The fashion brand that’s French enough for Parisians

At the brand’s 20 global pop-ups and standalone stores, known as appartements, delicate wool cardigans are neatly stacked from floor to ceiling and customers are greeted with the word bonjour. On its website, shoppers can find gamine cropped jackets, sweaters with lace trims and a tied neck scarf to complete every outfit. Here, plain white T-shirts and mid-rise jeans aren’t wardrobe staples—rather, they’re “French Heroes."

While all of that might seem like clever marketing for American shoppers, even Parisians agree: Sézane has a decidedly French allure.

“It looks chic and it is easy," said Maylis de Lacoste Lareymondie, 41, who works at a private-equity firm in Manhattan and is from Paris. “This is why everyone in Paris wears Sézane."

Since its founding in 2013, the company has cornered the market on French Girl style, outfitting legions of professional women with sweaters, trench coats and button downs that would fit right in along the Seine. Last year, Sézane’s revenue was about $450 million, according to an estimate from the financial data firm PrivCo. The company declined to share financial figures.

Now, Sézane is at an inflection point, where it is expanding while trying to maintain its je ne sais quoi. The company is opening new stores and looking to grow its American customer base. It recently launched a children’s-wear line, called Petit Sézane. For those hoping to live a French lifestyle, Sézane has become a one-stop shop.

The French Girl at the center of the brand is Morgane Sézalory, its CEO and creative director. She co-founded Sézane with Thibault Lougnon, an entrepreneur who was her husband at the time, and a third partner who is no longer with the brand. She’d spent nearly a decade selling secondhand luxury finds and vintage treasures. On eBay and a blog, she developed a following for how she styled old pieces from Courrèges, Parisian flea markets and her sister’s closet.

After launching as an e-commerce brand, Sézane opened its first store in Paris in 2015, then opened stores in cities like New York and London.

To fans, Sézalory, who lives in Paris, is the textbook mademoiselle they aspire to. With over 300,000 followers on Instagram, Sézalory often designs clothes with herself and her team in mind. The secret to nailing Parisian styling comes down to the art of mixing high and low, she said. It’s why a typical Sézane look pairs casual jeans with a dressy lace blouse or tailored pinstripe suit pants with an oversize tee.

“You don’t look overdressed," Sézalory said. “It looks like you don’t think about it."

At a time when fast fashion is churning out TikTok trends and luxury labels keep raising their prices, Sézane has grown into a fashion empire by making elevated, mid-market basics. Knitwear sells for around $140, dresses for $200 and leather bags go for about $350.

In September, Sézane launched kids clothes, with ruffle-collared blouses, corduroy trousers and unisex T-shirts that are already enticing Francophile moms. Some “clothes have a sweet Parisian look, others effortlessly cool tomboy styling," said Charlotte Kewley, a 41-year-old kids stylist based in London who shopped the collection for her daughter online.

The expansion into children’s clothes helped round out Sézane into a lifestyle brand; it also sells menswear and home goods. Sézalory said her priority is to make Sézane “the most beautiful brand."

In 2022, the company sold a minority stake to Téthys Invest, the family office of billionaire L’Oréal heir Françoise Bettencourt Meyers. Téthys Invest declined to comment. Sézane has raised about $5.4 million in funding, according to PrivCo, from firms including Summit Partners and General Atlantic. Sézane declined to share investor information. Summit Partners did not respond to requests for comment. General Atlantic declined an interview request; in an email, Melis Kahya Akar, the firm’s managing director and head of consumer for EMEA, said she believed “Sézane has a long runway ahead."

Last year, it hired two executives from LVMH (one of whom has since left the company) and is now gunning for growth in the U.S., which accounts for about 25% of its business. Most of the company’s business comes from Europe.

Sézane spent 39% more on social media advertising in the U.S. from January through September 2024, compared with the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm.

Danielle Colding, who owns a power equipment dealership in Jacksonville, Fla., started buying Sézane after enough influencers posted about the brand. She now owns about 25 pieces and said she found the quality and fit exceptional.

“When I find brands I like, I go all in on them," Colding, 35, said.

Sézane immerses customers in its world-building through its stores and pop-ups, which are stocked sparingly and decorated with French knickknacks. The company has 20 of them in France, the U.K. and the U.S. It will open one more in Madrid later this year, and is currently searching for another location in Los Angeles, Sézalory said.

The company sells the vast majority of its clothes on its website and in its stores. It has a relationship with Le Bon Marché, the French department store, to stock its clothes, and it is running a pop-up shop at Liberty in London until January. Sézalory says its tight distribution is how it’s able to keep prices low while sourcing and mostly manufacturing in Europe.

Julianne Costigan, CEO of a style consulting firm in Toronto, said many of her corporate clients wore Sézane because they felt the clothes weren’t seen everywhere.

“When you wear Sézane, you don’t have to worry about everyone showing up wearing the same thing," Costigan, 34, said. “It’s not the Aritzia pants that everyone has."

The brand offers its “essentials" (such as cardigans, heeled mary janes and suit vests) year-round and releases seasonal collections in small and limited quantities that often sell out. The drop method, popular in streetwear, fuels demand and has inspired superfans like Bri Denis to set her alarm to 3 a.m. in order to shop.

“It is such a frenzy to get pieces before they go out of stock," said Denis, a 32-year-old IT director at the College of Charleston. She’s a moderator of a Sézane Facebook group that has over 36,000 members who swap outfit photos and shopping advice.

Recently, Denis said she’d noticed shoppers on Facebook complain about a decline in quality and the rise in materials blended with polyester.

“Now you have to check the materials before you buy something," Denis said. A spokeswoman for the brand said Sézane’s use of polyester “is limited to 6% to 8% of the fabrics in our collection" and that three-quarters of the polyester is recycled.

Jenna Fisher, who owns a video production business in Rochester, N.Y., said she used to go all out for Sézane’s drops.

“They were really good at creating FOMO, but I’ve come to see through it as faux scarcity," she said, adding that many items come back into stock. A spokeswoman for Sézane said the brand does “not create fake scarcity" but stocks inventory to “match supply and demand for each product."

Now, rather than buying products directly from Sézane, Fisher, 34, now shops the brand’s products secondhand, on Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace, where she’s sold some items, too. She said the resale value for the goods was strong.

“If I buy something for $40 at J.Crew, I can sell it for $10 or donate it, but if I spend $200 at Sézane, I can sell it for that or a little bit less," Fisher said. “The hype helps."

Alexandra Daniel likes to wear white linen and bright patterns when she’s home in Palm Beach, Fla. But the moment the 34-year-old executive assistant travels, she’s eager to whip out her “French girl" wardrobe, which consists of button-down shirts, high-waisted jeans and a big wicker purse, all from Sézane.

“When you comb the Sézane website, you’re like, ‘This is what I want to dress like. I want to go to Paris right now,’" Daniel said.

Write to Chavie Lieber at Chavie.Lieber@WSJ.com