A swimsuit powerhouse built in Quebec | Canada Voices

While you’re browsing Shan’s sleek flagship boutique in Laval, Quebec, you might not realize its swimsuits and summer vacation-ready apparel are being made just below your feet. Until you’re invited to take a peek. Shan’s literal vertical integration is a great point of pride for founder and head designer Chantal Levesque, who started the company in 1985 at the age of 27, naming it after her firstborn son. Her goal was to create a brand that offered high-quality swimwear, crafted by workers who were treated fairly. “The most important point for me is I don’t want to use people,” Levesque says.

She began working out of her basement with a small team and built the current design and production facility in 2008. Today, Shan employs 125 people and sells swimwear, resort wear and ready-to-wear in 900 points of sale in over 35 countries, from luxury department stores to family-owned boutiques. “Shan is always a product that’s both glamorous and functional,” Levesque says. “It can be fashionable, it can be on trend, but it has to be comfortable and stand the test of time.”

The company, too, has weathered more than a few storms over four decades. Most recently, in 2020, Shan launched its first ready-to-wear line just before the swimwear industry was hit by the pandemic. As helpful as diversifying the collection was, creating everyday apparel elicits the least amount of excitement from Levesque, whose passion lies in vacation wear. “I love swimwear, travel and the spirit of the summer,” she says. “That’s why it took so long to introduce ready-to-wear.”

Only selling swimwear can be limiting, especially in a cold climate, although it helps that Shan’s customers hail from all over. It’s also highly technical and precise because a bathing suit sits so close to the body; just a millimetre of fabric can completely alter the fit. Over the years, Levesque and her team have created techniques specific to swimwear’s stretch fabric, including ways to pleat, stitch and shrink material. Their Vector iX machine pulls fabric tight and cuts it more precisely than a human hand ever could.

They use many of these methods (namely their zigzag stitch) in their ready-to-wear collections, which is often made in a signature stretch fabric of polyamide and elastane. “If you saw the technical side of it, how layers of fabric are fused together using the same stitching as our swimwear to create the perfect silhouette …” Levesque says of Shan’s ready-to-wear bestseller, a classic fitted blazer. “It appears simple, but it’s far from it.”

Business at Shan is good, but the “Buy Canadian” movement hasn’t had as much impact as you might expect. Levesque supposes this might be because of the cost of her pieces (a swimsuit starts at $300), and because fast fashion has made people less willing to invest in fewer, high-quality items. But with all three of her sons now working for her and an exceptionally loyal work force, Levesque is still eyeing expansion via creating a second production facility in the United States, where 40 per cent of Shan’s business comes from. Quality will be the top priority. “What we do is impeccable and that’s my pride,” Levesque says. “That’s what I want to sell.”