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The Colors of the Day: January 20, 2021
French version available via Le Petit Journal. Click Here
If changing the destiny of a country could be as simple as changing the colors and message of a drawing, then words and political actions would not be necessary.
A jockey smoking a pipe on a galloping horse. In a single blue stroke of pencil, Marion Naufal’s watercolor sums up the challenges of a race, a style, a brand—Longchamp—and of the family Cassegrain whose history has been attached to America right from the start.
Comfortably seated on his New York terrace, the grandson of the Longchamp’s founder, Olivier Cassegrain, is meticulously watching over the American destiny of the family business.
While retail sales in Texas are slowly picking up again, the original Madison Avenue boutique is still closed along with all the other luxury brands in Manhattan. In Soho, the Maison Longchamp remains as empty as the Hudson Yards Vessel where, until a few weeks ago, tourists, business travelers and New Yorkers flocked. “The stairs of the Vessel are with those of the Soho boutique the most famous in New York,” says Cassegrain. They are both the work of the same English architect. “I would be quite happy to see more people on these stairs soon,” adds the Vice-President of Longchamp United States with a smile, “at least a little more on those in SoHo than on those of Hudson Yards.” Filling these stairs is just an additional challenge for the man who loves nothing more than overcoming obstacles with a cigar on his lips.
There is a small bookstore on the corner of 10th Street in the West Village. In this little shop so reminiscent of the past, old and new books squeeze together on the shelves and give off that special scent of cracked ancient floors and living pages. Just a block away, if you look up, you can see through an open window that belongs to the most widely read French novelist and storyteller in the world.
A conversation with Marc Levy usually takes place over a good lunch on the terrace of Sant Ambroeus café. But Sant Ambroeus is closed now, as is the Three Lives & Company bookshop.
We could have also dined on a dish he would have cooked. But Marc Levy is currently a recluse in his haunt, sitting at his desk, among his books, computer screens and ancient typewriters. Surrounded by his characters, he gathers the letters of the alphabet and creates stories, like the one he just published in Des Mots Par La Fenêtre.
When spring blooms in Manhattan, tulips flourish at every Park Avenue intersection. Not far towards the West, the pink and white festival of century-old cherry trees attracts tourists and New Yorkers alike in Central Park. Nature always triumphs when Spring offers at its dawn its annual spectacle. For the floral artist Agnès de Villarson, it is the promise of a busy season of New York galas, weddings and boards of directors, all with flower compositions on the tables.
A French version of this interview has been published in Le Petit Journal (click here).