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    “My Spring/Summer 2014 mood board included Bettie Page, Marilyn Monroe, various knots
    and pictures of me in a few of my favourite sailor outfits. I can even spot our lovely au pair Anton.”
    © Olympia Le-Tan, from The Story of O.L.T. (Rizzoli)

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    “Apparently, pink and books are obsessions I started developing quite early…”
    © Olympia Le-Tan, from The Story of O.L.T. (Rizzoli)

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    “On Wednesday afternoons, my grandfather (who was a painter) gave me painting lessons.
    This is me, age 13, in his atelier.” © Olympia Le-Tan, from The Story of O.L.T. (Rizzoli)

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    “Embroidered nudes.” © Olympia Le-Tan, from The Story of O.L.T. (Rizzoli)

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    “My thirtieth birthday card from Dad. I guess he still sees me like this,
    a little girl in dungarees. I am closer to 40 now but she is definitely still inside me.”
    © Pierre Le-Tan, from The Story of O.L.T. (Rizzoli)

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    “I remember this day so clearly. We were staying at a hotel in Cornwall and there
    was a fancy dress competition. There was a girl dressed as a mermaid and her father had to carry her in because her legs were wrapped
    in silver foil. I was so jealous of her costume that I ended up hating mine.”
    © Olympia Le-Tan, from The Story of O.L.T. (Rizzoli)

There are bookbags and then there are Olympia Le-Tan’s book bags. You know them when you see them. They’re the minaudières frequently spotted in the front row and on red carpets that resemble actual paper books — complete with hand-embroidered front covers replicating the literary classics. Like The Catcher in the Rye. Dracula. Valley of the Dolls. Moby Dick. And cookbooks, too.

Since her eponymous collection launched in 2010, Le-Tan has expanded the initial conceit into a whole lifestyle brand, including ready to wear and other handbag styles, that’s still hinged on the witty and bookish. And this month, the London-born, Paris-based designer adds to her accomplishments with her very first book — an actual book, that is — published by Rizzoli. The Story of O.L.T., the name for which is an amusing nod to Anne Desclos’ Story of O, is as charming as the designer is — more a scrapbook, filled with personal images and candid captions (see above slideshow) than a catalogue of designs or autobiography. Here, some fun facts we learned about Le-Tan.

1. Le-Tan may have loved books — she was in an English-speaking book club as a teenager in Paris — and may have built a career from them, but she was, in her own words, “terrible at school.”

2. She interned at Chanel, under designer Gilles Dufour, then-assistant to Karl Lagerfeld. When Dufour decamped to Balmain, she followed. Also on her CV: DJ stints at Paris’ famed Le Baron nightclub.

3. In 2011, she designed a “Milk Box” bag in the shape of an actual milk carton.

4. For her Fall 2015 runway show, her father hand-painted all the tights the models wore.

5. And that father? He is the legendary illustrator, Pierre Le-Tan, a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Vogue, W and many others. Read Tory Daily’s interview with him here.

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