This is the story The Veja founders opened Centre Commercial on the 5th of December 2010. 10 years of adventures, 10 years meeting incredible people with incredible projects, working with an amazing team. This 3 minutes video is a 3 minutes “thank you” for this journey. 10 years ago, we wanted to create a free place, open to projects and influences, actions and thoughts, where we could call for the best fashion projects we could find. These last years have been tough, but Centre Commercial has grown nonetheless to become one of Paris’ most visited stores. This video is dedicated to our team and partners, to the ones who are with us for a decade or more, to the ones who left for new adventures, to the ones who will join us tomorrow. We have many ideas for the next 10 years to come, as the fight for a more sustainable fashion has just started. @centre_commercial @xavierfaltot #veja#vejaproject
La Playlist des vidéos utilisées:
Centre Commercial :
2 rue de Marseille
75010 Paris
Centre Commercial Kids:
22 rue Yves Toudic
75010 Paris
Centre Commercial :
9 Rue Madame
75006 Paris
CREDITS
Voice over by Camille Pellicer
Special effect by Maxime Fries
Sound by Marco Barion
MUSIC:
The Streets – Turn the Page (Instrumental) 2002
Le texte de la voix of:
What is a shopping centre?
“A shopping centre, or a mall, is a private area, where we are filmed in every corner, in the corridors, in the stores, even in the bathrooms. It’s a controlled place. A place designed for safety and control. A place whose only purpose is to push you to buy things. It represents the dark future of our society. A panoptic society is a society that watches us, our every move, our every thought.” This quote comes from Evil Paradises, by American sociologist Mike Davis. This book on the future of society inspired us in 2009 to name our new project CENTRE COMMERCIAL.
We wanted to create a free place, open to projects and influences, actions and thoughts. We named it Centre Commercial, “shopping centre” in English, as a tongue-in-cheek stab at the society we didn’t want anymore. So in 2010, 5 years after we created VEJA, we launched CENTRE COMMERCIAL.
We gathered brands that would have a common ground: transparency. Brands that care about how and where they make their product. Brands that use organic cotton, that are based in France, in Portugal, in England, brands that respect the workers who make their clothes, brands that use recycled materials. Brands run by people we love. They said we would fail, that nobody cared about how fashion was made. But Centre Commercial became, little by little, the heart of this generation.
A generation of designers who collaborate, who returned to the human scale, who love what they do, who care about how they produce fashion. Since the beginning, we threw lots of parties, launched lots of events.
We set up our store in Paris, close to Republique, in an area we love. In a street we love, rue de Marseille.
In 2015, the terrorist attacks shocked the city and this area became the centre of Paris. It was here that Nuit Debout was born, a social movement of people gathering every night in the square to fight for workers rights.There was a huge demonstration, During COP21, where the police surrounded green activists. Next it was the Yellow Vests, a movement of people forgotten by liberal globalization, who, for one year, rallied almost every week-end in the square.
These last years have been tough, but Centre Commercial has grown nonetheless to become one of Paris’ most visited stores. We have many ideas for the 10 years to come, as the fight for a more sustainable fashion has just started.
