offer. Of course, selling wedding dresses is great, but the after-service - such as carrying out perfect retouches - is at least as important to us. With us, you will find everything under one roof: from the sale of wedding dresses to accessories such as shoes and jewellery and, most importantly, the retouching is done entirely in-house. The fact that we are not a standard bridal shop did not go unnoticed either - beautiful articles about us regularly appear in the newspaper. Nice!
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