The result of a meeting between Alexis Gouten, an entrepreneur in the world of luxury goods, and Philippe Loup, a designer who has collaborated with the greatest – from Audemars Piguet to Louis Vuitton – Monarchy London offers an offbeat vision of luxury leather goods: a DNA between English classicism and punk influence, between tradition and modernity.
From these two seemingly opposite worlds emerges an avant-garde brand, breaking away from the classic codes of luxury, while remaining upmarket and exclusive.
gender-neutral, The collections of bags and accessories are contemporary and maximalist, mainly made of leather, including surprising touches and materials.
The guiding principle: to stand out from the ordinary and be noticed, in line with the idea of rebellion found in the brand’s name.
The “M” of Monarchy and the “A” expressing the anarchy and freedom of the label are used as a monogram on the leather goods, which are the result of meticulous research and development, where the luxury and quality of the leather are particularly valued.
Icon-Icon brings you an exclusive interview with this niche brand, which is still confidential but which contains all the seeds of an icon in the making.
Meeting with Alexis Gouten
In order to begin and recontextualize for our readers, could you please briefly sum up your career ?
I was born in France, then I followed my parents in Switzerland at the age of 11 years. Then, I then studied economics and journalism at the University of Freiburg. Quite quickly, I discovered that I had a flair for entrepreneurship.
I was lucky enough to have been trained by my father who used to say to me: “Alexis, whatever you do, always try to be independent”, he taught me a certain number of things, I then followed my own path. I set up my first distribution company in 2002.
In Switzerland, luxury brands often do their business from Paris, are not really interested in the Swiss market, and prefer to set up subsidiaries in other countries. There was an extraordinary market both locally and for tourism. I saw this opportunity and that’s when I started my first company where I distributed a number of brands.
In my opinion, my biggest success story was with the Frédérique Constant group, we became with the Swiss market, the second largest market in the world after a few years of work since we started from scratch. At that time, in 2016, the Frédérique Constant group made me an offer to buy my company.
At the same time my desire to create has not been extinguished, and my family and I have decided to buy a brand of fine watches called “Manufacture Royal”.
In 2018, we created the “Monarchy London” brand from scratch.
In 2019, I launched a private sales platform for employees of large Swiss companies, where there are no works councils like in France, we organise sales campaigns, we sell mainly luxury products (watches, jewellery, accessories) at reduced prices, all on a private platform.
How did you come up with the idea of Monarchy London? Could you tell us about the concept and the DNA of the brand in a few words?
Monarchy is first of all a meeting, a meeting with a manufacturer that came to me to ask for my help to introduce him to watch brands in order to sell leather cases (travel cases more precisely) to these brands.
I saw the product, it was extremely well made and that’s when I had the idea to propose the launch of a leather brand, I saw from my past experiences with Lancel and Dunhill that there was an extremely promising market and that it was also necessary to move away from watchmaking. We teamed up with a designer and very quickly came up with the idea of the English, London heritage, which on the one hand brings together the tailoring, the extremely classic, artisanal fashion side, and on the other, a slightly crazier, more rock and roll, punk world.
So Monarchy London is the heritage of these two worlds, the clash of royalty, the classicism and then the creative, punk and non-conformist side. It came about quite naturally I must say. We are not an English brand, we are an international brand.
There are a lot of leather goods brands today that are very well known, so the idea was to stand out with something a little bit stronger, a more offbeat style while still being serious in the way we develop the products. What’s very interesting is that Monarchy London is a brand that we launched to be masculine and yet as we went along, we saw that there was a significant female clientele interested in our products. So we’ve branched out to become a much more mixed brand with a masculine image but with a focus on more feminine products. We have started to make unique pieces for female customers and in the next few collections we will also be offering colours that are a bit different from black.
Your collections are mostly black, why this choice ?
For us, black was very important, firstly because in a luxury leather goods brand, the majority of sales are in dark colours, that’s a reality. Then black allowed us to mark our territory, to have our basic collections, the pillar of the brand. Now, as you have seen with the coloured bananas, we are going to move towards more colours, more feminine. Our slogan is ” Unnoticed is not an option » the idea is to say that when you buy Monarchy London, it’s because you already have Hermès, Louis Vuitton or other luxury brands, and that you want to have a different, flashier product, which allows you to be noticed. Our brand is not aimed at a sober or introverted clientele, we are there for a relaxed clientele who already have a knowledge of leather goods and leather.
That’s when we found our female niche, as we noticed that some customers are not afraid to wear much more niche brands, being proud to wear them.
Where does your passion for the noble material of leather come from? What does leather goods mean to you?
Leather is a noble material, a material with a patina. I find that today, some of the images that people want to give of leather are extremely negative, even if I agree with certain activists on the lack of ethics, with all the “exotic” leather around, in particular, crocodile and alligator farms, which are there solely for the purpose of butchering them. But leather processed in Europe, from cows or calves, remains an extremely noble material, providing a living for a whole section of the European economy.
I am therefore against those who would like to see it disappear. It is a material that will survive, based on a very fine craft and I would not want it to continue to be devalued in this way. There are certain brands that have launched into leathers made from mushrooms, such as Hermès, and it is very interesting to find possible derivatives of leather, but leather itself remains something extremely noble that must not be soiled.
Could you tell us about your recent collection of designs with metallic materials?
The aim is to be noticed, to stand out and have a product that is recognisable. We are aware that we need to work on brand awareness but I see that when our products are worn, we don’t necessarily notice that it’s Monarchy London but nevertheless, the products intrigue, we are surprised to see people approaching to ask where this bag is from? What is the brand?
The aim is always to stand out and make a statement with different colours or materials.
If you had to keep only one, what would be the iconic Monarchy London piece?
We have some more iconic products and some others that then become our best sellers.
There’s one product that we’ve launched that I’m very proud of, which is certainly more niche and more complicated to sell. It’s called the Lion Heart, which is a sort of quiver, a backpack that could be like Robin Hood with his bow and arrow.
It is at the same time, something offbeat, but very luxurious, it is an iconic product.
You recently signed an exclusive local partnership to represent the famous artist Richard Orlinski in Vietnam. What is the link between the world of luxury and the world of art?
First of all, on a personal level, I have always been interested in luxury and then in 2015 I fell in love with art which quickly became a passion.
I am a collector, rather of emerging artists, of works that are a bit more niche. I started by collecting everything related to urban art and today I’m more into contemporary art by emerging artists.
This is my personal taste, then if we talk about Richard Orlinski it is very particular, he found an angle, that is to say that he is the synthesis between luxury and art. Some people will say it’s not luxury and others that it’s not art, but he has managed to get people to buy an Orlinski culture as a marker of success, just as they would wear a beautiful watch or a beautiful bag.
He is for me the only artist to have succeeded in this, that is why luxury looks at him so scandalized but we quickly noticed that the partnership made with Hublot was a great success, today the watches Orlinski x Hublot watches are certainly the watches that sell the most, regularly and for a long time.
The link between art and luxury is the rare, passionate, handmade aspect, since behind each work is a craftsman, an artist or a team of artists.
There are really common values between these two worlds.
You are also working on the project of a nomadic gallery and a platform dedicated to emerging artists, are you thinking of developing this concept as an NFT?
For me, there are three kinds of NFTs.
Firstly, an NFT that will last over time, which is a proof of authenticity for a product or for a work of art, that will replace the classic certificates of authenticity, the credit card format for example. This is a real advance thanks to blockchain.
Secondly, the NFT that will disappear is the speculative one that replaces the crypto currency, i.e. instead of buying a token with an image or a video to resell it at a higher price, this is déjà vu.
The third NFT is a different format, to create a work of art that will allow a collector to have his work on his phone, on his tablet, one that will travel with him. It has to be made by artists who have real content, real talent, a message to convey.
Today, everyone is talking about these speculative NFTs, which in my opinion will disappear as quickly as they arrived. We are talking to artists in Angola, as the nomadic gallery we are setting up has a partner in Angola, to potentially do NFTs. We have decided to take our time on this because we want this wave of “speculative madness” to pass so that we can create work that will last over time.
Finally, at Icon-Icon we are interested in iconic objects, places or experiences, do you have a smell, a memory or a fetish object whose story you would like to share with us?
There are many things, but I would rather talk about an object that was given to me when I was 11 years old. My paternal grandfather was the assistant of a gentleman called Robert Hocq, this gentleman bought Cartier, then relaunched Cartier.
My grandfather worked with him and gave me a Cartier Santos Octagonal steel watch on a steel bracelet. For me, it was my first luxury watch and it is what made me taste and love watchmaking. I still have this watch, it follows me, it has a commercial value which is now extremely low, it is not worth much anymore, but it has a very important sentimental value.
The funny thing is that in this day and age this watch is very small compared to today’s models, my girlfriend is wearing it now. It was my first encounter with a luxury item, I was proud to wear this watch and it is certainly thanks to this that I fell in love with watchmaking and luxury in general.
Interview by Sébastien Girard, President of Icon-Icon and Saskia Blanc
Leave a Reply