ZADIG & VOLTAIRE

The name came off a bookshelf: Voltaire’s 1747 novella Zadig, or The Book of Fate, whose hero takes life’s reversals as they come. Thierry Gillier started the label in Paris in 1997 — his father André had co-founded Lacoste and run one of France’s large knitwear manufacturers, so the trade was inherited even if the attitude wasn’t.