crasset matali
matali crasset, born in 1965, is by training an industrial designer, a graduate of the Ateliers – E.N.S.C.I. (Workshops – National Higher School of Industrial Design). After her initial experience with Denis Santachiara Italy and with Philippe Starck in France, she set up her own studio in Paris, in an old renovated printworks in the heart of Belleville. It is there, among children and neighbours, that she dreams up her projects. Since the 1990s, she has been looking at her profession of designer in a global fashion. With a view of the world that is both expert and always new, she questions the obviousness of the codes so that she can be more free of them. In the image of her symbolic subject, the hospitality sector "Quand Jim monte à Paris" (When Jim goes up to Paris), it is on the basis of a close observation of the uses that she invents another relation to the everyday space and objects. Her proposals are never towards a simple improvement of what already exists but, without rushing things, to develop typologies structured around principles such as modularity, the principle of an interlacting network, etc. Her work consists in looking for new organising principles and in formulating new logics in life. She defines this search as an accompaniment towards the contemporary. matali crasset works with a variety of actors, just as easily with the curious craftsman as with an individual in search of a new life scenario, with the industrialist ready to experiment as with the hotelier who wants to develop a new concept (Hi Hotel in Nice), with a small rural commune which wants to develop its cultural and social dynamism or the museum which wants to be transformed (SM’s in s’Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands). Always in search of new territories to explore, she collaborates with eclectic worlds, from crafts to electronic music, from the textiles industry to fair trade, realising projects in set design, furniture, architecture, graphics, collaborations with artists, and so on. www.matalicrasset.com

Hermé Pierre
Heir to four generations of Alsatian bakery and pastry-making tradition, Pierre Hermé began his career at the age of 14 as an apprentice to Gaston Lenôtre. Famous in France, Japan and the United States, the man that Vogue called "the Picasso of Pastry" revolutionized pastry-making with regard to taste and modernity. With "pleasure as his only guide", Pierre Hermé has invented a totally original world of tastes, sensations and pleasures. With his original approach to the profession of pastry chef, he revolutionizes even the most firmly entrenched traditions. For example, he prefers discreet pastry decors and "uses sugar like salt, in other words, as a seasoning to heighten other shades of flavor." Refusing to sit on his laurels, he is always revising his own work, exploring new taste territories and revisiting his own recipes. As a result, praise has often been lavished on Pierre Hermé, who has been called "pastry provocateur" (Food & Wine), "an avant-garde pastry chef and a magician with tastes" (Paris-Match), "The Kitchen Emperor" (New York Times) and "The King of Modern Pâtisserie" (The Guardian), along with honors and decorations, as well as – most importantly – the admiring gratitude of connoisseurs of gourmet sweets. www.pierreherme.com