Melik Baratian, Knit Way

Nitto Knitwear in Le Goût de M from M le Monde magazine

As a child, Melik Baratian loved playing hide-and-seek with his sister, Léa, among the piles of boxes, large wool yarn spools, and knitting machines in the family’s knitwear workshop. Today, it is his 5-year-old son who has taken over, in the same textile creation workshop specializing in wool sweaters, in Clamart, near Paris.

Since the 1920s, this town in the Hauts-de-Seine and its neighboring communes have been home to Armenian exiles, who brought with them, among other skills, the art of knitting. “It was my grandfather who founded this workshop in 1972, at a time when there were more than 250 knitting companies in the southern suburbs of Paris,” explains Melik Baratian. His father, Jean-Marc, continued the work and developed a women’s knitwear line under the label Tricots Jean Marc. Here, the employees (about fifteen currently) are almost like family. Some have been there for nearly forty years, having known both the father and the son, who fully committed to the family business in 2011 after studying at business school, and took over its leadership in 2022.

Today, the Baratian knitting workshop is the last one still in operation in Clamart… It was during a large order from a Japanese distributor in 2016 that the idea of launching a men’s sweater line began to take shape in Melik Baratian’s mind. It was a project he had often thought of in the past but always put aside. This is how Nitto Knitwear was born in 2022: “In Japanese, it simply means 'knitting'.” Entirely designed and produced in the Clamart workshop, the men's sweaters come to life according to the desires of Melik and his team. “We don’t develop many models per season, but when we settle on a sweater, we spend a lot of time on it. Our goal is for it to still be around in twenty years, both in collections and in our customers' wardrobes…” says the young entrepreneur. “A sweater is primarily a functional piece, it has to be solid, stylish, well-cut, and the wool must feel soft to the touch,” he adds. The sweaters and five-button cardigans are crafted from ultrafine merino wool, using a tight stitch knitting process. Each model is available in various colors (navy, black, khaki, ochre…) and shapes (crew neck, roll neck, trucker style…). A hat and scarf complete the set.

Each year, 70,000 pieces are produced in the workshop, with 12,000 under the Nitto Knitwear label. The rest corresponds to an ongoing women’s range, still under the name Tricots Jean Marc, which is particularly appreciated in Japan. Sold on the brand’s e-shop and in various multibrand stores in France and abroad (in the United States, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland), Nitto Knitwear continues its steady but sure development, with a focus on the Armenian heritage of the Baratian family. “Each model is named after an Armenian first name. There’s the Youri sweater, the Vasken, the Ara hat… It’s important for me to highlight our origins,” concludes Melik Baratian.

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Text Maud GABRIELSON

Photos Delphine CHANET