calligraphy

I Love Calligraphy

10 years ago by

Even though I love all the crazy invites we get to shows, most of the time the ones I keep are the simple ones.

What I love is the calligraphy. This beautiful way to give shape to letters, the attention and the time it demands. The Balenciaga ones are the most crazy, they’re all handwritten… It really touches me.

To tell you the truth, I’ve always played so much with my pens that when I was young, I didn’t really have a writting style. People would tell me that you could see someone’s personnality in their writing, and mine would change everyday, so many times I wondered if I had no fixed personnality :)

When I see the part that writing plays today in my life (I wouldn’t call what I do calligraphy, but I get a lot of commissions to write titles or create logos) I tell myself that you really never know where your little weirdnesses can take you…

69 comments

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  • I’m in LOVE with that “D” on the Margiela invitation!Can’t stop looking at it. Is that weird?;-)

  • I love that one too, love the G as well :)

  • The same person wrote invitations for Miu Miu and Dior ;)

  • or used the same font!! :))

    http://littleaesthete.com

  • Talking about calligraphy, I love the font of your website!
    http://www.thedeepbluecory.com
    Xoxo! Cory

  • J’ai toujours aimé m’appliquer et bien écrire! C’est super de voir ce genre d’invitation écrite à la main!

    http://www.laurablogmode.com

  • Très jolie conclusion :)

  • La caligrafia es un arte ,y si no que se lo digan a los chinos .
    Por otra parte te dire que a mi me encantan las tarjetas de invitación
    escritas a mano son deliciosas .
    Un beso
    Pilar
    http://www.a-louise.com

  • Pilar, totalmente de acuerdo. La caligrafia es un arte de delicadez y algo para atesorar.

    Garance, thanks for sharing these treasures.
    PS: I love the use of “Madame” — it makes the calligraphy even more special if that’s possible.

  • I have the same abt handwritting! Was hard to figure a signature I could use on a daily basis since my writing changes accordin to my mood!

  • Le fait de changer d’écriture à l’adolescence est normal, c’est connu en psychologie :-) (cela a d’ailleurs été étudié dans le cadre du journal d’Anne Franck).
    En matière de calligraphie, ma plus grande bizarrerie reste mes œufs de Pâques sur mes “i” quand j’avais dix ans.

  • I just started taking calligraphy classes, and I’m really loving them. Our teacher said calligraphy is closer to illustration than handwriting, and I can see what she’s saying. Her next class after the alphabet teaches flourishes and other decorations, and I can’t wait for that!

  • I love calligraphy. And how well I remember learning how to write in cursive in elementary school! My grandfather had a big loopy script, my mother’s was more compact, my father’s more squiggly. I’d know them anywhere. Of course they weren’t “calligraphy” per se. I learned about that in college. But it makes me sad that in the age of computers they no longer teach handwriting in school.

  • all of these look so beautiful. it is always such a personal touch to have something handwritten. i love it

    http://coralissignature.blogspot.de

  • Quand on y pense, l’écriture était un art à part entière avant. Je me rappelle qu’au lycée, mes copines qui prenaient des cours d’arabe avaient aussi des cours de calligraphie.
    Maintenant, on écrit si peu.. Enfin si! Sur nos claviers… C’est dommage que cette pratique ne soit pas plus répandue.

  • Calligraphy…. even the word is beautiful in any font….. there is something about penmanship that is so incredibly attractive…. I like them all….. but i have to admit the Margiela is the most wonderful…. I think the ‘D’ is more beautiful and stands out because the ‘g’ is lower case..

    http://www.myclayexperience.com/

  • Jane with the noisy terrier October, 15 2013, 7:02 / Reply

    I love beautiful handwriting and calligraphy. I always wrote with a slant so I got to write fake notes from Mom when my school friends wanted to get out of gym. ( ” Please excuse Garance from gym today. She has bad cramps.”) It breaks my heart a little to know that some schools are no longer teaching children how to write cursive.

  • Est ce que cela ne serait pas la même petite main extrêmement douée qui aurait écrit pr Dior, Miu Miu et l’invitation tt à gauche????

  • Léonore October, 16 2013, 5:12

    Oui ça a bien l’air d’être la même!

  • La calligraphie montre toute l’élégance de l’invitation, celles-ci sont sublimes!

    Sandrine xx
    http://www.iamsandrine.com

  • Dear NFP (No Fixed Personality),
    It simply means you are well adjusted. Banal, I know.:)

  • Love your blog!!!!
    I’m posting looks from L.A. and accessories:

    http://www.thegavlaks.com

  • I think in today’s world, the “old” act of simply writing something with a pen–especially if the writing is beautiful–can mean so much. (The Balenciaga invite above is my favorite, too!)

    amydaniewicz.com

  • I adore calligraphy as well, there is something so special about taking a pen to puts words on a paper that you don’t get with typing.

    x karen
    http://www.thechicndamned.blogspot.com

  • C’est très beau, très élégant!
    Mafalda ?
    http://www.mafaldadotzero.blogspot.fr

  • I like the writing from Dior the best.

  • This is the super talented lady who did my wedding invites…soooo beautiful!

    http://www.studiofrenchblue.com/

  • Waw, elles sont magnifiques ces invit’s. Pour moi qui fait de la calligraphie, c’est encourageant de constater dans tous ces commentaires que de nombreuses personnes apprécient le courrier calligraphié.
    Merci Garance pour ce post! (“Garance” + “calligraphie”….J’vous dis pas la vitesse de mon clic!)

  • I love your calligraphy!!! In fact I even bought a thing called Bamboo to add super nice calligraphy to my pictures because I really like what you do (and I wanted to copy it, to be honest. No personality, That’s me.). Bad idea, of course. I’m teeeeeeeeeeeeeerrible at it. I stil have to discover what I’m good at, whicht my signature style is (pun intended)… In the meantime I keep drawing silly faces with that Bamboo thing ;)
    xx,
    E.
    http://www.theslowpace.com

  • So true, so beautiful ! thank you Garance…
    Like you I keep all my handwritten envelopes too !
    I take pride in my handwriting and I handwrite a lot to the extent that I have a callus on my middle finger and I can only write with a Pilot black ink V Pen which does not explode on the plane and costs 2.5 euros, the closest you can get to a fountain pen without the hassle of the cartridges , but the problem is that after so much time spent on the computer you have to retrain your mind and coordinate your hand because the mind goes faster than the hand when you are hand-writing and you make a ton of mistakes
    Cursive is for me a form of meditation because you need to focus and slow down your galloping brain

    I was very shocked a month ago when I was in LA at my friends’s home and their 5 children ages 6 to 11 were doing their homework on the computer . No more handwriting , just a screen on the school’s website that the kids use to type in their answers….including spelling tests ! for me spelling and hand writing should go together , it is a skill and it involves thinking , focus and concentration.
    http://www.fashionsphinx.com

  • Oh, oh, ce n’est pas une invitation de chez BALLIN ?…
    Je n’ai qu’un épisode à relater: j’adore les stylos, j’en ai quelques uns de chers. Un jour à LA j’en ai un avec moi et une exécutive d’un studio devait m’écrire quelque chose sur un papier, je lui tends on stylo, elle le regarde comme un objet tombé de la planète Mars. ” A fountain pen??”. Et je la vois horrifiée massacrer la plume alors qu’elle ne savait même pas de quel côté écrire avec.
    Quand on entend de nos jours qu’on va suprimer l’écriture à l’école au profit des claviers d’ordinateurs aimer la belle écriture revient déjà à aimer les antiquités!

  • loopinfinite October, 16 2013, 4:54 / Reply

    Il y a ceux qui mettent un accent sur le “e” de Doré et d’autres pas. Ca se discute d’un point de vue typographique. D’ailleurs je n’arrive pas à mettre de cédille sur le C majuscule. Les claviers nous briment !

  • J’adore la Calligraphie, ma mère en faisait quand j’étais enfant et depuis ça reste lié à elle. Elle m’a même fait un livre de recette maison écrit avec sa plume et son encrier, un des plus beaux cadeaux qu’on met fait.
    J’admire beaucoup ton écriture et ça ne m’étonne pas plus que ça qu’on fasse appel à toi rien que pour écrire.

  • Même “caca prout” écrit de cette manière aurait l’air cool, trop fort la calligraphie et en arabe j’adore.

    Bonne journée Garance

    PS: ça fait une baille que je ne mets plus de commentaire mais je continus à lire ton blog religieusement :)

  • Oui ! D’ailleurs, connais-tu Fabienne Verdier ? Ses oeuvres sont magnifiques, et surtout, il faut lire son livre “Passagère du silence”, sur ses années d’apprentissage de la calligraphie en Chine. Bouleversant !

  • Its a kind of Art!

  • I would change my writing all the time too when I was young !
    Even at the university, when I finally settled for a “old school” style !

    I can spend hours looking at calligraphy and typography…shame they don’t teach it anymore at school. We use to do lines and lines of cursive writing!

    -xxx-
    Lysanne

  • I like it and perfect is.. That they made a invitation fandmade. Looks sooo nice,.

    http://www.fashiondenis.com/

  • J’ai développé au fil de mes années d’expérience en tant que D.A-Graphiste un véritable amour pour la typographie, à tel point que parfois je HUUUURLE dans le métro sur une approche qui est tout simplement ignoble!

    En fait je suis devenue TYPOCONTROLFREAK! :D

    Je me surprends de temps en temps à regarder pendant des heures une Esperluette “&” (Ampersand) il y en a de tellement belles!

    Bisous!
    ByGlam

  • xaruxamu October, 16 2013, 7:06 / Reply

    C’est vrai que tu as une écriture vraiment caractéristique,que tu pourrais en faire une typographie (garancedoré.odt :-P) ce serait classe!
    Ton post tombe bien, ce week-end je vais apprendre la calligraphie anglaise…j’ai hate!

    des bises!

  • Enfant, j’ai appris a ecrire avec plume et encre, pleins et delies.
    Mon frère a une ecriture magnifique , ses majuscules sont complexes et de veritables oeuvres d’Art. Il m’a enseigne comment utiliser les differentes plumes et l’encre de Chine. La beaute de la calligraphie chinoise m’a toujours fascinee.

  • Wow! I love calligraphy since I was a child. These invitations are so beautiful! I can’t choose my favorite…maybe Balenciaga, it’s awesome!
    http://heelsandpeplum.wordpress.com/

  • C’est vrai qu’une belle écriture c’est magnifique ! J’adore la tienne ! Radieuse journée !

  • I would like to be able to write so well!

  • C’est vrai que ta jolie manière d’apposer du texte sur tes photos fait partie intégrante de ton travail et le rend unique.
    http://www.mode9.fr

  • J’ai changer plusieurs fois et je ne suis “jamais” tombée amoureuse. Une écriture belle et lisible.
    Comme celle d’une de mes anciennes prof de français au collège. Rien à faire le rendu était vraiment trop différent. J’ai fini par me décider à garder la même écriture assez jolie, moderne et lisible. Il a fallu faire un choix parmi tous mes “talents”.
    J’aimerais me marier un jour et je souhaites que tous ces petits détails soit réglés.
    Et l’écriture en fait parti !

  • …uuu my favorite is Dior so elegant !!! Yes handwriting is in this time something miracle… I like it very,very much ….Your name of blog was the first interesting place where I put my eyes and falt in love!! By the way You have absolutely right…. man never know what will do in the future… I had such strange situation…

  • I would definitely call your handwriting style calligraphy! Calligraphy is an art form that encompasses all sorts of styles today, from classic and traditional to more free form. It is beautiful and expressive!

  • par exemple, have a look!

  • Wonderful website. Really incredible work, Lisa.

  • Calligraphy or typography? I’m a HUGE fan of both, since entering the blogging world. It matters so much, especially since I always take pride in handwriting.
    Your Friend, Jess

  • What a fun way calligraphy would be to be involved in the fashion industry….

  • me too… love it

  • So funny I had the same problem with hand writing. It is actually really bad. And I can write one sentence and write the same letter two to three different ways.

    Ali of Dressing Ken

  • j’aime vraiment ton style d’écriture !

  • As a letter lover, I can say that I’m going quit insane for the Margiela invite. The curvature of the D and G — superb. I’m about to go practice…

  • What is your process?! Sorry, I’m sure you’ve mentioned it somewhere before but i just can’t remember. Do you tend to write your text by hand, scan it in, place it over image, etc etc? Or are you all digital?
    All the best!
    Jess

  • Je reconnais évidemment l’écriture de Nicolas Ouchenir, LE calligraphe de Paris qui fait également de très beaux logos.

  • Yessss! Nicolas Ouchenir the best! I recognize his work on the Miu Miu and Dior invitations and so many others… But always the best ??????

  • Il s’agit de Lili Raphanel, LA calligraphe de Paris qui travaille pour les grandes maisons (Dior, Miu Miu…). Je suis fan !

  • During my erasmus in paris I lived with the woman who made them. She did these cards at night, in a tiny studio to buy tickets for a year long stay in thailand with her daughter. One of the most amazing person I’ve ever met.

  • I didn’t have a writting style either!, my mom is a painter and also a language teacher, so I spend a big time trying to copy her style and all kind of femenine and artistic currents she loves.

    regards

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