The Grande Braderie, the annual sale organised by UCAM, the Monaco Union of Traders and Artisans, takes place Friday to Sunday, November 3-5, at the Chapiteau in Fontvieille.
The 21st edition is open daily from 10 am to 7:30 pm, and will offer dozens of big name brands offering slashed prices of up to 70 percent.
Sort through dozens of stands and racks full of designer bargains, from clothing for women – including Marie Muller swimwear and accessories, Italian fur coats by Carlo Ramello, Banana Moon swimwear, beach towels, ready-to-wear designs, and shoes – to menswear, kids clothing and shoes.
Photo: Monaco Life
You’ll also find sporting goods – Rossignol, Dynastar, Head ski equipment, plus sportswear and shoes from Adidas, Nike, Converse and Vans – and home accessories, like Fashion for Floors carpets.
Other brand names you’ll find are Carlo Ramello, Chaussures Antoinette, Clo, Ekinsport, Espace Monochrome, Galerie Shayesteh, JPA Monte-Carlo, Jules, La Botterie, Le Requin blanc, Lull, Sam Ichtys, Segraeti, Serna, Swann Hostein and Trends Monte-Carlo.
Stock up on Christmas toys for kids and dogs.
Photo: Monaco Life
UCAM supports Monegasque charities, and several stands will be on hand to make a fundraising appeal. There’s also a pop-up café at the back of the tent.
Last year’s tombola, which included dinner at the Café de Paris, Sunday Jazz Brunch at Saphir24, and lunch at the Novotel Monte Carlo, was a one-off event to celebrate the 20th anniversary edition, UCAM confirmed.
However, preferential parking at Fontvieille car park will again be offered this year. Pick up validated tickets at the Chapiteau entrance.
The 21st Grande Braderie is the perfect way to spend the coming rainy weekend.
Kate Powers looking at the event’s poster, featuring the famous Rubin Vase, an optical illusion of a decorative vase or two human faces.
As part of its monthly series, on Sunday, November 5, Stars’n’Bars ECOHUB will be holding another day-long event of conferences, workshops and expositions exploring wellness, ecology and wellbeing.
This month’s theme “Well Being Through Perspective” will include presentations led by experts in the esoteric field including healers, astrologists, clairvoyants, hypnotherapist and numerologists. As well, Reiki practitioners and Angel and Family Constellations therapists will participate.
“Esotericism and spirituality are broad concepts with room for many perspectives,” said Kate Powers, co-founder of the ECOHUB. “In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life.
“As such, it is a universal human experience – something that touches us all.”
Entrance to the conference, which will be held at Stardeck on the third floor of the restaurant from 1 pm to 5 pm, is free of charge and you don’t need to sign up in advance.
Attendees can listen to lectures and visit experts at their individual stands for information or demonstrations of various alternative therapies, products or services.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance writer, consultant and broadcaster on both Koreas
At the invitation of Roger Shine, on October 30, Aidan Foster-Carter gave a talk in his capacity as an expert on North Korea to members of the Churchill Club in the Churchill Room at the Hotel de Paris.
Monaco and South Korea established diplomatic relations in June 2007, when HE Il-hwan Cho became the first Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Korea to the Principality; the current Ambassador is HE Chul-min Mo.
Five years later, Seok-Joh Hong was appointed Honorary Consul of Monaco in Seoul, Korea.
And, as Mr Foster-Carter pointed out during his speech at Monday’s luncheon, there is a connection between Monaco and North Korea also. “I’m reliably assured that in their Swiss schooldays both Kim Jong-un and his sister Kim Yo-jong, now promoted to the Politburo, visited here and elsewhere on the Riviera, chaperoned by their aunt Ko Yong-suk,” the frequent commentator on Korea to BBC and Sky News said. “Such jaunts were curtailed after auntie defected to the US in 1998.”
“Another visitor, several times, was the ill-fated Kim Jong-nam: the half-brother Kim Jong-un never met, but notoriously had killed using VX nerve agent in Malaysia in February. Thirdly, the DPRK State Circus comes often to the International Circus Festival.”
The self-described Korea watcher since 1968 added that North Korea is “a big subject, and we have little time” and so preceded to address ten home truths.
As the Spice Girls ask: Tell me what you want, what you really, really want Speaking exclusively to Monaco Life later that afternoon at Club 39, Mr Foster-Carter, author of “North Korea After Kim Il-Sung: Controlled Collapse?” and “Korea’s Coming Reunification”, touched upon some of those key points in an interview.
But if I was hoping to get the inside scoop of what Kim Jung-un is really up to, I learned that, indeed, it’s complicated.
“It is actually quite hard to know, and has become even harder under the new, not-so-new leader Kim Jung-un, what North Korea wants,” expressed the Old Etonian, with a Phd/DPhil from Oxford, Cambridge, LSE. “Certainly there is a defensive motive. If you’ve been put on an axis of evil by the US, which then invades the first country on that list, then you’ve seen what also happened to Libya, the lesson drawn is that without nuclear weapons you are vulnerable to America specifically.”
North Korea’s first nuclear test was eleven years ago, but now under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, and what is leading to the current crisis, is that the pace of testing of nuclear weapons – two in one year of bigger and better missiles – has accelerated.
“Let’s not be literal-minded and think of him as a Bond Villain exactly, although he plays the part so well – “Mad Dictator Plans To Destroy The World”. If this had been his father, Kim Jong-il, you’d have the balance of threats and then the proposals, even if outrageous.
“In my view, we need diplomacy but it makes it difficult not knowing what this chap wants.”
A different mix of stick and carrot but never this unpredictable element Add to that uncertainty, President Trump. “In several different ways Trump echoes the bombast. North Koreans know what they are doing. When they say they are considering firing a missile near Guam, then that is their intention. No one spontaneously Tweeted that at 3 in the morning.”
The contributor to the Economist and Financial Times added that “As Trump gives us fire and fury, he sends mixed messages. He said he could meet Kim Jong-un over a burger, and would be honoured to do so, and then he calls him ‘Rocketman’ in a puerile exchange of playground insults and, in the UN, of all forums, he threatens to totally destroy North Korea and bring down the regime.
“There’s a wildness from the US that we’ve never seen before. We’ve had a different mix of stick and carrot but not this unpredictable element.”
While Mr Foster-Carter affirmed he was never a fan of Steve Bannon, he did admit that the former White House Chief Strategist “said it best” when he told American Prospect magazine: “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”
If military is not an option, could China play a bigger role? The Republic is the financial lifeline to the DPRK and “is their trade” but as Reuters reported, China’s imports from North Korea fell for a seventh straight month in September, dropping 37.9% year-on-year.
“China has been honouring US sanctions more than they have in the past but people expect China to do America’s heavy lifting. China would dearly love, I’m sure, for North Korea to stop testing nuclear weapons but it would be worse if North Korea, a buffer state, collapsed: Loose nukes, American troops coming in, and massive refugee flows.
“The conclusion I draw is that China will never risk this so support will come.”
Kim Jong-un: the economic reformer In an article for TIME titled “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing to Become North Korea’s Economic Reformer?”, Bill Powell wrote that the dictator recognises “what North Korea has been doing for decades economically doesn’t work”. Is there any evidence of this?
“The great paradox is that Kim Jong-un is an economic reformer. Each Kim has had a slogan, and for Kim Jong-un it’s ‘tandem together’ – and the two things are nuclear weapons and economic development. He seems to think this can work and has created policies for about 20 new economic zones.
“Politically, it looks like the young man educated in Switzerland has more guards for the pictures and statues of his dad and grandfather. But literal starvation in the 1990s started the growth of grassroots markets and under his father, these markets would be reigned in. Kim Jong-un knows that he cannot.”
The expert then pointed out, “We have reports that anything that the North Korean leader touches can never be used again and must go into a glass case. Irrationality is costly.”
Mr Foster-Carter referred to friends who train entrepreneurs in North Korea, which has a population of 25.37 million. The Chonson Exchange is a non-profit group in Signapore that has coached more than 1,600 North Koreans on the basics of business and economics since 2010, either in Pyongyang or, in some cases, the workshops have been taken internationally.
Founded by Geoffrey See, the Chonson Exchange focuses on three key themes: women in business, provincial development and entrepreneurship among younger business leaders.
Additionally, there’s the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology for the elite, which is primarily funded by born-again Evangelists.
“There is more going on in North Korea than one might think, although I’m not suggesting it’s a normal society that we know anywhere else. Life is still very grim.”
Trump’s trip to Asia: what to expect Donald Trump will start a 12-day, 5-country tour through Asia tomorrow, his first as President. And while the WSJ reports that “South Korea’s leader used a closely watched speech to oppose military action in countering North Korea as the US builds up its forces in the region”, Mr Foster-Carter stated, “The single most important foreign policy relationship is between China and the US. There are other issues for China and the US to discuss, so it wouldn’t be smart to let North Korea dominate their meetings.”
Mr Foster-Carter has a plan. “But I’m conscious it’s a bad one. I do think you need diplomacy and to take comfort in the fact that North Korea is very solitary, and not an Islamic State.
“So therefore you buy them off. Rewarding a country that is systematically broken and behaves as North Korea does seems unpalatable, but you need to go with the grain and Kim Jong-un’s drive for economic development and we can then monitor their nuclear weapons.
“But at the moment he doesn’t seem interested and in the US the time for diplomacy is over. We are far from that place.”
“A couple of missiles got through the South Korean defence, which is enough to kill 300,000 people right away, before the radiation kicks in. And Trump, safe in the US, was Tweeting ‘Bad North Koreans’.”
Aidan Foster-Carter shakes his head slightly. “I feel so uncertain.”
Max Hastings and Nicholas Soames, Churchill’s grandson, have been previous guest speakers for the private members’ Churchill Club in Monaco. Article first published November 2, 2017.
Kevin Smeenk, Director of Studio 39 hair salon and Eugenie Lurvink, makeup artist and mink eyelash entrepreneur.
Prepare to rethink everything you thought you knew about hair, makeup and eyelashes, because two resident Millennials are here to teach you a thing or two on November 7th.
Living in an era where social media is king, getting that perfect selfie ready makeup contour and highlight is something that practically comes as natural as breathing to many people, and beauty gurus on YouTube are #GOALS it’s no wonder that the beauty industry is worth over €370 billion.
A community of passionate artists, these beauty gurus hone their skills as well as constantly evolve with advances in techniques. While queen of social media and reality television, as well as CEO of her own beauty empire, Kim Kardashian’s Masterclass with her makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic in NYC may not be the most geographically practical to beauty lovers in our area we don’t to worry, we’ve got our own gurus that got us covered.
Enter Kevin Smeenk, the handsome young director of Studio 39 hair salon in the exclusive members club 39 Monte Carlo and the fashionable makeup artist and mink eyelash entrepreneur Eugenie Lurvink. On Tuesday November 7th, you’ll have a chance to watch these pros at work as Kevin shows you how to get the perfect glam hairdo and curls and Eugenie speaks about contouring and eyelashes at their Masterclass. They’ll show you how to get the look at home so bring your necessary beauty tools with you (curling irons, makeup brushes, eyelash curlers – whatever).
Having interviewed Kevin before (look for that next month) I know you guys are in for a special treat as his skill level is near flawless and he knows exactly how to make his clients look their best. Having run into Eugenie at an event in town she is the perfect makeup artist to learn from when it comes to getting the look for a night out in Monaco.
So if you fancy learning some new tricks or just refreshing on what you already know, this is one date you should not miss.
F1’s Daniel Ricciardo at Blue Coast Brewing Company
When I meet Natasha Frost-Savio and Roberto Savio Beer at Stars’n’Bars to talk about their new company, Blue Coast Brewing Company, the largest craft brewery in the region, they nonchalantly rhymed off a few investors – F1’s Jenson Button, F1’s Daniel Ricciardo and TV presenter Karen Minier-Coulthard – and then a few Ambassadors, or BlueCoasters as they refer to them, American actor Noah Wyle (ER, Falling Skies) and Sky Sport presenter Natalie Pinkham.
By this point I forget we’re talking about beer.
Sure, the official opening of the Blue Coast Brewing Company tap room in Nice is this Saturday, November 4, but with all this hype how can the artisanal beer not be a huge success?
Opening Day: Natasha Frost-Savio and Roberto Savio Beer of Blue Coast Brewing Company. Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
Photo: Monaco Life
“Well we have to have a tasty beer to stand behind,” Roberto told me. “And we have three.”
The Blonde Ale, IPA and the Session Ale were designed by Nice-based Swede, Robert Bush, who won gold at the Swedish National Championships in Home Brewing in Stockholm, and in 1996 he took the “Home Brewer of the Year” title with an English style bitter.
“We interviewed 18 brewers to come up with what we hope to be one of the best beers in France,” said Natasha. “And Robert knows his hops like a nez knows perfume.”
The idea for Blue Coast came to the Monaco-based couple two years ago, as the craft beer market is booming in other countries. In the US, for example, according to the Brewers Association, the American craft beer market was valued last year at €20.23 billion ($23.5 billion) – which represents 21 percent of the market share – and the number of active craft breweries tripled in a decade, from 1,409 breweries in 2006 to 5,234. In other words, 2.3 new breweries opened every day in the US in 2015.
In the UK, about 10 microbreweries opened a week in 2016 and in total the craft industry represents 9 percent of beer sold in licensed premises.
France counts around a thousand artisanal breweries, and locally a dozen, including Allez-Hops! in Nice launched last year by American Daniel Deganutti and his French wife Julie.
Jensen Button
Photo: Ed Wright Images
Blue Coast Brewer Robert Bush
Andreas Mikkelsen, winner of the WRC2 2017 Monte Carlo Rally
Photo: Ed Wright Images
“Craft beer is a tradition and a philosophy,” Roberto, an Italian-Swede explained.
Natasha, who is American but grew up in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, added, “All the local craft brewers, we all help each other, and even if we are the biggest, it’s about community.”
Blue Coast Brewing Company will be the largest brewery by a long shot, with a production target of 600,000 litres in 2018 and 1.1 million litres in 2019.
In addition to the million residents living in Monaco and the 06 department, the husband and wife business duo hope to tap into the 12 million tourists who visit the French Riviera every year. They are already in the process of designing a limited-edition 2018 Monaco Grand Prix beer.
The state-of-the-art brewery on Chemin de Saquier, in the Nice Eco Valley near Allianz Riviera stadium, will be open from noon to 7 pm every Saturday from November 4. This weekend 5TH Avenue Hot Dogs will serve American franks for the inauguration, but Natasha and Roberto plan to host a variety of food trucks across the year.
Pro cyclist Tiffany Cromwell
And with an extensive list of Ambassadors– cycling champion Thor Hushovd; Andreas Mikkelsen, winner of the WRC2 2017 Monte Carlo rally; pro cyclist Tiffany Cromwell; superbike driver Eugen Laverty; French karting champion Nicola Duchateau; and Monaco’s eco-legends Kate and Didier, owners of Stars’n’Bars, where you’ll also find the beer on tap – you never know who you could end up sharing a pint with at Blue Coast Brewing.
There’s plenty of free parking at Blue Coast Brewing, 18 Chemin de Saquier in Nice. Look for Decathlon St Isidore and then turn right on Camin de la Blea after Keria Luminaires et Laurie Lumière. This turns into Chemin de Saquier. Article first published November 1, 2017.
Lionel Galfré, Director of IMSEE, the Institut Monégasque de la Statistique et des Études Economiques
At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I attended the Marché Du Film’s “Refugee Voices in Film”, a collaboration between the Monaco-based International Emerging Film Talent Association (IEFTA) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The keynote address from Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s Director for the Bureau of Europe, set the tone: “Europe is trying to understand what happened last year. It’s like a hangover. You wake up and there are one million displaced people.”
But Mr Cochetel underlined the need to understand that a million migrants means a million unique people, each with a story.
This sentiment is shared by Mr Lionel Galfré, Director of IMSEE, the Institut Monégasque de la Statistique et des Études Economiques, which was set up in 2011. “Each person is a statistic,” he tells me, “and so behind every number there is a man, woman or child.”
I meet with Mr Galfré at IMSEE’s office, near Décathlon in Fontvieille, to discus the recent census and find out how this Economics major ended up working at Monaco’s institution for statistics.
Although Mr Galfré’s mother is Monegasque, the 43-year-old lived most of his life outside Monaco, in France and in Italy, working in international trade for the plastics industry. He was a branch director at Groupe Berchet in Milan for three years before moving over to their international operations in Oyonnax (Ain) as director, also for three years. He then ended up working briefly for in Paris for a Franco-Japanese and Chinese company before returning to Monaco. “Then I came back to the Principality to work in the directorate of economic expansion but moved on fairly quickly to statistics, which I’ve always been particularly interested in.”
Mr Galfré joined IMSEE at its inception in 2011. “I completely agree with IMSEE’s motto: ‘you need to measure to understand’. We measure, look at trends and try, if possible, to understand.”
The institute The Monaco Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies was created only five years ago and has eight people in the department, most of them with a background in statistics or economic studies, and there’s also a legal expert.
Before IMSEE, the division responsible for statistics and economic studies was part of the directorate of economic expansion, which fell within the Directorate of Finance and Economy. “It was a small department that conducted small-scale studies with fewer resources and less legitimacy than IMSEE,” Mr Galfré explains from his office. “Today, our service responds to the Minister of State.”
I ask the Director about a typical day at the statistics office. “We try to be very open and available to the outside world, and have some contact with the general public, say for company registration, but it’s not our major role. Our main activity is collecting and analysing data and writing reports.”
IMSEE focuses firstly on Monegasques entrepreneurs, investors and so forth because “they are the ones experiencing the day-to-day life that we try to measure, and we need to maintain a close link with their reality so that we can correctly interpret the figures”. And secondly, to other Monegasque administrations as their services also gather vital information.
The gathering of data at IMSEE falls into two core sectors – Economy & Finance and
Population & Employment – and IMSEE studies are published without being “filtered” by the state.
Mr Galfré goes over key areas with his team
The data One of the institute’s regularly published reports is the quarterly Economic Bulletin. It pulls data from difference services within the Monegasque administration, from fiscal services concerning turnover, to the social organisation on employment, to the treasury directorate for credit and bank deposit information.
“These reports help us to understand how the Monegasque economy is doing and explain the main trends in terms of employment, turnover and tourism. This makes the economic situation clearer to people making investment or financial management decisions, Mr Galfré points out.
IMSEE also publishes a monthly retailing barometer based on data collected from retailers about their sales, inventory, payments and number of customers. This “takes the temperature” of the retail sector and provides insight to retail chains with points of sale in different countries to compare the dynamic in Monaco with that in a wider economic context.
“Putting the statistics in context is important,” Mr Galfré insists. Take the cruise industry in Monaco as an example. “We know that the number of cruise passengers in Monaco has been dropping over the past two years. This is the direct result of a change in policy from the Monegasque Office of Tourism and Congress to attract smaller cruise liners, which obviously accommodate fewer passengers, but at a higher level of luxury and price. So we are able to explain the reduction in the number of cruise passengers in the light of this change in strategy.”
Mr Galfré adds that given the economic context around the world, “we can show that Monaco is also following a trend but generally coping better than, for example, the French Riviera”.
Another frequent publication is the Focus Report, which comes out around 15 times a year and spotlights a particular topic like weather or sex equality, or sectors such as retail, industry and education.
“We also have observatories that provide more in-depth data in a particular area, say retail observatory, industry observatory or demographics observatory, to allow us to study the Monegasque population in detail according to international indicators, such as life expectancy, birth rate and so forth. These are published once a year.”
Some of IMSEE’s studies are published in English online (imsee.mc). “Monaco in Figures”, a compilation of all the statistics about the Principality, can be found online and the print version is available for purchase.
Stating that IMSEE is both lucky and unlucky to be a young institute, with a young team, Mr Galfré describes that group as “still enthusiastic and dynamic” with a lot of plans in mind.
One such project is to strengthen its partnerships with foreign entities such as international polling agencies or foreign statistic organisations, which would allow the institute to open up its statistics outside Monaco. “For example, we conduct a European study, under international guidelines, every four years on alcohol, cigarette and illicit drug use by high school students.”
The census collects an individual’s data only to guide public policy, so the personal data is anonymous and confidential.
The census A census has been carried out in Monaco, according to Mr Galfré, since 1783, occurring every eight to ten years. The current campaign was launched June 9 and finished July 29. “We’re cleaning up the data now and results will be ready the first quarter of 2017.”
I look outside of Mr Galfré’s office and see two young women sitting at a table, sorting through paper copies of the survey, one by one, as the director goes through the process.
Four members of IMSEE work on the census, one is responsible for communication and is in contact with the different Monegasque communities, including the Anglophone community. “IMSEE uses different local French and non-French media, including radio and TV, plus visual publicity campaigns. “Our message is that participating in the census is a civic duty and in everyone’s best interest.”
Everyone living in Monaco, whether they are resident or not, receives in their letter box two questionnaires, one about the characteristics of their home and the other, an individual questionnaire for each member of the household.
Fifty specially recruited census agents (and dressed to be easily recognisable to avoid others posing as censor agents) go door-to-door delivering the census documents and are supervised by eight public service officials. The inhabitants fill in the information about their situation – if they are employed, their family situation, if they are a full-time resident in Monaco, their nationality, if the address is their main or secondary residence, their level of education and so on. The second questionnaire is about their housing,
The two main objectives of the census are to count and characterise the number of apartments and to count and characterise the number of inhabitants. “The information will tell us how many housing units there are in Monaco, and their level of development – size, level of comfort, equipped with double glazing, parking facilities – which helps public authorities to implement public policies, and helps IMSEE to know more about the population residing in Monaco, the typology of the population and the demographics. In turn, this provides politicians and government with the tools to forecast facilities such as nurseries, schools, health care centres, and retirement homes.”
The census also gives information about how the population gets around in Monaco, on foot, bike, bus or car, to help in the government in the management of transport infrastructure.
The 2016 census team
The census is not digital, although the results are scanned and entered into a database, but anonymously. Mr Galfré emphasises, “The purpose of a census is to collect an individual’s data only to guide public policy, so the personal data is anonymous and confidential. We’re not interested in the name of a particular person. The census does not ask about salaries earned or about religion. We’ve learned from Russian residents that in their country, for example, the census is completely different. In the UK, it’s different again.”
The significance
Figures are not abstract – they always represent something. So while the popular image of statisticians is rather austere, Mr Galfré insists they must be rigorous because behind each figure is a reality. “If we look at the annual demographic study, life expectancy is something concrete. It says something about people’s living conditions. If we take the Economic bulletin, are trends moving up or down? On a European level today we know that the trend for employment is not very optimistic, so where is Monaco positioned in that context? Monaco is creating jobs at a rate of around 2% per year but how long will this last?”
There was a small dip in employment in the last quarter of 2015, but the first quarter of 2016 it took off again. This can be taken as an indication that Monaco’s business can create activity and resist in a disruptive economic environment.
“If we look at the growth rate, the GDP, which expresses the economic health of a country, is 4%. If there is growth, it means that the country’s economy is expanding more than in the previous year. In Monaco, the growth rate tends to be positive.”
Mr Galfré is passionate in saying there’s a reality behind each figure and with the data from the census we can understand people’s lifestyles. “Being able to measure and count has allowed us to highlight certain phenomena and therefore improve the lives of individuals. We can’t react unless we first measure.”
For Lionel Galfré, behind every statistic is a story worth telling.
