This Wednesday, January 25, the Mediapart site published an investigation into the Miss France competition. In it, we discover that students from a vocational high school worked in alarming conditions to make certain dresses for the evening.
Behind the scenes. Prior to the election of Miss France 2023, whose ceremony was broadcast on December 17, the competition called on students from a vocational school to make some of the dresses for the evening. But this Wednesday, January 25, Mediapart published an investigation to reveal that the working conditions of these students would have been particularly alarming.
Highlighted in the press, the students of the high school of fashion and arts and crafts Octave-Feuillet, located in Paris, were at first delighted to work for the Miss France competition. But the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. According to Médiapart, high school girls, mostly minors, would have been forced to work day and night. “The students, most of whom do not live in the 16th arrondissement of Paris where the Lycée Octave-Feuillet is located, were unable to return home and had to sew fabrics, rhinestones and feathers for a good part of the night, the days preceding the event“indicates the media, specifying that some young girls have even had to sleep inside the establishment“their heads resting on their crossed arms, on the workshop table”.
High school girls exposed to “too fast a pace of work”
The rectorate of Paris and school medicine were finally alerted to the situation before December 17. The day before the competition is broadcast, “the headmistress was ordered to no longer have students work at night in high school”, said a member of the vocational high school teaching team. For its part, the rectorate of Paris recognized with Médiapart a situation “in defiance of all the rules governing schooling and work in a vocational school”. “This year, this project led, in particular due to supply delivery constraints, to expose some students of the establishment to an excessively fast pace of work in the last days preceding the event.admitted the rector, who however claims to have brought “accommodation solutions nearby” students.
For its part, the Miss France production company explained to the investigation site that it had transmitted the artistic instructions to the vocational school in October 2022, “i.e. 6 to 7 weeks in advance”. She also explained that it was then the teachers of the establishment who “defined the schedule of realization as well as the creative projects according to what they considered adapted to the level of studies of the pupils within these deadlines.