Ladurée is a luxury cakes and pastries brand based in Paris. It is known as the inventor of the double-decker macaron, fifteen thousand of which are sold every day. They are still one of the best known makers of macarons in the world. Louis-Ernest Ladurée, a miller, was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.
He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.
He founded the bakery on the Rue Royale, Paris in 1862. During the Paris Commune uprising of 1871 the bakery was burnt down. A pastry shop was built at the same location and Jules Chéret was entrusted with the interior decoration.
The chubby cherubs dressed as pastry cooks, painted by him on the ceiling, form the company’s emblem. The interior of the premises were painted in the same celadon colour as the façade. Ladurée’s rise to fame came in 1930 when his grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, had the original idea of the double-decker, sticking two macaron shells together with a creamy ganache as filling.
Queen Catherine de’ Medici had brought the macaron to France from Italy in the 16th century, and the recipe for the biscuit had hardly varied over the years, but the amounts of the ingredients used and the appearance of the end product were up to the individual bakers.
Desfontaines also opened a tearoom at the pastry shop. In those days ladies were not admitted to cafés, which were the exclusive domain of men. This was a big success with ladies, who enjoyed meeting in the freedom of the tearoom rather than their homes.
The history of Parisian tea salons is intimately tied to the history of the Ladurée family. It all began in 1862, when Louis Ernest Ladurée, a miller from France’s southwest, created a bakery at 16 rue Royale in Paris.
During the same year, the first stone of the Garnier Opera was laid, and the area surrounding the Madeleine was rapidly developing into one of the capital’s most important and elegant business districts. The most prestigious names in French luxury goods had already taken up residence in this neighborhood.
In 1871, while Baron Haussmann was giving Paris a ‘‘new face’’, a fire made access to the transformation of the bakery to a pastry shop. The decoration of the pastry shop was entrusted to Jules Cheret, a famous turn-of-the-century painter and poster artist. M Cheret sought inspiration from the painting techniques used for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Garnier Opera. By incorporating them in his work, he added depth and relief to the ceilings ornamented with cherubic children.
Under the Second Empire, cafes developed and became more and more luxurious. They attracted Parisian high society. Along with the chic restaurants around the Madeleine, they became the showcases of the capital. The beginning of this century found Paris wrapped up in a frenzy of distraction and going out in public.
Parisians flocked to the Universal Exposition. Women were also changing. They wanted to make new acquaintances. Literary salons and literature circles were outmoded. Ernest Ladurée’s wife, Jeanne Souchard, daughter of a well-known hotelier in Rouen, had the idea of mixing styles: the Parisian café and pastry shop gave birth to one of the first tea salons in town.
The “salon de thé” had a definite advantage over the cafés: they permitted ladies to gather in freedom. Jeanne Souchard succeeded in combining the turn-of-the-century trend to modernism with knowledge of the merits of a craft transmitted by her family.
The rue Royale tea room was enlarged in 1930 by Pierre Desfontaines, second cousin of Louis Ernest Ladurée. When he retired, his son, Jean Marie, and his niece, Dominique, presided over the tea salon. This site imbued with a refined atmosphere and charged with history seduced David Holder and his father Francis Holder, founder of the Holder Group.
In 1993, they decided to buy this Parisian institution, and promote and enlarge the famous “Maison”. In September 1997, a new prestigious Ladurée address both a restaurant and tea room opened on the Champs-Elysées. The mission of the President David Holder is thus to bring back the great classics, which have contributed to the reputation of this ‘salon de thé’, as well as create an environment for gastronomic creativity in Paris. With him, Ladurée will be a tea salon, pastry shop, restaurant, chocolate shop and an ice cream parlor.
The Holder group intends to introduce this century-old name in the main capitals of the world and develop new business opportunities. The Holder family also owns the PAUL bakery chain in France. Following the takeover, the company began an expansion drive, setting up pastry shops and tea rooms on the Champs-Élysées and in Le Printemps Haussmann in 1997, followed by Ladurée Bonaparte in 2002.
The International development of Ladurée started in 2005 with London. Ladurée stores are now also present in Monaco, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Luxembourg, Kuwait, Ireland, and the USA. And more recently in Qatar.
Ladurée made the pastries for the film Marie Antoinette, directed by Sofia Coppola; its famous macarons can be seen in a scene between Marie Antoinette and Ambassador Mercy. They can also be seen in The CW’s hit teen drama Gossip Girl as Blair Waldorf’s favorite pastries.
In 2012 Ladurée will also release a collection of makeup inspired by the colors of their macarons. It will be available in Japan in February 2012, and in Europe from November 2012. For more information on the company we invite you to visit the link below.