A personalized service to dress up your windows

Made with wool, cotton or linen woven by French craftspeople preserving exclusive savoir-faires, WINDOW curtains are made-to-measure in the Vosges region, historical area of quality home linen.

A brand which combines style, service and quality, close to your home

WINDOW Made to Measure curtains in the Palais Royal gardens curtains are the poor relation of home decoration. When it is not completely left out from furniture collections, it is only available in a few shades and patterns, standard-length. To top it all, most of those “ready-to-hang” models are made at the other end of the world with low-quality materials.
And one does need more than talent to manage to hang their curtains… It calls for experience to install a curtain rod, as well as some balance, a ladder or stepladder and a lot of tools that they don’t necessarily own.

A career gradually woven

Frédéric Martin-Bernard, founder of WINDOW

Frédéric Martin-Bernard grew up in a small village in the Vosges region at the gates of Gérardmer. His parents lived at number 1 on the factory road. And the factory at the end of the road was a manufacturing place for a famous house linen brand.

Graduating in 1992 with a degree from the Ecole Supérieure des Industries Textiles d’Epinal, he put the finishing touches on his formal education with fashion design classes in Paris. He practised this job for some time, while at the same time teaching sewing during several years.

At the same period of time, Frédéric Martin-Bernard was noticed by a professional newspaper thanks to his complete curriculum in textile and clothing. In the spring of 1997, he became a member of its editorial board, which was an ideal school to train for journalism. From 1999 on, he wrote articles as a freelance journalist for different magazines and newspapers, until he was hired by a famous French newspaper in June 2007.

Head of the mode department during twelve years, FMB wrote about current events in the luxury sector, keeping a special curiosity for various savoir-faires. He never refused to go on the field and visit a manufacturer. He liked to see what is hidden from view, discover how things are made and explain the transformation process from an original idea to a finished product – especially when it called on traditions and preserved professions.

His original passion for confection, cloths and fine linen never left him. Enriched with thirty years of experience, observation and analysis of the fashion and luxury worlds, Frédéric Martin-Bernard today returns somehow to his personal and professional roots by imagining a brand of home decoration, in parallel to his activity as a journalist.

WINDOW was born from the acknowledgement of those multiple difficulties. It is a complete service of creation, manufacture and installation of curtains. We take care of everything, from the measurements of the dimensions of your windows to the installation of the curtains, 3 or 4 weeks later, with made-to-measure curtain poles and individualized curtains that have been made-to-measure in the Vosges region – historical area of quality household linen – from a selection of new or vintage fabrics, composed of natural fibers woven in France.

WINDOW operates in Paris, in France and abroad upon request.

Long before upcycling became trendy, Frédéric Martin-Bernard browsed flea-markets to find antique sheets adorned with hemstitches, heraldry and embroideries. The elite of linen or cotton fabrics – or even both for linen-cotton blends, what we call in French “toile métis” – which had been carefully put away in family closets.

Some of these had even never been used. The embroidery of their monograms still showed chalk guidelines. Others had kept the tags from their manufacturers… The idea was to awaken all of this sleeping household linen; to give it a new breath by transforming it into curtains, headboards or pillow covers.

One thing leading to another, FMB got caught in the game of finding more, always more pieces… Today, WINDOW owns hundreds of bedsheets discovered in attics, flea markets or in private sellers’ collections… Upon receipt, each bedsheet is thoroughly cleaned, controlled and filed while it waits for its new owner dreaming of custom-made curtains with vintage fabric and their initials.

WINDOW curtains in vintage fabrics are also made-to-order to suit the height of each window.

WINDOW only offers natural fabrics woven in France by craftspeople keeping exclusive techniques and savoir-faire.

Its “palette” is deliberately limited to about twenty carefully selected references, chosen for their design as well as their quality, among textile manufacturers who are not necessarily specialized in home decoration.The collection will evolve with the seasons, moods, love strikes, trends and encounters. Natural materials, French craft, style, originality and quality are the main selection criteria of WINDOW.

The suppliers of trimmings, curtain rods and fastenings were chosen with the same care. From conception to the putting up, the idea of WINDOW is not to try and get somewhere else what we can find right next home.

A manufacturing process inspired by couture and the luxury sector
WINDOW curtains in vintage fabrics adorned with hemstitches, heraldry and embroideries

The Vosges region is the historical heart of French textile. At the beginning, its speciality resided in spinning, weaving and coton bleaching. One thing leading to another, production then went towards house linen.

Up until the 1980’s, every famous French house of bed and table linen had manufacturing workshops in the valleys surrounding the Lac de Gérardmer. Today, those manufactures are noticeably fewer. Some savoir-faires may even have disappeared were it not for the launch of the Vosges Terre Textile label in 2011, which contributed to maintain a majority of craftspeople and related jobs involved in the production line of house linen.

WINDOW relies on the expertise of close manufactures from the Vosges region for the embroidery and manufacturing of the curtains. They bring together their long experience with our made-to-order approach. Every stitch and finishing touches are made following strict specifications inspired by couture and the luxury sector. A WINDOW curtain has nothing to hide. It must be beautiful from every angle.

The first collection of WINDOW VA&VIENT ready-to-hang curtains is inspired by summer, the blue sea and sky, bougainvillea and flowering hydrangeas… The vast majority of these fabrics are exclusive creations, developed in partnership with French craftsmen and industrialists.

Each model is available in 4 standard sizes to cover windows from 1m35 to 3m35 high.

This new line of ready-to-hang curtains is linked to an application, digital and easy to use, allowing their length to be adjusted to the nearest centimeter, by a partner workshop.

Hence its name WINDOW VA&VIENT.

All WINDOW VA&VIENT models include a paper dressmaker’s tape inserted in the left side seam. This allows you to define, using the mobile application developed exclusively for WINDOW VA&VIENT, the final length of the curtain in relation to the dimensions of the window and the height of the bar.

Then, you have to fill in your details and, within 24 hours, you receive the address of the workshop responsible for making the hem. A multi-purpose envelope is included in the packaging. All you have to do is copy the address of the workshop and pay the one-way postage.

Alterations and return postage are borne by WINDOW VA&VIENT for shipments to mainland France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and Portugal

First of all, we fix an appointment at the client’s home to take note of the precise dimensions of the windows you want to equip with curtains, present you with a selection of fabrics in accordance with the rest of your decoration, and finally draw up a quotation for your future curtains.

Three or four weeks after the confirmation of your order, your WINDOW curtains are ready! If need be, it would be a pleasure for us to come and hang the curtains – and, according to the client’s needs and wishes, we can also provide the curtain rods that we carefully selected from French manufacturers, and fix them as well.

WINDOW also offers an upkeep service for its made-to-measure products. Six months, a year or several years following the delivery of your curtains, we can lend you temporary hangings while they are being cleaned in our workshops.

WINDOW is a Parisian brand of home decoration 100% made in France.

The fabrics used are woven in the North of France, in the Pyrénées-Ortientales, the Landes, the Tarn or the Vosges region, while the rufflettes and other fastenings are made around Saint-Etienne, and the braids come from the surroundings of Lyon; the curtain rods and other fastenings are made in Parisian suburban areas. All the made-to-measure crafting is made in workshops in the Hautes-Vosges region, which is the historical home of high-quality household linen.

WINDOW operates in Paris, in France and abroad.

WINDOW was created in January 2022 after two years of reflection and research, dialogue with manufacturers and crafting of a unique offer of made-to-measure products and services. It has been imagined by Frédéric Martin-Bernard, who has been deciphering fashion, ways of life and luxury as a journalist from the 1990’s, after he studied textile industry and clothing during seven years.

In addition to bringing about a solution to the puzzle of home curtains, WINDOW’s mission is to develop products and services closer to its consumers and the manufacturers it works with.

On average, production time lasts about 3 to 4 weeks between the validation of the quotation and the hanging of the curtains.

By limiting the intermediaries in the production process, WINDOW can control its manufacturing time and offers affordable prices for such a high quality. Every project is made after a quotation. Prices vary depending both on the fabric chosen and the dimensions of the windows.

Every WINDOW creation is one-of-a-kind.

On an indicative basis, prices settle around 1000€ by window, materials and hanging included.

Yes, affordable made in France also exists in home decoration !

WINDOW works with local manufacturers in order for its production to be more responsive and precise, all the while contributing to salvage savoir-faires in weaving, trimmings, ironwork and crafting in France.

WINDOW also works with French craftspeople for environmental purposes. This way, there is less back-and-forth movement of the merchandise and a limitation of CO2 emissions.

Furthermore, WINDOW uses fabrics made with natural materials rather than petroleum derivatives, which are unfortunately widely used in home decoration.

Always trying to improve its carbon footprint, WINDOW also offers curtains made with antique bed sheets, which display embroideries and monograms. Those are vintage and unique fabrics that we found in all of France.