Mrs Colle once produced stunning sequinned tops for Yves Saint Laurent, £3,000 Christian Lacroix cardigans and knitted wedding dresses that were sent down the catwalk by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
Now she says she has not landed any orders from the great and good of French haute couture since suing Chanel for allegedly copying one of her hand-made knitting patterns.
Mrs Colle says Chanel took a sample of a newly designed crochet material from her company, World Tricot, set up to employ jobless immigrant women, and used it as the basis for a jacket, made not by her firm but by another supplier in Italy. She is claiming 2.5 million euros (£2.3 million) in damages for alleged counterfeiting and breach of contract.
Chanel, which is quick to fire off legal warnings to anyone copying its fashion designs, vigorously denies the accusations and is counter-suing World Tricot for tarnishing its name. It insists the “creator” of the jacket is its chief designer, Karl Lagerfeld.
After four years of legal wrangling that has taken 61-year-old Mrs Colle’s company to the brink of ruin, judges are now deliberating on the case, seen as pitting fashion’s Davids — the anonymous artisans known as “petites mains” (small hands) who toil in workshops all over France — against the international Goliaths, like Chanel, who rely on their skills.
“I am not doing this for me or my company, I’m doing this for the women who worked here and created the designs, the small people who are forgotten, who don’t exist,” said Mrs Colle.
In 2000 Mrs Colle’s factory was a hive of productive activity for 90 employees — mainly female immigrants - with a turnover approaching 2 million euros. Now it has a skeleton staff of just 12.In 1990, to create proper jobs for the women, she took a bank loan and set up World Tricot in a grey factory unit on an industrial state outside Lure. A decade later the small company was making clothes for Christian Dior, Thierry Mugler, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne and Hermès, among others.
By 2004 Chanel was her biggest customer, and to keep pace with its orders she opted to turn down other work.
The following year Mrs Colle flew to Tokyo to promote her own nascent fashion label, Angèle Batist - named after her parents. Passing the city’s Chanel shop she said she was shocked; in the window was a jacket whose pattern seemed identical to that of a sample which World Tricot had submitted earlier that year, but which Chanel had rejected.
“I knew immediately it was from our sample and I was shocked. I thought Chanel wouldn’t do that; to me Chanel was the image of loyalty and noblesse.”
Mrs Colle said she tried to talk to Chanel about the jacket but claims nobody at the company would take her calls - and she has since found it impossible to revive interest in her pattern designs among other companies. “From one day to the next we lost all our business,” she said.
“I would knock on doors and nobody wanted to see me; I would telephone and nobody would take my call. We are the victims, but it’s as if we are the ones who are guilty".
A spokeswoman for Chanel, said the company “firmly rejected” all World Tricot’s accusations. “Chanel claims the creation belongs to it and the that making a crochet sample based on precise instructions given by Chanel does not mean someone else can claim to have created it, “ she said.
“We also contest the accusation that we breached any contract. Between April 2005 and March 2006 Chanel gave World Tricot orders for an amount comparable to that paid annually to World Tricot since we started working with them in 1999.”
Mrs Colle’s lawyer Pascal Créhange argued during the trial that at the very least the Chanel jacket was the product of collaboration between the supplier and the fashion house, and Chanel should have asked for permission to use the crochet sample.
“Mrs Colle is the first woman with the courage to stand up to a major fashion house and say 'This work is mine,” he said.
A verdict is expected on December 11. France’s fashion giants fear a decision against Chanel would open the door to similar actions by other “petites mains,” sparking an industry-wide revolution.
Mr Créhange told the court: “Chanel argues it created the jacket, but so far as I know Chanel doesn’t do knitting."
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