Here at Playtime, we love putting innovative brands in the spotlight! From the SINGULAR selection at the winter edition of Playtime Paris, the young brand Bleu Citron is already making itself known in the kid's market. Launched just last year, they have just joined forces for a collaboration with womenswear label Modetrotter to create a special mini-me moment for parents and kids everywhere!

Join us as we learn more about this exciting partnership!

Can you please tell us about Bleu Citron?

Bleu Citron is a young French brand created in 2021 that is reinventing kid's fashion through its concept of creative, artistic, and educational clothing. Bleu Citron has imagined a concept that allows children to feel free to be themselves, to express themselves, and to dare to wear their personalities and their differences on their clothes, all while enjoying getting dressed! Our garments can be infinitely redecorated with our thematic collections of embroidered patches that children can attach to their clothes. With the help of psychomotor therapists, we brought our concept to life to allow children to develop their self-confidence, creativity, fine motor skills, and cultural awareness.

As often as they like, children can create new decorations on their clothes by attaching the patches of their choosing. The possibilities become endless as they combine all our different collections! To allow children to discover the world in a fun way, each collection has a theme that is accompanied by educational content prepared in collaboration with education professionals: an audio story, an explanatory leaflet, and a pretty poster to decorate their room! The themes explore places, environments, eras, artistic movements, or even essential subjects like geometry or the alphabet.

Bleu Citron is an eco-friendly concept because it allows people to limit the number of clothes in their closets: they only change the patches, not the sweatshirts. It allows siblings to wear the same style of sweatshirt but still make it their own with the patches they use. The fit is also designed to be oversized, so our sweatshirts can be worn for at least two years. We use natural and organic materials, the clothes are designed in Portugal, and the packaging we use is compostable and/or reusable.

This concept is just the beginning of the adventure for Bleu Citron: because we are convinced that we must cultivate our differences to grow up happy and fulfilled, we are working on a whole series of everyday objects to encourage kids to discover and develop their talents.

How did this collaboration with the brand Modetrotter come about?

We crossed paths with Marie Courroy, the creator of Modetrotter, during a panel for crowdfunding with Ulule. It was love at first sight, not only aesthetically, but also philosophically. Modetrotter creates fashion that is free of traditional fashion codes and creates pieces that transport their community, while Bleu Citron has formed a new type of fashion that is creative and educational to help children grow up. The common denominator? A strong, modular style and an irrepressible desire to bring something to life through clothes.

Modetrotter being a womenswear brand, Marie quickly suggested making an adult sized sweatshirt together. Many people were already asking us for adult sizes of our creative sweatshirts, so we immediately jumped at the occasion! By chance, our collaboration was set to be ready mid-2022, so we decided to release it in celebration of Mother's Day. We also decided to launch a children's size at the same time so that parents could match with their kids.

Where did your inspiration for your sweatshirt and patches in this collaboration come from?

Like Modetrotter, Bleu Citron loves to take families to other places through our collections. So, to match with Modetrotter's current collection "Sous le Soleil de Sifnos," we centered our concept of colors around the Cyclades. For the collab, we designed Greece-themed patches and realized our iconic Bleu Citron sweatshirt in a beautiful sea green.

When we hear "Greece," we immediately think of the Cyclades and their unique architecture. For the children's patches, we tried to recreate the decorations of Cycladic villages. The idea was that children could use them to imagine their own postcard. To maximize the number of possible combinations, we made it so the patches can go on top of one another. This innovative idea was successful, and the sweatshirt has become a real construction game! For the adult patches, we stepped a bit away from our base idea of asking children to create their own design on their sweatshirt. The patches all represent symbols of Greece from gastronomy to fishing to a bit of mythology with a small Poseidon patch.

What is your favorite piece from the collab?

The adult sweatshirt is particularly well cut, and extremely soft! It is very cool even without patches, but by completing it with the lobster patch, it becomes iconic!

Thank you so much to Thomas for taking the time to talk about Bleu Citron and this exciting collaboration with us!

We can't wait to see what comes next from Bleu Citron, and to see what amazing brands we will discover in the SINGULAR space at the summer edition of Playtime Paris!
Make sure to get your pass to come meet new brands with us!