The 38th Hyères Festival will be chaired by Charles de Vilmorin and Alan Crocetti

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Cassidy STEPHENS

Published
Jan 27, 2023

The Hyères Festival 2023 is set to be a youthful edition. The competition for young designers has chosen to entrust the presidency of its different juries to three young names from the fashion and photography scene. Charles de Vilmorin for the fashion category, Alan Crocetti for the accessories category and Luis Alberto Rodriguez for photography.

The announcement was made on Wednesday evening January 25 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. On this occasion, the founder and general director of the event, Jean-Pierre Blanc, officially launched the 38th edition of the Hyères International Fashion and Photography Festival, which will take place from October 12 to 15, by announcing the selected finalists and the members of the jury. This is a special year for the organisers, as the centenary of the Villa Noailles, which hosts the event, will also be celebrated.

At 26, Charles de Vilmorin, who has had a meteoric rise in three years, is probably the youngest designer to have been enlisted to chair the fashion jury of the famous competition. The son of an art teacher and a finance director with a passion for fashion, the designer took the plunge during the lockdowns in spring 2020 with a first collection of colourful bombers promoted on his social networks.

Six months later, in January 2021, he made his debut with his newly launched brand at the very select Semaine de la Haute Couture, before finding himself propelled in February 2021 to the creative direction of the Rochas house. Since then, he has multiplied projects and collaborations with his exuberant and colourful creations, drawing on a whimsical and fairy-tale universe reminiscent of the world of childhood.

Alan Crocetti, aged 37, is considered as today's most daring and interesting jewellery designer, renowned for his experimental and unusual non-gendered creations related to anatomy, such as his famous silver nose plaster. Born in Goiânia, Brazil, he grew up in Belo Horizonte, where his parents ran a hosiery business, before moving to Europe. After passing through Italy, where he had relatives, he settled in London. He attended Central Saint Martins and launched his own brand in 2014, collaborating with a number of labels such as GmbH, Helmut Lang and more recently AMI Paris.

On the photography side, the Hyères Festival has called on one of its former finalists, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, aged 40, who won the American Vintage prize as well as the prize awarded by the public and the town of Hyères in 2017, to chair the jury. Of Dominican origin, the New York-born American photographer and dancer is now based in Berlin. Fascinated by bodies in motion, they are at the centre of his work.