FIVE QUESTIONS FOR LOUIS BARTHELEMY

First up is artist and designer Louis Barthélemy, a multi-hyphenate who we love both for his vibrant work and for his committed, collaborative embrace of traditional artisanship and its practitioners. In 2020, Carla Sersale reached out to Louis, asking him “out of the blue”, as he recounts, to design a capsule collection for Emporio Sirenuse. He responded with a pattern based on drawings he made in the Egyptian oasis of Siwa, in which a dream of Positano and the Amalfi Coast flirts playfully with the colours, forms and spirit of this ancient, sacred desert town.

Since then the rapport has blossomed into a friendship and an ongoing creative conversation. For Emporio Sirenuse’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Louis has designed a capsule consisting of twelve pieces: a unisex Hawaiian shirt, an oversized Kelsy shirt, silk Tamu shorts, a twilly, a foulard, and swim trunks, each of which is available in either orange or cream colourways.

Based between Marrakech, Cairo and Paris, the artist-designer set out in the new collaboration to establish, he says, “a dialogue between places that are very dear to me”. Positano, Louis believes, “has such a strong visual identity: the sea, the lemons, the architecture, the mythology of the Sirens”.

Shop the 2026 Louis Barthélemy capsule collection here at Emporio Sirenuse.

Le Sirenuse Journal

Can you describe your creative process? What inspires you and how do you translate that inspiration into an illustration or textile design?

Louis

My process is probably quite intuitive. I’m constantly collecting images, stories, objects, patterns and details from the places I visit. I’m very interested in vernacular arts and crafts, and in the way people adorn their everyday lives.

Often, an idea starts with something very small : a drawing, an old photograph, a fragment of architecture, a plant, a textile, or even a story or anecdote I come across. I sketch a lot and I let the image evolve quite freely. I don’t necessarily know where it is going at the beginning.

Then I start thinking about how the drawing can exist through a particular craft or material. For me, the technique is never just a way of producing the image. It becomes part of the image itself. The limitations and possibilities of embroidery, appliqué, weaving, tapestry or ceramics often completely transform the original idea.

I think this dialogue between an initial idea and the hand of the craftsman is a very important part of my work.

Le Sirenuse Journal

When I look at your Emporio Sirenuse collaborations it’s obvious that you’re not only channelling the spirit of place as you experience it, you’re also engaging quite playfully with the way Positano and other Mediterranean resorts have been imagined and depicted in the past. How does this come out in the current collection? What were some of your touchstones?

Louis

For this collection I wanted to look at Positano not only as the beautiful place that we experience today, but also through the many images and fantasies that have been created around it over the years.

There is something very theatrical and almost dreamlike about the Mediterranean, its colours, the architecture, the gardens, the sea, the food, the landscape…

Le Sirenuse Journal

Can you tell me more about your time in Benin, and the tradition of appliqué banners and tapestries still carried forward by craftsmen in Abomey?

I became very conscious of how much of this history and heritage was subsequently violated, erased or simply overlooked. Working with the artisans and spending time with these traditions made me feel that there was a real desire to tell some of these stories again, and to recognise the richness and sophistication of the culture from which they come.

In that sense, I see the work as a very small gesture towards reparation and restitution, not by trying to recreate the past, but by giving these traditions a contemporary platform and allowing the stories and imagery to continue to live.

Le Sirenuse Journal

What have you read, seen or listened to recently that has stayed with you?

Louis

One book that has really stayed with me is a long essay from 1998, Les Identités meurtrières (In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong) by Amin Maalouf.

I keep coming back to his ideas around identity, belonging and the danger of reducing people to a single identity. Perhaps because I work between different cultures and places, I find this question particularly resonant.

I’m interested in the idea that we can belong to several worlds at once, and that these different influences don’t necessarily need to contradict each other. In many ways, I think this is also reflected in my work.

Le Sirenuse Journal

Tell me about one artisan or artisan-artist you admire, and why.

Louis

Two artists immediately spring to mind: Ramses Wissa Wassef and Alighiero Boetti.

Ramses Wissa Wassef is very important to me. He trained as an architect and worked near Giza, in what was then a rural area outside Cairo and is now part of the enormous Cairo metropolis. It was here in 1951 that he founded the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre, which aimed to teach young Egyptian villagers how to create tapestries and other forms of art.What I admire most is the way he gave a voice to communities who had little access to art or education, creating an environment where they could discover and express the artist within themselves.

I strongly believe that human beings are naturally artistic, but that society and conditioning can sometimes suppress this instinct. Ramses Wissa Wassef created a space where that innate creativity could rise back to the surface.

I also think of Boetti, particularly his work with Afghan embroiderers. I’m fascinated by the way he allowed other people’s hands, skills and interpretations to become an essential part of the work. In both artists, I see a beautiful idea of collaboration where the artist is not necessarily the person who controls everything, but someone who creates the conditions for something to emerge.