#089 ✰ Oct 4th in SF: Our Soirée nº2 Is Happening
our diy recipe for throwing a party 9300km away in four weeks
In today’s newsletter, I thought I’d share the backstage of La Première, our very first Objet event that took place last August 2nd, in San Francisco, and gathered 35 very interesting personalities. I just feel like saying it all, vulnerably. This project of ours is exciting. It is also a bit crazy. These previous weeks, these current weeks, have been intense, to say the least. I am inviting you in Max+Kev+I’ life. Maybe as a way to illustrate that when you want something to happen so bad, you can start behaving like you’re already living this life. Maybe?
Oh! Our second soirée is coming friday next week, in SF. So if embedding memories into clothing sounds intriguing - or if the prospect of spending an evening surrounded by interesting people, under curated music, sipping nice handmade drinks: come.
OK, back to our journey.
first, find the home
Earlier this year, a family from Berkeley, CA reached out on HomeExchange1. We’ve been using this home swapping platform for a little more than 6 years now and it has changed the way we travel. We love when serendipity knocks at the door. And so, this sign from the universe: California’s calling. We knew we had to make it happen (we still had no idea how).
then, find childcare
Get a home for 5 weeks (2/3 of the trip): ✅
Get affordable flight tickets during Paris Olympics : ✅ I think 15 years of travels made us pretty well aware of all the do’s and dont’s in preparing (even) a (last-minute) trip
Find childcare: 🤯 The real challenge was ahead of us: who would take care of our two little boys (3 and 5 y/o) while we’d be hustling out there? Family? They all had plans. Local summer camps? $1,000 a week for childcare that ends at 3pm, hmm sounded kinda crazy. In a genius moment, Kev thought about emailing our ex maths teacher from prep school, asking whether one of his students would be down to live a little experience in California this summer. We received many emails. And met Alice ❤️
act as you already live there
The beauty of long term (in our case 5 weeks) home swapping, is that you get to live like a local. If you want to. You have enough time to build little routines, meet your neighbours (on our first weekend, they invited us for drinks, lent us child seats and a cargo bike, who does this?!), have your favorite grocery store, alleys and produce, playground and coffee shop, start calling people by their names even. These routines, once settled, give you a priceless bandwidth to just focus on what you need to do.
meet every single person in town
It’s been thrilling to get out of our comfort zone and engage with people. Asking questions, talking about what we do. The energy in the Bay is one of a kind. After years of no one asking you questions (topic for another newsletter), suddenly people were just curious. Genuinely curious. Not nice. Not kind. Curious. And ready to help, in one way or another. And so, with a little bit of self kick in the butt, it became suddenly possible to meet new people at a compounding pace.
sharpen your ‘pitch’
How lame that first time was. And the second. And the third. But you learn to read people as you’re talking to them: lost? skeptical? bored? Then adapt your words consequently. It’s both challenging and fun to see the impact of changing one word at a time.
shit will hit the fan
Our soirée was initially planned for July 25th. And then the CrowdStrike outage. We thought it would be a far-off type of news, turns out our labels production froze, stuck by a threads shipment that got delayed. Long story short, our labels being the center piece of our soirée, we had to postpone, a week before the event, losing attendees in the way. Niiiice.
Also, should we talk about the mobile app?
beat that imposteur syndrome
The more people I talked to, the more events I attended, the more confident I became. Hearing a panel of (generally accepted) successful women talking about work life balance (while none of them had - or at least talked about - kids, ha ha), I started growing that feeling that I was no less insightful, that 10+ years building products and communities had made me grow a certain wisdom, a certain strength, that I was absolutely grateful for.
surround yourself with good people
We’ve had ups and downs. Many. When you land on the other side of the world on July 2nd, have already booked a venue for three weeks later, and barely know 10 folks in the city, you certainly have flows, such as “are we, like, completely insane?”. It’s hard to keep your faith intact 24/7 when you’re experimenting a brand new concept. But “what choice do we have now?” We grew stronger every day surrounded by enthusiastic, optimistic, cheerful, generous, thoughtful people. Some we had just met. Some we’d known for years. It would have been much harder (impossible even?) without their support.
there is no such thing like a plan A
Even though I had been the queen of events my whole life (ask my family, I am a freak), even though I had gone through that checklist 47 times: I kept telling myself it would NOT happen as expected. Bingo. (Giving birth is a good teacher, you should try). First, getting a venue ready in just 30 minutes was crazy, then having people coming in from 8pm til late, bit by bit, made it so that there was not a perfect moment to do our well-prepared introductory speech. Which ended up being… just fine!
let go and enjoy
Can we? Truth is, there aren’t many things that we love more than connecting good people together. That’s what the soirée was all about. If you’re curious:
password: mathilde
the debrief in the car
Midnight. We’d wrapped up everything, hugged the last diehard friends, and off to Berkeley. Max, Kev and I just couldn’t wait to debrief!!
WE LIKED 🤩 the vibe of our two talented, friendly tailors & dj | the pace of it all | an opinionated venue | our roadies' help throughout the week | that iOS worked! (iykyk) | the home-made (food & drinks) spirit | that people played | that people laughed | that people would not leave
WE WISHED 😵💫 we had more time to prep the venue | we didn't do that unnecessary, painful trip to costco | Android worked (iykyk bis) | people would dance, really? | no-show wasn't a thing | we had nailed down the sequences better (check in in the app, get your label sewn, introducing objet, artist performance)… next was to go get your feedback, folks!
(back to) making zines
We had this idea of making a zine post-event. A physical memory. We’d made zines in the past. A good bunch of them. Actually, I think we’ve always loved telling stories. Not just sell products, imbue them with meaning. So here I was, back to Illustrator to get this zine done. It felt like reopening an old toys box.
dang, where the hell are we staying tomorrow
Oh yeah. The evening before we’d check-out from our home swap (the lovely Berkeley family was heading back home, eventually), we had no clue where we’d stay next, Kev, the kids and me. Finding an accomodation for 14 nights in San Francisco, in the middle of highly-demanded summer, last minute, with zero budget: good f*** luck. We reached out to every single household in the Bay and were up at 3am replying to kind rejection messages. In the morning, we came across Daniel, the sweetest, most accommodating person in the world.
share the love, hear feedback
New home then. A few days after the party, we reached out to our attendees, met most of you, handed over the zine, and listened to your feedback. Priceless.
In between two encounters, me and my two little trainees also visited (and ranked) every single playground in the city. Rescued and adopted a (stuffed) german shepherd. Threw rope-like seaweed in the Pacific. Witnessed the catch (slaughter?) of a ray at Pier 7. Our boys finally asked whether we’d stay in “San Francis” for good, cause, well, they like it here.
go back to France and obsess about going back
Who invented borders in the first place? I hate this guy. We flew back to France and had some time with the family - but we felt it was too soon. Momentum kicks in, you can’t seriously be leaving. So we decided to…
send one of us back to SF [Kev], while kids go back to school
Cooking the next party one foot here, two feet there ❤️
So yes, we’re slightly obsessed. And we deeply believe these convivial-meet-eternal moments should exist.
✨ see you again on October 4th! ✨
At our soirées, we embed memories into clothing.
A deep appreciation to the beautiful souls out there who believed in us and helped us make La Première a reality: Stella Stark, Sushmit Dutta,
, , Audrey Danser, Valentina Calore, Gian Segato, Nori Kizawa, Alejandro Diaz, Alice. And all the attendees whose smiles and enthusiasm I will simply never forget!
Meet Stella and Audrey, the talented tailors! 👇
Bisous 💋
Mathilde
homebase these years is in Lyon, France :)
I don’t know what’s more successful than being capable of traveling across the world for a few months with two kids while staying on a budget in exchange homes and pulling off events with people you barely know💪 congrats!
Congrats on La Première! ✨ So impressive to pull it off in four weeks, it’s super lovely to read about all the human connections and curiosity - feel like I can totally relate 😅