Diego Della Valle named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The title, one of the highest honours of the French Republic, recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the promotion of the arts, literature, and culture in France and globally.
A longstanding figure in international fashion and luxury, this honour notably recognises Diego Della Valle's commitment to supporting art, fashion and cultural heritage.
In addition to leading the Tod's Group, which includes Tod's, Hogan, Roger Vivier and Fay, Della Valle also serves on the board of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
This latest recognition places Della Valle among an elite group of fashion professionals who have received the honour in recent years, including Iris van Herpen, Simon Porte Jacquemus, Demna, and Rahul Mishra.
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Local France
17 hours ago
- Local France
13 French words that creep into your English
The English and French languages share a lot of words and have deeply entwined roots. In fact one French linguist has made the case that La langue anglaise n'existe pas - c'est du français mal prononcé (the English language does not exist - it's just badly pronounced French. He was joking. Mostly ). Borrowing words between the two languages goes back to 1066 and beyond and continues to this day as all sorts of anglicisms crop up in everyday French from le wifi to un job , via un ' appy 'our to un co-working . But while young French people like to toss in the odd English word to sound cool, English speakers who move to France and immerse themselves in the language often find French words creeping into their English. Sometimes this is because a perfect English equivalent doesn't exist, other times it is because the French is snappier or just sounds better. Here are some common examples, feel free to share yours in the comments section below. Apéro - pre-dinner drinks. This one probably crops up because apéro plays a strong cultural part in French life, and there isn't an exact equivalent in anglophone cultures. The French apéritif , commonly shortened to apéro , is drinks before dinner but it's also a social occasion and it's common to be either invited to someone's home for apéro , or to join people in a bar for apéro . On the other hand, the French themselves sometimes use a borrowed English phrase - happy hour - to talk about post-work drinks or an early-evening offer of reduced-price drinks in a bar. READ ALSO : Apéro: All you need to know about the French evening ritual Expo - exhibition or art show. The French 'o' ending is a common casual shortening of words, so you might find yourself using 'resto' (restaurant) or 'expo' (exhibition) if you're chatting about your weekend plans. Advertisement Profit well - enjoy/take advantage of - if you're wishing someone a good time or a happy experience, you might find yourself using the word 'profit'. While profit in English is most commonly used in connection with finances, in French it's widely used for any experience that you might gain some benefit from eg profiter du soleil (to enjoy the sunshine) or profiter des vacances (to make the most of the holidays) or simply as a response if someone tells you they're off to do something fun 'profitez-bien !' (enjoy!) Fonctionnaire - civil servant/public sector employee. While a perfectly adequate translation of this job status exists, somehow it doesn't convey the awesome power of the French fonctionnaire . In a heavily centralised state bureaucracy, the decision of a fonctionnaire can make the difference between an easy life and a nagging administrative nightmare. Wise people are therefore very polite to fonctionnaires . Advertisement If you're talking about them, not to them, you might be discussing the other side of this job status - while not especially well paid, public sector employees in France generally enjoy generous work conditions, benefit from perks like RTT days and are quite likely to strike. It's sometimes seen as a bit of a cushy job, but avoid saying this if you need one of them to help you. Précision - clarification. Another one from the world of French administration, which will likely take up a significant amount of your time. A précision is simply a clarification or a statement offering further details on a previous announcement or decision. But the devil is in the details, and a simple précision can give a case a whole new meaning. Dossier - file/application. The simple translation of a dossier is a file or folder, but it's also used more widely to mean the bundle of documents you have to put together to make an application to rent an apartment, for example, or for French residency or citizenship. It's sometimes also used as a shorthand to mean the application itself. If your dossier is approved, everything is going well. On the other hand, a message telling you "Votre dossier est incomplet" is enough to make French residents break out in a cold sweat - the wimpy English translation (your file is incomplete) just doesn't convey the true horror of the situation. Advertisement Perturbed - disrupted. This one always sounds funny to English ears, where 'perturbed' is a very archaic way of talking about emotional distress or disquiet (think Jane Austen heroines). In France, on the other hand, trains, ferries and Metros are regularly 'perturbed', with perturbation describing any kind of disruption. It's less specific than retardé (delayed) or annulé (cancelled) - perturbé tells that a service is disrupted, probably in a significant way. Two thousands nineteen - 2019. This is a symptom of speaking French regularly, when year dates are spelled out in their entirety. Instead of the English way of saying 'twenty-nineteen' or 'nineteen eighty four', a French speaker would day deux milles dix neuf (two thousands nineteen) or mille neuf cent quatre-vingt quatre (one thousand, nine hundred eighty-four). You might find yourself doing it with the time as well, specifying to friends that you want to meet at '20h' - meaning 8pm - and having them wonder why you're suddenly using military time to discuss a restaurant reservation. Advertisement Manif - demo. This is another one where a perfectly fine English translation exists, but it somehow doesn't convey the cultural importance of the French event. Manifestation means demonstration and the shortened version is manif , like demo. But while protests of course exist in the UK, US, Australia and other English-speaking countries, they're not quite a part of the social fabric in the same way as in France. Tell your French friends that you're 'going to the manif' on May 1st and they will understand precisely what you mean with no need for further questions or clarifications. Telly travail/ telly medicine - remote work, online medical consultation. Many of the anglicisms that are widely adopted in France become popular because they're shorter and snappier than the French version. Think le wifi versus access à internet sans fils . Or to give a franglais example salle de shoot versus salle de consommation à moindre risque . But sometimes it happens the other way around and the prefix télé meaning something done at a distance online is a perfect example. It can then be added to any word to mean an online, distance version - eg télétravail - remote working, télémedecine - a remote doctor's appointment, téléconsultation - an online appointment. More of these will likely emerge as the world moves online, and French has a perfect, elegant formula to add 'télé' to the beginning of the thing that is now online. The Covid pandemic gave us another nice example of elegant prefixes, when le confinement (lockdown) became déconfinement (lifting lockdown) and then reconfinement (going back into lockdown). RIB - bank details necessary to set up a direct debit or make a payment. Need someone to send you their banking details, including account name and number? French has an easy word for that RIB (pronounced reeb). It's an acronym for Relevé d'Identité Bancaire and is so handy you'll find yourself telling people to 'send me your RIB' with abandon. READ ALSO : SIDA to IRM to RIB: Everyday French initials and acronyms to know Chômage - unemployment/unemployment benefits. Chômage simply means unemployment, so it's used to talk about unemployment levels within a country, but it's also widely used as a shorthand for unemployment payments/benefits. So you can casually say 'he's on chômage' to mean that someone isn't working but is registered with the French unemployment office to seek work, and for the moment is living off unemployment benefits. Although it can be used negatively, it somehow feels less stigmatising than saying someone is 'on the dole' on 'on benefits'. France's generous unemployment system in which people are paid a percentage of their former salary for up to 18 months, means that chômage is sometimes more of a career goal than a catastrophe. READ ALSO : How generous is France's unemployment system? Controlled - stopped by police/inspectors for a check. Another piece of elegant French simplicity, if you were stopped by police for an ID check, if you were pulled over while driving for a vehicle check or if the conductor came round to inspect your ticket, you were 'controlled'. In French that kind of official stop and check is un contrôle and the past tense verb form is contrôlé . Do you find French words creeping into your English? If so, share which ones in the comments section below
Euronews
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Windcraft Festival: the musical feast that celebrates wind instruments
The Windcraft Music Fest, the celebration of wind instruments, took place for the eleventh time in Katydata, the beautiful village on Mount Troodos in Cyprus. The event marries tradition with jazz and contemporary sound, bringing together musicians and bands not only from Cyprus but also from the rest of Europe. There were many foreign musical acts participating in this year's 11th Windcraft Music Fest. 30-year-old Robinson Khoury is one of the most interesting young voices in French jazz. In 2024, he was awarded the prestigious Django Reinhardt Prize as the best jazz musician in France. Renowned for his virtuosity on the trombone and his comfort with improvisation, Khoury has collaborated with great artists such as Ibrahim Maalouf, Natacha Atlas, and Quincy Jones. His latest project, titled "MŸA," explores his Lebanese roots. He combines jazz with Middle Eastern scales, ancient musical traditions, wordless vocals, and electronic soundscapes. At Windcraft Music Fest, he came to present it with his trio, consisting of Anisha Neari and Leo Zashef. "I wanted it to be something really special. with musical instruments that we had never seen together before. So I wanted there to be a musical trio because the chemistry is really unique. This project is about ancient musical traditions, but also about electronic music, which represents the timbres we don't know, which are perhaps forgotten," the French musician tells euronews. The Oratnitza group is made up of five young Bulgarian musicians who share a love for both Bulgarian tradition and contemporary music genres, with an emphasis on bass. For this reason, they call their unique sound "ETHNOBASS." The band members met 16 years ago in a park, jamming. Soon they took to the stage, impressing with their danceable sounds. In Cyprus, they presented compositions from their fourth album, which will be released soon and is titled "The Guardian." "We play Bulgarian traditional music, which we combine with some other contemporary music styles, such as drum and bass, dubstep, and even jazz. Honestly, these are the kinds of music we like and listen to; we like to mix them with Bulgarian traditional music," says Georgi "Jorge" Simeonov, and Christian Georgiev adds, "We have the djediridou, which is an ancient woodwind instrument that has a bass, and we add more bass from synthesizers, and we mix it with acoustic instruments and traditional singing." Windcraft Music Fest is more than just a concert series. It's a living testament to the richness that comes from collaborations between people who have never worked together before. It reveals the talents of both local and international artists, with a special emphasis on wind instruments. At the same time, through workshops, activities, and other activities, participants of all ages are invited to take part in the process of musical creation and explore the rich cultural heritage of the village and the surrounding area.
Euronews
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Film of the Week: Luc Besson's ‘Dracula: A Love Tale' - Fangtastic?
Mere months after Robert Eggers returned vampires to their Gothic roots with Nosferatu, his stylish exhumation of F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent German Expressionist classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, it's now Luc Besson's turn to sharpen his fangs. "I'm not a fan of horror films," the French filmmaker recently told Le Parisien newspaper about his take, Dracula: A Love Tale, which straddles several centuries in the life of the immortal and cinematically ubiquitous blood-sucking count. "Nor of Dracula." Ah. That doesn't bode well, does it? Or maybe it's exactly what we didn't know we needed. Based on the original book by Bram Stoker, Besson focuses on Dracula's search for the reincarnation of his late wife. He kicks things off in Romania, 1480. Pillow fights, food fights, plenty of steamy sex... Prince Vladimir the Second (Caleb Landry Jones) and Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) are two fusional lovebirds who are passionately into each other. Vlad gets called to war and after a rushed and poorly filmed fight sequence, he accidentally kebabs his beloved in a snowy field of wolf traps. He was trying to save her from an attacker, you see. Not trying to spice things up further. 'Tell God to send her back to me,' he pleads to the priest, who he promptly impales for failing to send the message in a timely manner to the Almighty. Renouncing God on the spot, Vlad is cursed, condemned to wander the centuries. 400 years later, in Paris, Christoph Waltz (a nameless man of the clergy referred to as 'Priest' but may as well be Professor Abraham Van Helsing) is called upon for a delicate case, featuring Maria (Matilda De Angelis). Her apparent sexual appetite is initially dismissed as hysteria by French doctors. However, he quickly deduces that she's a vampire, turned by her 'master' who is on the hunt for the reincarnation of his beloved. 'Sometimes pure souls can be reincarnated'. Not sure how 'pure' considering the religious morals of the time - not to mention the copious amount of fornication and food waste in the film's first act - but we make do. Before you know it, the damned and inconsolable prince, now a reclusive in his gloomy chateau populated with GCI gargoyles that may as well be Minimoy rejects, gets a lifeline. The escaped Maria may have found his princess... Her name is Mina (Bleu again), and she could be the reincarnation of his dead wife. Now looking like a boiled testicle, Vlad rejuvinates himself with some human Claret and sets out to win her over. But if he's condemned to eternal life, and therefore eternal suffering, that's not the sort of divine punishment one easily shakes off... A lovelorn incarnation of the famous vampire isn't as new as Besson seems to think it is. After all, Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula was billed as a love story, and since then, romantic devotion has always been a driving force in Bram Stoker adaptations. Indeed, this story has always been about a cursed man waiting hundreds of years to see again the only woman he has ever loved. It has always been the ultimate love story. Still, Besson colon-and-bills it 'A Love Tale' and... It's a royal mess. But a damn entertaining royal mess. Incapable of injecting tension or drawing out the horror from the story, Besson chooses to tell the tale of doomed love through the lens of a heightened fairytale. The director throws everything he has at it: tragedy, action, OTT melodrama, Danny Elfman's comically grandiose score, sexy magical elixirs, a Guillermo del Toro-esque carnival sequence, and a surprising amount of comedy. Yes, Dracula: A Love Tale is funny. Not Dracula: Dead And Loving It funny; rather, a film excelling at cartoonish and overripe comedy through committed performances by Landry Jones and his channelling of his inner Gary Oldman, the always terrific Waltz (whose delivery of the line 'She's alive. Clinically speaking' is fangtastic), and stealth MVP Matilda De Angelis. There is the niggling sense that the humour in this tonal hodgepodge is completely accidental, but it still lands. And the biggest joke of all is that this version is missing Gothic horror. Blasphemy for purists – and understandably so. For a film about the most notorious and celebrated Gothic figure in literature, a noticeable dearth of Gothic horror feels like heresy. However, in failing to create a serious meditation on love and salvation versus damnation, Besson may have inadvertently crafted a camp romp with Dracula: A Love Tale. Especially when considering the hilariously abrupt ending which has Waltz's Priest coming out of Vlad's castle and casually declaring: 'The spell is broken, everything is fine now.' CUT TO BLACK. TITLE CARD. THE END. Comedy gold. Intentional or no. So, while Dracula: A Love Tale doesn't inject too much fresh blood into the vampire myth, what it does is special. Egger's meticulous-to-a-mannered-fault approach may have been stunning, but Nosferatu ran the risk of alienating pre-existing fans yearning for less familiarity. When it comes to Besson, he risks alienating viewers for MANY other reasons. But get on his wavelength and again, accidentally or no, this may be the fated-to-be-hated high camp masterpiece of 2025. Alive and loving it. Dracula: A Love Tale is out in French cinemas now. It hits theatres in South America this month and is scheduled for release in other European territories like Greece, Germany, Italy and Spain in October.
