Fusalp’s Alexandre Fauvet and designer Clara Daguin among Land Rover Born Awards winners

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Mar 29, 2018

Alexandre Fauvet, director general of Fusalp, and fashion designer Clara Daguin were among the six award winners of the French edition of the Land Rover Born Awards.

Sponsored by the noted UK automotive marque, the Born Awards celebrate and unite a worldwide community of creative people in six key industries: architecture; interior design, fashion, mobility, technology, sport & leisure. Some 6,000 creatives (over 1,000 in France) applied to enter the 2018 awards, whose theme was Peerless, which are also staged China, Italy, Spain, Britain and the USA.
 
This year’s French winners were presented their awards at a dinner party Wednesday night inside the Lutetia Hotel in St Germain. As the famed 1910 hotel is not quite fully completed, guests were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement by the management. The prize-winning architect overseeing the renovation, Jean-Michel Wilmotte presented several awards.

“It’s about celebrating true creativity with path-breaking people, talking to them, understanding them and toasting their work,” explained Jean-Christophe Chopin, who founded the Born Awards eight years ago. Born was, err, born as an internet platform that today unites some 75,000 creatives and entrepreneurs working in a wide range of disciplines.

 
The French awards kicked off back on Jan 31 when Gerry McGovern, Chief Design Officer of Land Rover, received the Grand Prix du Design at the 33rd Festival Automobile International in les Invalides, Paris.
 
“The goal of Land Rover’s association with the Born Awards is to encourage creation that honors design with an international dimension, and inspires the next generation of creators,” said McGovern, noted for his designs of Land Rover’s LRX; its declination the Range Rover Evoque and the latter sculptural Range Rover Velar.
 
Daguin developed novel wearable technology within a charcoal tunic, where lights and crystals glimmer to reveal the body’s energies. While Fauvet revived Fusalp, turning a venerable ski label born in 1952 into a must-have contemporary label.
 
Other French winners included Corinne Vezzoni, an architect who built The Camp, an eco-system in Aix-en-Provence that is Europe’s first campus dedicated to emerging technologies and social innovation. Ilia Potemine for Interiors with a light saber lamp, constructed remarkably without switch, dimmer or even bulb; Patrick Benoit for Mobility with his retro-industrial, carbon drive electric powered extra-terrestrial trail bikes; and Hugo Mercier, a Parisian who commutes to San Francisco, won for Dreem, a high-tech bio feedback headband that encourages healthier sleep.

All six winners will have their projects displayed during the Milan Design Week from April 17 to 22. The global winner will be announced on October 4 in the Design Museum of London.