7 Descombes is a department store of independent houses. We make nothing: we bring together ateliers that do, and give them a shared address — a storefront you enter for one house and leave knowing three.
The idea comes from a simple observation. An atelier of six makes very fine pieces and has neither the time nor the means to go looking for visitors. Two ateliers side by side do better than each alone. Thirty-two, better still.
The store occupies a former bookbinding workshop at 7 rue Descombes, in the 17th. Three hundred square metres over two floors, one window per house, and a single counter.
The site is not a copy of the store: what you see here is available on rue Descombes, and the reverse holds too.
We choose the houses one by one. Three conditions and nothing else: a named atelier, manufacture in Europe, and pieces the house can make again. We take no own-label brands, no resellers, no dropshipping.
We turn down more than half of the applications, and we say why.
We publish one text a month about a house: what it makes, how, and at what price. No press release, no season, no trend.