Goyard - Special Orders

Special Orders

Nowadays, special orders are to be placed at the store at 233, rue Saint-Honoré, as it was the case when the factory was located in Bezons. Special orders are entirely hand-made in the Goyard workshops in southern France, in the Aude department. The workshops are installed in converted wine warehouses. Whilst some trunk makers specialize in standardized goods, Goyard is equally at ease with both special orders and ready-made items. Among the many extravagant special orders that Goyard was able to deliver over the course of its history, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Writer’s trunk” certainly stands out. In the report he wrote for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in 1925, Paul Léon lists its main characteristics: “The trunk is equipped with a filing cabinet, a bookcase, a typewriter and a foldable desk.” The descriptive text that goes with its patent spares no detail either: “All kinds of kits and sets can be placed in the pigeonhole located in the trunk lid, along with photograph frames, a watch, a thermometer and a barometer”. After the death of the creator of Sherlock Holmes on July 7, 1930, Edmond Goyard registered a patent for the trunk on July 20, 1931, and seldom remanufactured this exceptional piece.

Each order is the result of a special encounter: that taking place between the trunk maker and the customer. When it comes to special orders, everything is possible: a trunk especially designed to carry and store caviar, or to meet the needs of a sportsperson, a fabulous picnic trunk.

Each piece of hard-sided luggage by Goyard is entirely hand made by a specific trunk maker, according to the highest, strictest standards. When the crafting process is over, the trunk maker writes down the serial number of the piece they made on its identification tag, along with their initials. They also write down that same serial number in the manufacturing register that has been keeping track of all items made by the Goyard workshops ever since Jean-Michel Signoles took over. The manufacturing register is used as a reference in the event an item needs to be repaired. About twenty trunk makers work in the Goyard workshops and specialize in made-to-order trunks and hard-sided luggage.