The arrival of the Olympic flame, the next Chanel show, an art festival, a breeding ground for new talent. . . In a few days, all the highlights will be in the Phocaean city.
On May 8, Marseille will be the capital of the world. And for good reason, the city of Phoca will host the Olympic flame, on the first leg of its French adventure to Paris. On the morning program, the “Belem”, a three-masted, 22-sail vessel, entered the harbor, followed by a swarm of exciting vessels. Your entrance into the Old Port will be accompanied by music by the local philharmonic orchestra. As he deserves, the torchbearer, a renowned sportsman whose identity is still unknown, will step on the Olympic trampoline track to stoke the cauldron, before the two rappers from the insurgent city Soprano – former judge of “The Voice Kids” and family favorite – and Alonzo come to thrill the expected 150,000 Marseilles. All this under the gaze of President Macron and globally: the Paris 2024 committee has 800 million spectators. It was a festive and popular moment, as Benoît Payan, the left-wing mayor of the city of 873,000 people, had hoped.
Marseille is an amazing metropolis, a city with many facets
Six days earlier, it’s the fashion world that will have rival eyes on the charming Phocaea. Chanel will bring 650 visitors from all over the world to the Mamo, the artistic center of Le Corbusier’s mythical Cité Radieuse, for its 2024 Cruise. 2025 and on the occasion of the inauguration of an exhibition orchestrated during 19M at Fort Saint-Jean du Mucem. Meanwhile, from 27 April to 18 August, Marseille creativity in all areas (fashion, gastronomy, design, etc. ) will be disseminated in Paris. under the glass roof of the Bon Marché Rive Gauche. Not to mention the crazy buzz of Vernis Rouge, this iconic singer of “The Voice,” who has racked up more than 20 million views across all platforms thanks to her poster of “Bande organisée,” the collective of Marseille rappers who already monopolized the airwaves in 2020. My love, it’s the southern districts, it’s the northern districts, your mother in the Canebière, your dead in the Old Port. . . Once again on the lips of the younger generation, Parisians get it!
“Marseille is an amazing metropolis, a city with many facets. At the same time, it is an advertising port, a place of departure and arrival, of knowledge and traditions, of cultural mixtures. It’s an inspiring city,” says Frédéric Bodenes, artistic director. director of Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche. Is his symbol of the city’s scoundrel, the scene of clashes between drug traffickers immortalized in “Bac Nord”, left behind?Its appeal has skyrocketed, driven by the post-Covid effect and the shared preference for better living. Sun, Mediterranean Sea, Alps in the background, there is no shortage of goods. But that’s not all. ” If you love Marseille so much, it’s because it’s a land of welcome built through waves of immigrants coming from all over. the Mediterranean basin – Italians, Greeks, Tunisians, Algerians, Lebanese – a port of welcome where all communities mix,” explains Annabel Hervieu, the municipality’s communications advisor.
“This kind of eclectic city inspires creatives,” says Maryline Bellieud-Vigouroux, founder of the Los Angeles Mode Museum and director of the Maison Mode Méditerranée Endowment Fund, which supports creative studies and projects in the Mediterranean basin and Africa. French Chicago has an incubator and is the subject of a center of urban creation “Marseille en grand” (5 billion euros) to compensate for its backwardness in terms of education, housing and public transport, in particular angelesr. ” “The city of Marseille is twice the length of Paris, it is full of empty angels and new neighborhoods that are emerging,” continues Maryline Bellieud-Vigouroux. A lost angel who turns out to satisfy the fantasy of a city with all the possibilities.
We like to dare
In fact, the list of iconoclastic talents who have come and displayed their creativity continues to grow. Starting with the wonders of food. From Valentin Raffali, a beloved candidate for “Top Chef” at 28 years old and with his infernal nickel, to Alexandre Mazzia, the only three-star chef in France who offers African-inspired cuisine, through women, many of whom are wagging their tails, such as Laëtitia Visse, the new Hélène Darroze, 34, who has also become known for having denounced violence in the kitchen. And not the young chef Auregan Dean, who officiates dressed in the OM shirt and claims a “meaty” cuisine at a time when everything is vegan. ” We like to dare,” sums up Ezéchiel Zérah, a thirty-year-old who recounts this effervescence on the Instagram account @croquemarseille or in his e-book “Marseille, a day without hunger!(ed. Hachette), the bible of Marseille food.
© Press/ “Marseille, a day of hunger! (Hachette edition)
A sex appeal that today captivates Parisians, such as Bao Family, which will open its first restaurant in Marseille, Gros Bao, in May, with an area of 350 square meters. On the other hand, the young couturier also fights to make this crossroads an avant-garde place. The city brings together designers who have come to make their mark, artisans determined to reconnect with local heritage, and brands that have been transformed into stories of good luck (American Vintage, Sessùn, Gas Bijoux, etc. ). Has the Athens of Gaul become the laboratory where the fashion of tomorrow develops?
Despite its poverty, I cling to the simplicity of this place.
The town already had its leader in the wearer of the emblematic Simon Porte Jacquemus, 34, and his art of combining couture and audacity. New names are added to the list, such as Yacine Aouadi, in her forties, who is trembling filling the garden of French haute couture with her tributes to rap, boxing and dance, references taken from the northern neighborhoods where he is a wonderful man.
Mélanie Gomis, 30, winner of the ELLE Solidarité Mode award in 2013, now specialising in embroidery from recycled sequins, has returned to Marseille, her hometown, after a stint at London’s Central Saint Martins and years at Dior and then Lebanese. fashion designer Georges Hobeika. ” Despite its poverty, which can be disconcerting, I adhere to the simplicity of this place. In São Paulo, I’m like being in a village. My partners are professionals, my neighbors. My studio is located in the 5th arrondissement, we all know each other, and if I need something, I know who to turn to. “
© Press/ T-shirt on sale at Le Bon Marché.
It is this context of local mutual aid that Marion Lopez, 37, must cultivate. In 2021, she founded Studio Lausié, a select and committed fashion school, based on reuse and upcycling. In this continuity, he has just presented the Baga collective, which is committed to the percentage of knowledge and intelligent practices. Committed to the democratization of art, the entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset was not wrong either. A key figure in the world of culture for his avant-garde projects, he has chosen Marseille as the stage of his Art Explora Festival, which will tour the Mediterranean for three years, with twenty stopovers in fifteen countries. Its museum shipment will dock at the Old Port on June 6. On the quayside, mobile containers with flags designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte.
© Press/ Frédéric Jousset, businessman and philanthropist.
It is there and in the city that ten days of arty loose festival will be organized. No less than 80 events, exhibitions, performances, concerts, break dance battles. . . A program where national and foreign stars will be combined with the city’s youth academy. talent. Among them, (La) Horde, the company run by the National Ballet of Marseille, Filles de Blédards, a “feminist and decolonial” collective that claims its “zebra identity” and acts in all directions (photography, video, music). , performance); Sara Sadik, a 30-year-old artist from Bordeaux, who deconstructs the cliché of the “young man from the suburbs” in video installations exhibited from New York to Vancouver. Or Mourad Tsimpou, a 19-year-old self-taught pianist años. de the northern districts and revealed through social media: in 2021 he performed “La Marseillaise” at the Stade de France for the Top 14 final. He is the one that Art Explora has selected for the first concert of the festival. Another tale of good fortune as this open city knows very well how to bring it to life.