BRUSSELS, Belgium — Following a tip-off from his mother that a house was for sale on Brussels' premier shopping street, Avenue Louise, Pierre Degand immediately drove to the capital. Degand initially believed his mother was mistaken, but eventually realised she was referring to a maison de maïtre, built with pre-war majesty in 1911. Immediately enraptured by the property, Degand set about finding the money to buy it. The 10^th bank he approached finally agreed to fund him, and ever since, the Belgian retailer has toiled in a labour of love to refurbish, repurpose and fill the renamed Maison Degand with a menswear store of sufficient scale and sophistication to convincingly inhabit so beautiful a house. Spread across three buildings, and employing 35 members of staff, Degand now dresses the Dutch and Belgian royal families and is a major stockist for the world's leading sartorial and luxury brands.

BoF spoke to Michèle Degand, the wife and partner of Maison Degand founder, Pierre.

BoF: Tell us about Maison Degand.

MD: Degand is located in a very beautiful house just outside of the city. It is in an old maison de maître which has been completely restored. Everything in the house is exceptionally detailed: every wall, every window, every curtain — everything. When the Sartorialist came, he took so many pictures because every detail truly is incredible, and every article of clothing we sell is shown in a really special way. It is not a shop; it is a house.

BoF: Is there a typical Maison Degand consumer?

MD: We have all kinds of customers, 80 percent Belgian, but of course people today travel everywhere, not only businessmen. Here, we have no tourists; people coming in really want to buy. We have 15,000 regular customers, and we have a computer with everything in about them in it: what they want, what they like and their demands. So with all these people, when they want something, when we go buying we know, ‘Oh that is for Mr So-and-So.’

BoF: What service do you provide your consumers?

MD: To sell to people who are very demanding, if you have three pieces, is impossible. So we always said that we really needed to be complete in our choice so when the customers come they say, 'Wow, here I can find what I need.' We have customers who buy ten jackets in one time because we have a lot of stock. We have a lot of merchandise in the shop. We have 3,000 Ballantyne cashmere sweaters in stock, hundreds of Brioni suits, really, we don't have a little bit — we have a lot.

BoF: How does the store surroundings impact the buy?

MD: We have a lot of luxury customers who want the most incredible things. Pierre loves to sell incredible things that do not exist elsewhere; it is his hobby. If someone wants a crocodile jacket in orange, which is impossible to find, he’ll find it. We have customers who have money and they want incredible things, and Pierre is the world champion at finding these things. My husband knows very well all his customers; they have become almost friends and he knows their taste, what they want and then really when somebody wants something special – he finds it.

BoF: How has Maison Degand diversified?

MD: In the beginning, Pierre was doing such a high level that his customers were only wealthy businessmen. When he began at Degand, he said, ‘I want to sell the most incredible articles I can find on the market.’ So he started with a very high level. He went only to makers of the most luxurious articles, not brands, but the best cashmere sweaters, the best suits, the best in everything. That is really what he wanted in the beginning. But, when I started to work with my husband I opened the boutique, which is sport and business, with brands like Caruso, Boglioni, those kinds, then a lot of new customers came here saying, wow I really thought Degand was only really expensive. Today people know we have in fact two different shops next to each other, the big house and the boutique next door.

BoF: How else has Maison Degand expanded?

MD: In the back we have a shoe shop with two levels, and we have also a shirt maker working with us on made-to-measure shirts. That is in a separate house next door and now we have opened a restaurant and a hotel. Thirty years ago Pierre bought the house and said, I am going to make something, and he has.

BoF: How does the product assortment break down?

MD: In the luxury shop everything is sewn by hand and the biggest seller is Kiton shirts. Nobody in Belgium has them except us, and we sell a lot of those, also Free and Brioni. In the boutique we sell a lot of trousers, sports jackets, Jacques Cohen. People come here because they know we have a lot of stock, and if we see something is selling well we immediately rebuy the good articles. We do one, two, three reorders a season of very good articles. I can safely say we sell 300 Brioni suits a year, 100 completely bespoke suits made in-house and 500-600 suits more in the boutique, half ready-to-wear, half of it made-to-measure.