Emmanuel Macron cajole French designers at the Élysée

For the second edition of the “French Design 100”, the president received a hundred designers.Stopping the "formidable French spirit", he engaged in a assessment satisfied with his action in the matter.Which masks a less brilliant reality.

It is not every day that designers are received at the Palais de l'Elysée.Thursday, January 20 in the evening, they are there, gathered by the Via association (valuation of innovation in furnishings), for the second edition of its "French design 100".The international jury of this competition has selected a hundred French designer projects, which will be entitled to a promotion around the world.

We cross the salons on the ground floor with their large leather sofas and their red lacquer console: in Macron, we like the a little new rich style.The guests arrive in the village hall of the presidential palace, where figures of the profession take place like Ronan Bouroullec, Constance Guisset, Mathieu Lehanneur or India Mahdavi.When Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron appear, everyone gets up.The president of Via, Bernard Reybier, patron of Fermob metal furniture, gives a small speech to insist on the historical and cultural dimension of French design, which calls on the artisanal and industrial know-how of the country.He specifies that the French furniture industry represents forty thousand jobs.

What is French design?

Then Hervé Lemoine, director of national furniture and president of the jury, launched a short film presenting the winning projects, on very French music, but yet largely "inspired" in a title of the American group Glass Candy, Warm in the Winter.The "French design" is "that I don't know", sussures a voice.It is "Sophisticated and A Touch of Luxury", "So Chic" ...

But here is that in this French clip the Guest Star, Philippe Starck, who had a good part of his career in Italy because the French industrialists did not want him."The French spirit is based on rigor and critical thinking.We appreciate quality, truth, creativity, cocktail that is both toxic and positive.How to export French design to the world?[…] The designers, the creators, the authors would be necessary to remember their social role, ”says Sibyllin, the designer of plastic chairs and yachts for billionaires.

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Is there really a “French” design?By what genetic or cultural magic would French designers all think that design is a "I don't know" chic and "luxury"?On the contrary, do they express very diverse points of view?And the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish, the Japanese not also show critical thinking, rigor, creativity?Do they not like the truth and the quality as much as the French?And what does French design mean when Parisian creators work more with Copenhagen or Milan than with their country?No matter: that evening, everyone agrees to live in a parallel universe where France miraculously becomes the center of the world of design.A world limited to furniture, space design and object, and which forgets transport, digital, graphic design, design of public policies ...

Hervé Lemoine resumes.If there is someone in France who fights for design, it is him.Since he directed the national furniture, he has done a lot to reconcile artisans of art and designers.He made very young creators work, initiated a publishing policy and no longer a unique piece.He opened his institution by no longer reserving it for national palaces, but also by putting his skills at the service of the general public.Too bad he was not Minister of Culture, he would have done a lot of good to this job.Roselyne Bachelot is there, in the front row, but she remains silent.

And here is the long -awaited speech of Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic. He also discerns a "formidable French spirit". A very "at the same time" spirit, "marriage of Descartes and the romantics", combining "method and creativity", "love of rooting and universal". He quotes a historic figure of French design, Charlotte Perriand: "The subject is man, it is not the object. And he declares that national furniture will now be the "flagship" of tricolor design. The old institution must regain the spirit - French, of course - which presided over its foundation: the ability to place orders, to promote artists, to invent, as André Malraux, Minister of Cultural Affairs had wanted to 'In 1964 he initiated the arc, research and creation workshop. Emmanuel Macron confirms this: national furniture aims to design series for school equipment or retirement homes.

We have strengthened the link with schools, continues the French president.We have formed a national design council to help the French sector to structure itself and meet societal, environmental and economic expectations.We developed a public order strategy during the health crisis.It may be a bit "monarchical", but Emmanuel Macron "assumes totally".

And then, thanks to Brigitte Macron, the Élysée has made it work, designers since 2017. Because Emmanuel Macron has placed himself in the line of his predecessors, whose names he did not recall: Georges Pompidou had confidedhis private apartments in Pierre Paulin.François Mitterrand had ordered Marc Held, Jean-Michel Wilmotte and, already, Philippe Starck.Under the Macron five -year term, Isabelle Stanislas redid the village hall while gilded gray.Pierre Bonnefille has signed golden shelters with national furniture.Nathalie Junod Ponsard set a blue and red Aubusson carpet on the staircase.And soon a new table, designed after a competition won by students from Ensaama-Olivier de Serres, will be installed in the Council of Ministers.The French president is delighted to live in Thierry Lemaire, Philippe Starck, ORA Ito, Patrick Jouin.

"We will continue to promote French design in the world," says the head of state by cajolizing designers: "You have an irreplaceable role for our youth."Because design is tangible, it is" meaningful trades "that" do not just learn in books ".French design is the art of living, plume, transmission.He does good in a France tired by the pandemic.And the French president to quote the Austro-German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938): "The main disease of Europe is weariness.It must be shown that everyday life is reinventing itself by the beautiful and the new, that the anxieties on the state of the planet are settled "in concreto".The audacity and invention will drive out the rancid ideas brought by the bad winds, concludes President Macron, assigning the design "an eminently political role".

It is not every day that French designers are entitled to a presidential speech just for them.A beautiful speech, indisputably, but an acrobatic discourse: not easy to brandish the tricolor flag while declaring to fight nationalism.Creation has no border: we would have liked to hear this sentence.And this speech will not make us forget that most designers have the greatest difficulties in making a living.Being a designer in a country that no longer has an industry, in a country where creation is so little recognized, so badly paid, is not simple.President Macron could have answered it by encouraging his government to apply the assistance measures to artists proposed in 2020 in the Racine report.He did not do it.