2074, the odyssey of French luxury Close panel Open panel Plume Le Figaro App -icon - 512px V1 1 - Style/Logotypes/Le Figaro/Apps/jeux

This Monday, 10 a.m., appointment is given at Versailles. On site, at the initiative of the Comité Colbert, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary, no less than sixty bosses from the world of luxury, from all sectors, have gathered. Magic of this extraordinary gathering: in the galleries of the castle, chef Alain Ducasse is deep in conversation a few meters from Guy Savoy, another three-starred chef, and pastry chef Pierre Hermé. Maggie Henriquez, patron saint of Krug champagnes, meets Philippe Guettat, head of Mumm and Martell. Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel's fashion activities, finds himself at the same buffet as Sidney Toledano, CEO of Christian Dior Couture, and Guillaume de Seynes, managing director of the upstream division and holdings of the Hermès group... As if the economic war had ended , as if the luxury bosses had signed a truce, to meet all together, in relative simplicity, under the banner of the French company.

"The celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Colbert Committee is undoubtedly an opportunity to show the ability of the different houses that make up this institution to come together, their propensity to think about their common interests and to go beyond competition between different companies", explains Élisabeth Ponsolle des Portes, general delegate of the Colbert Committee. “The companies that unite within the Colbert leave their competitive aggressiveness in the closet, recalls Sidney Toledano. They fight together on the international scene to defend common causes, such as the fight against counterfeiting. They intervene in concert with the public authorities. And, above all, they work on the subject of the transmission of know-how, on the implementation of training courses... It is fundamental.

In recent years, the Colbert has distinguished itself through a series of very concrete actions that affect training and diplomas, directing its support in particular towards the teaching of design and the creation of a Colbert chair.

“It is a sector which is meeting with success and which is taking full advantage of globalization. The buyers, we have them: all the countries that get richer become new sources of customers. And in this internationalization of our activities, the big houses, the oldest, take along the youngest companies”, underlines Guillaume de Seynes, of the Hermès house.

A global vision

Colbert is benevolent with newcomers. In fact, alongside historical companies, the latter can develop with substantial resources. Thus, Christian Liaigre, Éditions de parfums Frédéric Malle, Éditions Diane de Selliers, Lorenz Bäumer, Pierre Hermé, Atelier Joël Robuchon and others have joined the association, to take part in all the reflections, but also at international events. Concretely, it may be for those who have structures abroad to host these new arrivals for a while. This was the case recently, in January 2013, during a major demonstration organized in Istanbul. Unquestionably, the luxury sector and the various Colbert companies benefit from the globalization of trade. “84% of the Committee's activity is international. And a significant part of sales in France are made with foreign customers, says Jean Cassegrain, boss of Longchamp. Thus, while remaining attentive to the French economic situation, we closely follow international events, such as the implementation of anti-corruption measures in China, the demonstrations in Hong Kong, the problems in Ukraine which have reduced the volume of customer travel Russian to France…” A global vision which undoubtedly justifies a presentation made partly in English, in front of a gathering of massively French-speaking bosses…

This Monday, therefore, it is a question of thinking about the future and, more exactly, of dreaming what the world of luxury will be like in 2074. For the occasion, six science fiction authors and a composer have imagined this universe of the day after tomorrow (see below). "Let's be clear, at 60, either we start to decline, or we project ourselves into the future," remarks Sidney Toledano. “Ten years after the war, men were able to overcome their differences in order to bring French companies into international influence, analyzes Thierry Gardinier, co-owner of the Taillevent group. It is now a question of taking a break, reflecting on what has been achieved and thinking about the future.

Looking ahead sixty years, in 2074 therefore. “This project was, from its inception, led by an international commission chaired by Yves Carcelle, member of the executive committee of Louis Vuitton, who died last August. The presentation of this work is also a tribute to him”, insists Élisabeth Ponsolle des Portes. “Today, everyone knows that the economic situation is problematic, recognizes Bruno Pavlovsky, from Chanel. In this difficult context, this type of initiative is a way to encourage the youngest to innovate and to continue to give an emotional dimension to the materials we work on. By playing collectively.” Without losing sight of the fact that on the other side of the Alps, or the Rhine, foreign companies also play on team spirit. But Colbert remains a valued and rightly esteemed captain.

Sketching the art of living of the future, instructions for use

Do androids dream of electric sheep?, wondered science fiction author Philip K. Dick. Today, the Colbert Committee could decline this question by "Will we find crocodile bags in Martian stations?" No one can blame this association of seventy-eight companies for its lack of audacity and method in its exploration of the future of luxury. To achieve the final result posted online this week, all the houses, experts from all fields, writers and artists worked together, in record time.

Thinking 2074 was launched in the first half of 2013. Each house has developed its utopia around words, values ​​imagined as being those of 2074. “We met during workshops to work around semantic fields and images”, explains Élisabeth Ponsolle des Portes, general delegate of the Comité Colbert. At the end of 2013, a first synthesis was published. At the same time, academics and scholars are invited to come and present, each in their own field, their own idea of ​​the future. Alain Berthoz, specialist in the physiology of major sensory-motor systems, presents his vision of the brain in 2074, between natural and artificial. Followed by Frank Madlener, director of Ircam, demographer Gilles Pinson, economist Lionel Fontagné. Antoine Picon comes to talk about urban planning, then it is Jean-Christophe Baillie's turn to discuss issues related to robotics and artificial intelligence. Hervé Le Treut presents work on climate change…

But the project also doubles as an original creation, since the Colbert Committee invites six science fiction authors to write as many short stories on the theme of luxury in 2074. Luxury and anticipatory literature: the logic of the rapprochement between these two universes do not flow naturally. “We wanted to link intellectual influence and economic influence. We consider that it was above all the advent of courtly literature that led to the refinement of feelings and our art of living, before Colbert crystallized these ideas and these skills. And we are interested in science fiction literature, because it is an exciting field that has not yet been taken over by luxury. Before they wrote the first line, we made the authors discover our houses, in the sectors of wine, jewelry, leather, fashion and we delivered to them the work that had been carried out by our ad committee. hoc in 2013”, commented Elisabeth Ponsolle des Portes.

“We met craftsmen from Van Cleef & Arpels, Mellerio dits Meller, Château d'Yquem, Cristalleries de Saint-Louis, Chanel, Hermès… says the writer Jean-Claude Dunyach. It must be recognized that the world of luxury, as we have discovered it, is much more interesting than we imagined. We met people quite close to us, the authors, people who imagine then create, and consider that their work is finished when the work is perfect.

The writers chosen have in common a developed sensory universe, a taste for emotion, a talent for the description of smells, flavors and sounds. As Olivier Paquet testifies: “A wine tasting remains a fabulous moment. A perfection of the moment, even. I immediately linked this to Japanese Buddhist thought, to the awareness of the ephemeral nature of the moment but which is not a sad consideration. Luxury has this ability to shape our perceptions. Because we become aware of scarcity, we seek to live intensely every second. Same shock for author Samantha Bailly: “Visiting the sewing workshops was a real revelation for me. Seeing the designers at work, the abundance of fabrics, this debauchery of beauty, opened a floodgate. I was able to grasp the emotion that gave my short story a more personal dimension by associating this Dreaming 2074 with a hope linked to the creative fire, to what is beyond us as human beings, to what we love more than ourselves.”

For the happiness of all

So, what does this utopia imagined by these anticipation professionals look like? In a preface to the six short stories, the linguist Alain Rey first gives their geopolitical limits: "The great powers of this small planetary world - China, the United States, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Japan , Russia and a finally united Europe - are joined by many states in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific, in the now universal demand for well-being and happiness. Human needs and desires have shattered borders.”

In short, our civilization has therefore passed into a “posthistory” as different from past history as it was from prehistory. So much for the basics of utopia. With regard more directly to the members of the Colbert Committee, Alain Rey evokes a “craftsmanship rediscovered, rejuvenated, made powerful (…) which joined art and even exceeded it, because the arts have been compromised, since the twentieth century, through speculation and financial bubbles.” And the luxury? It now rhymes with emotion, sensitivity, requirement and respect, knowledge and action for the happiness of all... The best of all worlds, then.

For their part, the authors deliver an inspired vision of this dream. Sci-fi fans should enjoy these six short stories about the future of beauty, a sort of Minority Report of luxury: After escaping the chaos caused by a mysterious pandemic, the survivors have developed new abilities of perception, inevitably move in autoplane or train hurtling at 1,000 km/h, men and women wear clothes cut from emotional fabrics that say everything about their moods, jewelers carve jewels from asteroid rock, the most precious wines are designed by robot cellar masters equipped with artificial intelligence… The reader lets himself be carried away.

All of these writings and the musical composition are the subject of a digital publication which will be available free of charge, in French and English initially, in Japanese and Arabic thereafter. “The commissioning of this work was a real risk taken by the Colbert Committee, concludes the science fiction author, Jean-Claude Dunyach. But, in the end, I am very happy with the result. This anthology allowed us to capture something as vast as luxury in all its varieties.”

2074, technological year

2074 eventually arrived. We deplore a victim: the car. For the rest, the human is doing rather well, his senses heightened by the technology which has made striking progress. Welcome to the futuristic world imagined by six science fiction authors invited by the Comité Colbert to write what our world will be like in sixty years. The worst is over. A pandemic whose origin and duration are unknown has apparently ravaged the earth in the 2030s, but a wave of empathy has swept the world to save it. If there are still traces of this epidemic, man has been able to take advantage of technologies to adapt.

Six short stories follow each other and are not alike, except for a common context, the year 2074, the city of Paris, recurring characters and societies. An artist, the boss of a wine estate, fashion designers, jewellers. Some things are immutable, Paris is the center of the world, Place Vendôme remains the haunt of jewelers and the boulevards of the old Baron Haussmann have not aged a bit. Cars are just definitely banned.

Xavier Mauméjean immediately immerses the reader in the skin of a man from 2074: Paul Gilson takes the TransEurop Express (1,000 km/h) like us the metro, he wears a suit equipped with sensors that allow objects to be recharged, he can program his "egosphere" into a dormant or conscious mode. At the restaurant, the menu, thanks to its sensors, can suggest a dish to him after having analyzed his state of health. It is the reign of the salad, magnified by the art of composition. The search for beauty is a quest that has not faded away. Olivier Paquet imagines an artificial intelligence that feels the wine. An oenologist who has lost her sense of smell makes her an ally. The old lady, half French half Japanese, who quotes Hokusai, is one hell of a good woman. We learn that in the all-digital era, print retains a solemn character and that it has the value of authenticity.

Find the smell of good old Kelly

In the short story entitled "Facette", Samantha Bailly reveals the height of shamelessness, worse than the Bikini in the 1960s! Thanks to chips implanted in the brain, the "emoticon" reveals the emotions and moods of the person who wears clothes fashioned from this material. Fashionistas in Paris are snapping it up. But an old-fashioned fashion house has not said its last word. Jean-Claude Dunyach prefers to take the reader to a large house in Place Vendôme where a loving jeweler cuts spidery wedding rings in diamonds from meteorites. Here too, technology has revolutionized know-how. The frames can be invisible, the jewels are flexible to fit the curves of the body.

At the saddler staged by Anne Fakhouri, leather has long taken the desired shape by the molding imposed on it. It remains to find the smell of good old Kelly. Joëlle Wintrebert has found a solution for the skinners of 2074. Her chimeras leave their moult at the disposal of creators so that they can magnify clothes and accessories. If the adventure tempts you, this collection immerses you in it. (Francoise Dargent)