A shoe is always a story connected to a feeling, a moment in my life, a work, a song, a film, a person. I have to connect all the dots in a drawing in order to make progress and let a figure appear, and that's absolutely essential because that's how I weave my life together.
It was a Monday in February. I remember because it was cold. A cold that no longer exists, a polar cold. It was snowing heavily. Paris was paralysed. At the time, I was working for a major shoe brand created by a man who has now disappeared. Not in a magic trick, no. He was well and truly dead, well buried, well decomposed. Far, far away.
When I was little, I wasn't tall, and at that time there was only one god for me. It wasn't Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Patrick Balkany or Karim Achoui.
Last September, I woke up in the middle of the night, flooded, as if the giant aquarium in my bedroom, home to a family of piranhas, had broken and spilled onto my bed. However, I soon realized that I was in the middle of a wet dream.
When we opened our shop on rue Beaurepaire nearly seven years ago, we didn't have a penny to our name, and in fact it was I who finished the renovations./p>
And so it's off again for the famous and indisputable best festival in the world, which despite a very tough competition, remains the most brilliant and coveted of them all. Each time the opening approaches, every director and every producer rushes to finish their film in the hope of being selected as an official, alongside other films, or at least on a beach on the Croisette.
When I was young, very young, very small, barely old enough to walk, I was fascinated by a crazy TV show.
It's back-to-school, damn it. Damn, because when you have to get ready to put your hands, feet, neck and whole body into a new year, you have to be prepared or, on the contrary, completely relaxed to stand up and face an opponent that may seem out of proportion.
The novel Patricia, a biography on the life of the world's envied shoe designer, written by her son, hit bookstores without warning, like an unexpected french kiss. Meet the man who is revolutionizing the publishing world like no one before him, except perhaps Plato.
Hello Laurent, and thank you for answering my questions at the recently reopened Lutétia bar.
I wouldn't have got this far if... if my dear father hadn't introduced me to the wonderful world of shoes.
Very discreet, not because of misplaced pride, but rather because he's very busy, always halfway between burn-out and pure contemplation, the grey matter of Team Patricia Blanchet is a man who deserves to be overrated. Meet Renaud Blanchet, the safe haven of a family that never ceases to amaze.