Founder index · Longchamp · 1937–2020
Philippe Cassegrain
The lesson that travels
“A product that solves a problem outlives a product that signals status. Le Pliage has been in continuous production since 1993; every fashion handbag launched that year is gone.”
Philippe Cassegrain was trained as an engineer and it shows in everything he made. His father, the first Jean Cassegrain, had started Longchamp in 1948 by covering smoking pipes in leather in the back of a Paris tobacconist's — a novelty business named after a racecourse. Philippe took it from pipes to small leather goods to, in 1971, its first handbag, and then spent two decades building a wholesale network across Europe and Asia at a price point where reach mattered more than control.
In 1993 he designed Le Pliage. It is a nylon tote with a russet leather flap and a fold, built on origami principles, that collapses the bag flat into a rectangle. It is light, waterproof, holds a great deal, costs about €145 today, and is not remotely glamorous. It was also the single best commercial decision anyone in this file made, because it solved a problem instead of announcing a status. Thirty-three years later it is still in production essentially unchanged, and it is the company.
He kept manufacturing in France when almost every peer moved to subcontractors, and he never took outside capital. In four generations Longchamp has had no investor, no listing, and no conglomerate parent — which in a library containing Gucci, Tiffany and Versace is close to unique. His son Jean runs the business as chief executive; his daughter Sophie Delafontaine is artistic director. The succession was arranged years before it was needed, which is precisely the thing Guccio Gucci failed to do.
He died in 2020 at 83. In 2023 and 2024, the two years after, Longchamp posted growth of more than 40% and then 20% — its strongest results ever, from a design he finished thirty years earlier.
§01 — The hard calls
- 1971
Move a small-leather-goods maker into handbags, competing against established French houses with far more heritage.
Longchamp enters the category it will eventually be known for, and does it from below on price — the position it still holds.
- 1980s
Expand internationally through department stores and distributors rather than building owned boutiques.
Reach at a price point that could not have carried flagship rents. It is the opposite of what Gucci and Prada did, and at €145 a bag it was the correct answer.
- 1993
Design and launch a foldable nylon tote at roughly a tenth of a luxury handbag's price, from a house trying to be taken seriously as a leather maker.
Le Pliage is still in continuous production in 2026 and carries the company. The risk was that a cheap nylon bag would define the brand downward; it defined it durably instead.
- 1990s–2000s
Decline outside capital and keep manufacturing in France while the industry consolidated into LVMH, Kering and Richemont.
Four generations, zero outside shareholders, and a family fortune the French business press has estimated near €1.9 billion. The cost is scale; the benefit is that nobody has ever had to be persuaded to invest in a €145 bag.
- 2010s
Hand the company to his son Jean as chief executive and his daughter Sophie as artistic director while he was alive to watch.
A succession completed before it was forced. Longchamp's two strongest years on record came after his death, which is the only real test of whether a handover worked.
§02 — Around this founder
The company