Eating at Drouant with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac

Wow, at lunch today I just had the pleasure to replace Greg (gone in Spain to speak at a conference) for an interesting lunch with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac at Drouant Restaurant (famous & symbolic because the jury of the prize in French literature Prix Goncourt are electing the winner there every December since 1903!!!).

No I didn't knew this famous French legend of fashion design before today... I was presently invited to be part of the jury with Anne Marie Sargueil (French Institue of Design), Benoit Laumaillé (Beaubourg Center & Printemps Design), Marie Jo Malait (Journalist), Simon Pillart (Munchausen), Françoise Flament (La Grande Epicerie du Grand Marché), Frédérick e. Grasser-Hermé (Food consultant), Nelly Manoukian (TBWA), Sylvia Vitale Rotta (Team Créatif), Hervé Geffroy (Monoprix), Sylvian Hantz (Designer), Amélie Vidal-Simi(Henkel), Anne Wallois (Henkel), Arnaud Plas (Henkel) and Jean-Renaud Lutt (Henkel) for the "Dessine moi Mir" campaign organized by Bernadette Vizioz with great talent for Henkel.

Yes Henkel, one of the representative companies of the old mass production industry and washing powder best salesmen has made the choice of creativity and 2.0. It is even already the second time that Henkel has invited more than 400 students of fashion, design, graphic... schools to compete and invent innovative designs for one of their most popular cleaning product in France : Mir. The operation was a great success last year : lots of creativity, a lot of exposure + money and fame for the students and lot of PR and a strong increase of the sales for Henkel's temporarily customized products!

 

The brand has chosen to renew the experiment the experience this year. 400 projects were first selected. After a preselection, we had to keep only 8 of them out of a selection of 49 today. The choice was really tough. Every student was offered a few minutes to present his creation to the jury that took a lot of enthusiasm in exchanging opinions and feedback... I just regretted that sometimes students were only taking care about design while totally forgetting to understand the brand DNA and spirit. Hopefully, many concepts were great, fresh and imaginative.

The 8 chosen ones will now be published on the Internet (the new website will be created by Vanksen|Culture-Buzz ;) ) in a few days and web users are going to select the best one, that will be really produced and sold everywhere in teh supermarket in France!