Address by Frédéric Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication, on the occasion of the presentation of the Andam Prize

I am very pleased to welcome you once again this year to the fairs
of the Department for the 21st National Association Award for
development of the fashion arts. This calendar is not due to chance:
I kind of wanted to open the week of the fashion shows of the collection
Spring-Summer 2011. Support for creation, development of
new talents, this is the heart of the missions of my Ministry in all
the arts. This is your home.
Since 1989, ANDAM has continued to clear, identify and support
emerging talents contributing to the rise of big names in fashion
contemporary, like Martin Margiela, Christophe Lemaire, whose
welcomes the arrival at Hermès, Viktor & Rolf, Véronique Leroy, Gaspard
Yurkievich, Jeremy Scott, or Felipe Oliveira Baptista
make a remarkable entrance at Lacoste.
Thanks to access to the Parisian fashion week calendar - I am
thanks Didier Grumbach - ANDAM gives its winners a reputation
unique media, professional recognition and
means necessary for the sustainability of their own brand.
Fashion always confronts its own limits, it invents without
stop new forms, imagine new territories for the
clothing. I believe, however, that impertinence and insolence are
more than appearance. Nothing will replace freedom
It is the truth of your craft, it is the truth of the
jobs I did before becoming a minister.
Your jobs fascinate me, attract me, interest me deeply: in
their richness and diversity, from stylist to gainier, from embroiderer to
collection manager, they draw a «world», they shape a
like the actors in the film chain who are more
familiar.
There are talents, skills, resources
unsuspected, often revealed in the light of a projector, always
in the secret of a workshop.
You belong, as it is still said in the world of cinema, to a
“large family”. As in all families, I am aware that there are
sometimes has tensions, misunderstandings: I don’t want to deny them or
We must overcome them, we must overcome them, we must
go beyond that in the interest of the entire sector and in the interest of our creation.
In this regard, I would like to express my attachment to the French
mode. I know how much the Development and
Promotion of Textiles and Clothing, which
event. The economic and industrial dimension of the
mode is central. And I want to tell its general manager that I am
the dynamism and coherence of this sector, which has nothing to
to envy others we are sometimes given as examples.
I was talking to you last year about the importance of education. I want to
congratulating ENSAD and its management team who have just empowered a
European Master of Fashion. The school thus enters the circle of big
fashion training institutions that deliver a Master, such as the
Royal College of Art and the Central Saint Martins of London, the Academy
Royal Antwerp, or the Parsons School in New York. I am pleased
also the links that ENSAD is building with other major fashion schools
in a spirit of cooperation from which all benefit.
The places of creation and residence where young designers stay
are also an essential success factor. I think of the villa
Noailles, in Hyères, which my Ministry has decided to support
substantial additional funding, starting this year, which will be
2011. And I do not forget its neighbour, in Marseille, the Maison de la Création,
founded by Maryline Vigouroux.
This channel allows the emergence of new talents: they will flourish
later in the great houses that make France proud, or in
that they have had the chance and the energy to create. This sector must
also be more readable, more visible, it must be better coordinated to
be even more effective. And I hope that the ANDAM, which plays a
important financial assistance to creators, including
participates fully, in a constructive spirit and in a renewed dialogue
with my Ministry and its partners.
These partners, in particular the private partners, who are with us
I would like to thank them warmly. These big companies and
these prestigious groups grant the ANDAM a professional guarantee
and international prestige.
Finally, I would like to extend a warm greeting to the ANDAM Award recipients,
some of whom are here today, and especially the winner of this
year.
Mr President, Pierre Bergé, thanks in particular to you,
have been enriching the history of contemporary fashion for more than 20 years. I
I would like to thank them and express my deep admiration for
their exemplary journey. And I would also like to pay tribute to all
creators who have competed, and whose talent is no less: some
are also here this evening. Your commitment and passion
to remain the obligatory passage of all successes, of all daring also.
To quote the writer Jean-Luc Benoziglio (Portrait Cabinet):
the fashion of the unique sock is coming back soon». It will allow me to
welcome you, next year, in a gesture of complicity that will be
always of a more beautiful effect than a discourse of convenience!
Thank you.