ANDAM Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary With a Paris Fashion Week Dinner

Consensus is not fashion’s strong suit, but if there’s anything fashion people can agree on, it’s that everyone loves ANDAM founder Nathalie Dufour. “She’s truly a fairy godmother,” opined Ludovic de Saint Sernin (recipient of ANDAM’s Creative Brand Prize last year). “She’s so warm and sincere; she’s really there for you.”

Pigalle designer Stéphane Ashpool, who took the ANDAM Prize in 2015, added, “My head is still in a different time zone, but aside from having won, I just admire Nathalie so much. It can’t have been easy to persevere all these years. I’m here because of her.” (Ashpool was fresh off a trip to basketball courts in China and Havana—Paris is up next—with Nike.)

Likeminded people, including this year’s big winners, Christelle Kocher and Nicolas Lecourt Mansion; a dozen past winners; sponsors like Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault, Guillaume de Seynes of Hèrmes, representatives from Chanel; and VIP guests like Caroline de Maigret, Farida Khelfa, Victoire de Castellane, Vanessa Seward, Christian Louboutin, Charlotte Casiraghi, and Dimitri Rassam turned out in full force to dine in the soaring, gilt-and-mirrored salons of the Ministry of Culture. The occasion was a dinner to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ANDAM Prize, and the location was fitting: it was held precisely where Dufour got the idea for ANDAM in the first place.

With ANDAM president Guillaume Houzé by her side, Dufour thanked the current Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, and announced that the association’s prize for creativity would henceforth be named for Pierre Bergé, ANDAM’s late president and tireless champion. “His great passion for fashion and designers...the fact that he was there for us for 28 years makes it so natural and legitimate to give his name to this prize,” Dufour commented of the €100,000 award. With Houzé now carrying the torch, a new mentoring program will be announced in early January, along with the opening of the 2020 prize.

One of a handful of ANDAM alums who have won twice, Lutz Huelle noted that the photo exhibition currently on view at the Galeries Lafayette scans like a fashion industry family album. “We were naïve and innocent back then [15 years ago], much less organized than young designers are today. We just started, put on a show, and then wondered what to do next,” he said.

Onetime classmates Alexandre Mattiussi and Christine Phung grew starry-eyed recalling how they’d received prizes from Bergé in the same year. Mattiussi quipped, “People always ask me if it changed my life. I won €250,000 when my business was only two years old…so of course I took the money and had my nose and ears done—just kidding, Nathalie!”