If the Willot’s were the “Dalton of textiles”, and Boussac the king of cotton, Maurice Bidermann was the Tsar of men’s wear.

Businessman Maurice Bidermann, who formed the giant textile group Bidermann, died last Monday at the age of 87. He was the brother of the singer Régine. Born in 1932 in Belgium he built up a textile empire in the 1960s and 1970s from a small family group that he had inherited by modernizing production techniques and business practices. The Bidermann group developed several licenses for men’s ready-to-wear luxury brands in addition to its textile activities for workwear. The group, which had become the French leader in men’s clothing and had several thousand employees in France and abroad, had then encountered difficulties being heavily in debt. Continue reading →