When ready-to-wear becomes social
Interview with Charlotte Cormier, manager of the atout-linge integration workshop in Vendée (fr)
Photos by Nina Ducleux
When we launched the collaboration with Joël Dagès on the Cosmos ensemble, the question of production quickly arose. In our desire to go even further in terms of craftsmanship and local production, we decided to turn to a social integration project. The mission of these organisations made particular sense to us. As well as being 60km from Nantes, it was also the idea of being part of a social approach.
For the past 30 years, Atout-linge has been helping people who are no longer in employment to train, specialise, enter or re-enter the world of work, but also to gain or regain their self-confidence, all through textiles. At a time when the local dimension is becoming increasingly important, we felt that it made even more sense to add a social dimension to the project.
This collaboration gave us the opportunity to meet Charlotte Cormier, technical supervisor at Atout-linge, so that she could explain to us, in concrete terms, what a social integration project is.
We spoke to Marie, a young employee who is building her career around textiles and embroidery. Can what you do be a springboard for the world of work, whether for people linked to the textile world or not?
Indeed, the integration project is a springboard to employment or training. The aim of our mission is to provide social and professional integration for people who are far from employment. Based on a production activity, we employ people on fixed-term integration contracts for a maximum period of 24 months. The idea is to put them in a work situation so that they can regain their self-confidence, discover the codes of professional life, develop behaviour and skills for the job in hand and work towards their social and professional goals. We recruit people with no pre-requisites. It's up to us, as technical supervisors, to train them to meet production targets and at the same time to support them in their integration process.
In the clothing workshop, the majority of employees have no experience of clothing and do not wish to continue in this area. Marie is one of the few employees who has had training in this area and would like to continue in this sector. Others, like Mickaël, a former employee, despite his prejudices and reluctance to take up the job, has landed a permanent contract with a haute couture company and has come back smiling and proud to share his successes with us.
In the end, we have a very heterogeneous group, from young people aged 18 to people over 60 who have to wait to retire, who may be physically or mentally broken by working life. Our mission is also to help them regain their composure and serenity, and to look for ways of enhancing their day-to-day lives and boosting their self-confidence, because that's often what these people have lost.
There are also others who have never worked a day in their lives and who are discovering the world of work at the age of 40. And that's not easy. Integrating work codes, working hours, professional awareness, all that, we work at it. We have the tools to do this, because we offer a CQP for multi-skilled employees at Atout Linge. We have a special integration site method, where in fact everything is a pretext for learning: French, maths. For example, pattern-making teaches them geometry. Because it's conceptualised, they don't necessarily realise that they're doing maths. Insofar as there is a goal, an object behind it, it allows them to see the result visually. That's also what sometimes builds confidence and is rewarding.
How long has Atout Linge been in existence?
Atout linge celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, and while it has been a social integration project for 30 years, its activities have become more multi-faceted, with several production facilities. At the start, the association created a laundry, and then, in 2015, the clothing workshop. We found a partner who had some tarpaulins, so the idea was to recycle these tarpaulin offcuts at SOFAREB. Then we had another partner, MULLIEZ FLORY, a manufacturer of workwear, who helped us to work with fabric by upcycling garments into accessories.
Then, in 2022, we began an experiment in recycling work clothing, supported by funding bodies such as ADEME, CARSAT and the Pays de la Loire region. We won the ‘circular economy’ call for projects and opened our textile recycling workshop in January 2023.
For my part, I've been here for 7 years. Little by little, we've grown this production business. When I arrived, the technical aspects and production processes weren't clearly defined. At the start, I was thinking, ‘But how am I going to teach beginners how to sew in a short space of time, with the quality requirements that we claim to be made in France? ‘.
It's all built up over time. We make a lot of use of the transfer of skills from one person to another, which is quite gratifying for the individual, and for us supervisors/trainers, it helps us to put in place the most comprehensive training possible. Not to mention maintaining social links and interaction, which is also what people are looking for.
We make a lot of use of the transfer of skills from one group to another, which is quite gratifying.
Can you tell us more about what's involved in an integration project?
A work integration scheme has to be innovative, because it has to respond to the economic and social needs of the local area. It has to be adaptable, because it takes on people with a wide range of problems. All this requires a solid team!
How long do the people who come here usually stay?
The average is one year. But we do an initial contract of 4 months, which can go up to a maximum of 24 months, except for young people, where it's normally 6 months, like Marie. After that, when there's a career plan, or when there's something really concrete to continue working with us, a real objective, we can extend the contract for a further 6 months. It all depends on what's needed.
For the most part, these are 30-hour contracts, flexible to 10pm if the person has a disability or other reason why they can't come in all week. Obviously, it's a lot less flexible than other manufacturing workshops, there's no overtime and we have to juggle with absenteeism issues, which are fairly frequent.
At the same time, there's the possibility of doing work placements, which is perfect because it projects them into the future, into further training for example. It has to be said, we're a fairly sheltered place, so it's good to have a real-life experience and see what it's like outside.
Is working on textiles like this, with a brand, something you do regularly?
No, very little. We've had more of an opportunity to work on accessories, bibs, bags... Lots of little projects in fact, I've got loads of them in my cupboards. But projects like this one, on clothing, is something we'd really like to develop. It allows us to teach our employees lots of things, to go further and in different ways depending on the level of the person, and that's very interesting.
Obviously, with a project like this, you have to be fairly dependent on social policies in general, so what does that mean in practical terms?
The association is subsidised by the State and the Departmental Council. These are our institutional partners. It's true that we are dependent on political decisions, which sometimes result in this stop & go, this famous yoyo.... We have to adapt constantly and we're not always serene.
Overall, it's clear that general policy is moving towards the idea that everyone should work, but it's important to understand why people aren't working and to help them get there.
It must be hard to imagine what the future holds in these conditions, but ideally, what are the prospects for the future?
At the moment, it's pretty hard to imagine an ideal. But we'd already like to see things stabilise. We can't really know what tomorrow will bring. Overall, we can see that the general policy is moving towards the idea that everyone should work, but it's important to understand why people aren't working and to help them get there.
Integration projects are important, because they are the first step towards integration. We carry out a ‘diagnosis’, and at the end of the process we draw up an assessment, saying what has happened for us and what we need to work on. After that, there's continuity. There aren't always all the integration steps in the vicinity. And sometimes people need adapted companies or another stage. But unfortunately, there are very few in the area, and it all depends on the field of activity.
