Today we are happy to bring you a feature on LaMJC, the already famous parisian communication agency. We had a chat with Michael from LaMJC on their work, their view on the culture right now and a lot of other things. Find out how they became what they are right now. You will notice rather quickly, that these guys are involved in a lot of interesting projects and are always the first in the KNOW. Go to the Interview after the jump and be impressed.
Q1: Hey guys. Its great to catch up with you. First off, tell us who is involved in La MJC, when was La MJC founded?
La MJC was founded in 2001 by Michael Dupouy, director with William Snieg, creative director and Julien Cahn, now working for Nike.
Q2: So, tell me guys, what exactly is La MJC? You are involved in so many things. But where did it start and where are you at right now?
La MJC is an event and communication agency. Our main goal is to propose different events and projects that suit young urban trendsetters and the brand values of our clients.
La MJC’s main force is to be very close to the hobbies and culture of his target audience.
To sum up, we are like the people we love to see in our events :
We love street art, we collect sneakers, we are into toys and collectibles, we travel as much as possible for pleasure, but also to collect more information and contacts as possible from our culture, to learn and be better at what we do.
Basically, we are urban culture addicts. And we were lucky enough to make it a business!!
From the beginning, brands like Nike, BMW, Playstation 2, Levi’s, Coca Cola, Burton, Sony, Absolut Vodka, put their trust in us.
After five years, La MJC’s missions have changed. Since a year, we are doing less events to focus on consulting and special projects for brands.
Recently, New Balance gave us the mission to inform people about their century anniversary, introducing a collaboration shoe and buzzing on all the special make ups created for this event.
Basically, we offer to the brands to use LAMJC.COM website and its HTML newsletter as a targeted communication platform, that is received by more than 17.000 people every week.
Our best exemple, is the birth of La MJC’s Futebol Club, allowing Nike to communicate with fun, creativity and subtlety about his football campaign before the World Cup 2006.
Q3: You are based in Paris, France. What makes Paris special for your work and what are your thoughts in general about Paris?
Paris has nothing special for my work. It’s just the city I grew up in and i’m totally in love of it.
I never appreciate Paris as much as when i come back from travelling. I think the more you travel, the more you love this town.
Paris is located in quite the center of Europe, close to London, Berlin and Milan. It’s a town under mutliple influences. Capital of fashion and art.
Q4: How strong is streetculture, streetwear and everything that belongs to this culture in Paris these days? How has it evolved over the past years?
Urban culture in Paris is getting better and better. People know the products very well and the stories behind, thanks to internet and websites like yours!
The only problem is the lack of consumerism of French people. They supposed to know everything but they don’t buy the stuff in the stores!
That’s why only Colette, Opium, Lazy dog and a few other small shops exist in Paris. Even if the selection of products is good, shops still struggle to sell out.
Q5: For me it is always impressive to see how immensely well you are connected. You are the first ones to report about new Kaws toys, the first ones to show new Bape products and also working a lot with Nike. These are all very big players in streetculture. How did you build up these connections? What kind of an relationship do you have with these people and companies?
Many thanks for your compliments. I would say curiosity is the key. Especially with brands and artists that La MJC love for a long time.
Thanks to our many trips around the world and our experience in this culture, we have built a very strong network : Some relationships remain profesionnal, and with others we went to another level based on respect and friendship.
Q6: Another clear thing is always the connection between La MJC and Colette. What are your thoughts about Colette as a store and a trendsetter?
For me, colette is a reference in the fashion world. The store exists for almost 10 years now, and remains on the top.
colette was a pionneer in terms of new brands introduction, and with being the first in the world to propose the best selection of high fashion, street culture, art gallery, collectibles, books and restaurant, mixed together in the same space. We can say that colette invented the “concept store” idea.
Without colette, i think Paris would not be at its level today.
Q7: Last month you actually launched in cooperation with Colette “Sold Out”, an online store offering only hot, exclusive and hard to find products. When did the idea come up and what was exactly your intent with “Sold Out”?
Addition of skills, same passions, mutual desires to offer rare products. Here are the reasons that pushed colette and La MJC to give birth to Sold Out.
Sold out was imagined by La MJC with and for colette.
For the first time in France, the best of urban brands are put together on a website, with a real concern for presentation, in order to provide perfect understanding of the products, for all.
As well as the newsletter published by La MJC, the Sold Out website’s goal is to preview the best of international street and urban scene, via a secured payment system.
This selection of rare products are the result of the close collaboration between colette and La MJC.
Sold Out is also regularly offer its own limited editions products. First one was the Nike Sold Out Air Max ID. Sold Out clothing is coming soon.
Q8: Now we have found out most of what you do with your time during your professional life. Now, tell us, how did you get into this culture? Gives us a bit of a background. And how do you see the current state of the culture?
I grew up with people older than me, who used to travel to US in the late 80’s. They taught me the ropes of hip hop music, graffiti writing, and urban clothes.
It became a passion.
I had the chance to meet the pionners who were the first to open urban culture and hip hop record stores in Paris in the late 80’s : Tikaret, Alpha New York Store, Ekivok, Dobble source, Stadium, LTD, Sound Record… This culture was totally underground in Paris at this period, so very attractive for the young guy that I was.
Underground meant creativity, risk, and novelty. Nowadays, this culture is definitely mainstream and standardized and kills any form of creativity. Everybody’s doing the same things in clothes, music etc…
It’s been ages since Nike proposed a new real great shoe model, yesterday classics are still the best sellers ( Every street brand is trying to make its own Double Goose each winter !), and nothing equals the hip hop from the beginning of the 90’s.
The explosion of internet gave the opportunity to anybody to know everyhing about this culture from his desk but on the other hand, it also rises lazyness and counterfeit. It gives people the feeling that have seen everything, and cancelled the magic of discovery things, live.
As i said earlier, for me curiosity is the key. And the best way to satisfy curiosity is to travel and meet people for real !
Q9: What are your favorite clothing lines, brands, sneakers, music, etc? Just give us a little idea…
Clothing lines : Polo Ralph Lauren, Supreme, Base Control, Twelve Bar, iDiom, Double Goose Country, Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garçons Shirt, Junya Watanabe, Bape before Pharrell era (90’s), Moncler, Duvetica, Beams, Marc Jacobs, Dries van Noten, Viktor & Rolf Monsieur, Lacoste, Edwin, Leroy Jenkins, Gym Master (Rest in Peace), Burberry.
Sneakers : Nike (too much styles to mention), New Balance, Visvim FBT, Adidas Stan Smith & Rod Laver.
Music : Hip Hop from 89 to 96. Best period ever : Mobb Deep, Black Moon, Beatnuts, Lords of the Underground, Kool G Rap and DJ Polo, Leaders of the New School, Black sheep, Wu Tang, Gangstarr, Redman and Das Efx, Notorious Big, Nas, A Tribe called Quest…Impossible to name all of them !
Today, Dipset crew is one of my favorite. The Alchemist as a producer is great.
Brands : Apple, Muji, Medicom, Amos, 360 Toy Group, Habitat, Cappellini, Samsung, RockStar, Sony, Playstation, Pierre Marcolini, Kellog’s, Coca Cola, Perrier, Lustucru, Danone Taillefine, Carte Noire, Evian, Mariage Frčres, Nokia, Barilla, Gerblé, Picard, MINI, Burger King (Please, come back to Paris !)
Q10: Thanks a lot guys for the Interview. Keep up the great work. In Europe you are definitely holding it up and making this culture stronger and bringing it to a next level. Keep us in the loop of new happenings. Peace.
Thanks for the interview.
Long life to High Snobiety.
As you can see, you should keep an eye open on the work of LaMJC. There will be many more interesting projects coming from them in the near future. We will keep you posted on them as usual.
http://www.lamjc.com
Enjoy,
David
