Victor Glemaud: From Knitwear to Interior Textiles

Victor Glemaud's Fitbit and Schumacher collaborations carry the colour and texture of his knitwear into accessories and interiors.

Photo: Viki Forshee / Vogue.

Victor Glemaud launched his label in 2006 with statement knitwear, according to its official biography. His work also includes knitted Fitbit bands and furnishing textiles for Schumacher. The change of setting brings a change of scale: colour might wrap around a wrist, cover a garment or repeat across a room. Across these projects, fabric remains the starting point for designs that combine a strong visual identity with everyday use.

A career between design and communication

Raised in Queens, Glemaud studied at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and began his career as an assistant to Patrick Robinson. He subsequently worked in fashion publicity at KCD before returning to design in 2005. Roles at Paco Rabanne and Tommy Hilfiger followed. FIT's 2021 profile traces this route through both the making and presentation of clothes.

Those jobs involved different relationships with a garment: developing it in a studio, communicating it to an audience and establishing a recognisable identity for a brand. Glemaud's own label brought those concerns together around knitwear. In 2017, he became a finalist in the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, a milestone also recorded in the FIT profile.

The brand describes its clothes as intended for people across genders, races, sizes and personalities. That stated ambition places the wearer alongside the visual statement. The proposition is expansive: a clear aesthetic that leaves room for different ways of dressing.

Knitwear at a different scale

In August 2020, the CFDA announced Glemaud's collaboration with Fitbit for the Sense and Versa 3. Its announcement described knitted bands made with REPREVE recycled plastic fibres. The designs included a red-and-gold chevron, layered black and red, and metallic gold with black.

A watchband offers little room for a designer to establish an identity. Its pattern has to work within a narrow strip, close to the skin and beside the watch face. Glemaud's combinations made colour and knitted texture the distinguishing features of an accessory attached to a technological device.

Photo: Courtesy of Schumacher / Harper's Bazaar.

The project also extended a construction associated with his clothing into another part of a wardrobe. Knitwear became something a person could wear without changing an entire outfit. The documented fibre choice adds a specific material detail; it does not, by itself, establish the environmental impact of the finished band.

Pattern as a record of place

Glemaud's work with Schumacher moves from the body to interiors. The manufacturer's Toussaint Toile description identifies scenes celebrating Toussaint Louverture alongside Haitian flowers, foliage and landscapes. Schumacher presents the design as a tribute to Glemaud's Caribbean heritage.

That historical reference gives the pattern a subject as well as a decorative role. The figures and landscapes place Haiti within a textile made for domestic spaces. Repetition can carry those images across a broad surface, making the historical scenes part of what a room's occupants encounter each day.

The collection catalogue also lists Jessie Cut Velvet, Keket Stripe Tape and Evelyne Crochet Trim. These are different kinds of textile intervention: a textured fabric can cover a substantial area, while a tape or trim marks an edge. Together, they extend the collection from a room's larger surfaces to its finishing details.

From a garment to a room

The Fitbit and Schumacher projects show two directions for a designer whose practice began with statement knitwear. One compresses colour and texture into an accessory. The other gives pattern the space to repeat, including imagery with a specific cultural and historical reference.

Scale changes the encounter. A band is seen at arm's length and moves with its wearer; a furnishing fabric can be read from across a room and examined more closely as someone approaches. In each setting, proportion determines how much of a pattern is visible at once.

Photo: Courtesy of Schumacher / Harper's Bazaar.

Fabric connects these projects while their uses keep them distinct. Glemaud's work moves between personal dress and domestic surroundings through decisions about colour, texture and the space an image occupies.