It was one of the spring events at Lacoste. Saturday 1er April, at the end of the afternoon, in one of the charming narrow streets of this medieval town in the Luberon, perched 320 meters above sea level, a small Proxi grocery store was inaugurated. A business long awaited by the 426 inhabitants and which will make their lives much easier.
It is to the American art university SCAD – Savannah College of Art and Design – that the village owes the arrival of the mini-market in its heart. The same day, SCAD opened the doors of its spring exhibition, devoted to French fashion designer Julien Fournié. For the summer, from 1er July, the guest will be Christian Lacroix, with in particular the presentation of his costumes imagined over the years for the Comédie-Française. The hanging is to be discovered until 1er november.
How did a renowned private school, located in Savannah, nearly 7,000 kilometers away, in the southeastern United States, take up residence in this small French town more than twenty years ago? , jewel of Luberon tourism and known mainly for having been the stronghold of fashion designer Pierre Cardin? “Bernard Pfriem, an American painter who fell in love with the village, opened the Lacoste School of the Arts at the very beginning of the 1970s, explains Cédric Maros, the director of the French branch of SCAD. He had bought a first house for a pittance! »
In 2001, on the verge of bankruptcy, the school proposed to Paula Wallace, co-founder in 1978 and president of the Savannah College of Art and Design, to recover the eighteen buildings it owned in the village to set up a branch in Provence. SCAD Lacoste was born. For two decades, the village has seen a succession of small groups of American students – up to 600 per year – who come for six to eight weeks to reinforce their university course in this exotic Occitan setting.
Investments in local heritage
In the United States, SCAD is one of the best universities in the field of the arts. It has a 99% employment rate within ten months of graduation and offers no less than 42 specialties, from photography to textile arts, including fashion design, advertising, architecture and even illustration, creative writing, screenwriting or animation.
Among its former students, screenwriters from Grey’s Anatomy and Christopher John Rogers, fashion designer known for dressing Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, at the inauguration party in 2021. “One hundred and fifty former students were credited in the credits of the films presented at the last Oscars”, welcomes the director.
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