A heavy steel gate conceals l’Usine Spring Court from the surrounding streets of Paris’s Belleville. Beyond it, a glass-roofed passage opens onto a bright courtyard, surrounded by 5,000sq m of former factory buildings. It was here in 1936 that Georges Grimmeisen, a tennis enthusiast from a family in the rubber business, invented and began producing the Spring Court: a light cotton-canvas sneaker designed for clay-court tennis.
The brand’s headquarters © Aliocha Boi
Family lore has it that Grimmeisen, frustrated by his own poor tennis game, hoped the shoe might improve his performance. It didn’t. “Honestly, we’re all bad at tennis,” laughs his granddaughter Théodora, who now runs the family business – which turns 90 this year – alongside her sisters Florence and Laura. “There’s a bit of a curse.” The shoe, however, was a hit.
A classic G2 shoe © Aliocha Boi
Famous customers on the walls of the headquarters © Aliocha Boi
