Sowvital's 2022 Paris Pop Up: A Celebration of Art, Nature, and Creativity in the Marais

Experience Sowvital's Paris pop-up in the Marais, a vibrant celebration of art and nature, featuring workshops, culinary delights, and creative collaborations.

Sowvital had a busy 2022, successfully launching and bringing the brand from London, to Paris, to New York. Our stop in Paris took the form of a pop up shop in the iconic Marais, a famous neighbourhood in the Third Arrondissement of Paris.

Creating a beautiful, high-end gallery-shop hybrid space, we hosted a range of events and workshops, working with some of the top creatives in Paris and inviting both friends of the brand and newcomers alike.

Contents

1. Botanical Patisseries with Andrea Sham

2. Workshop with Romance Berberat

3. Botanical Styling with This Humid House

4. Mindful Processes with Eléonore Grignon

5. An Evening with Fedrigoni

6. An Evening by Laszlo Badet

7. Botanical Cocktails with Little Red Door

8. Art Through Cuisine with MANGER MANGER

9. Conclusion

Botanical patisseries with Andrea Sham

Andrea Sham's delectable creations are a delight both visually, and on the pallette. Therefore, Sham was an absolute must when considering statement, edible pieces for the pop-up.

Instead of keeping her passions for patisserie and art separate, she combines, resulting in cakes that are nothing short of ephemeral works of art.

Bringing an enchanting fusion of fairytale and fine art, Sham created two stunning pieces for our Marais pop up, wonderfully pairing with our chic Parisian gallery space and marking the event with the essence of luxury.

Workshop with Romance Berberat

Trained as a designer and passionate about nature, Romance Berberat explores living things and situates the connection between art and ecology at the heart of her work.

She is the co-founder of Les Filles du Champ, an association that educates children about eating well, and co-manager for Le Champ des Rêves, a neighbourhood grocery shop.

Berberat hosted two workshops at our pop up in the Third Arrondissement of Paris.

Participative affairs, these workshops allowed parents to bring their young ones, helping them understand the life cycle of a plant, from seedling to full grown. Each child left with a cutting planted in their own Victorian terracotta pot.

Botanical styling with This Humid House

With the heart of Sowvital being embossed with elegance yet scientific accuracy, we needed this visible in all that we presented in Marais, This Humid House were able to deliver this and more.

This Humid House is a team of highly skilled designers with a wealth of experience in the fields of fine art, architecture, floristry, horticulture, and landscape design.

Their primary objective is to develop a comprehensive, botanically-based design language that embodies the essence of their climate, geography, and collective culture.

Key Design Elements of This Humid House:

• Living materials: Embracing a dynamic approach using shape, volume, colour, line, and texture.

• Fondness for the unusual: Preferring unruly, uncultivated plants and experimenting with new materials.

• Collaborative network: Leveraging a wide array of industry experts, growers, and foragers to source unique botanical materials.

• Botanical artistry: Striving to blend contemporary design with organic beauty, creating timeless displays.

As a botanical design studio, their focus is on the contemporary. They seamlessly weave together living materials to create a profound visual connection that transcends time and trends.

This was no different in the case of our Paris pop-up in the idyllic Marais.

Combining their design philosophies with regular brand materials, such as mycelium, This Humid House created an awe-inspiring tiered display, its structured nature closely representing the construction of plant cells under a microscope.

It was a glorious centrepiece, oozing with effortless elegance.

Mindful processes with Eléonore Grignon

Eléonore Grignon is a captivating figure, working as a transdisciplinary artist, author, and photographer. Her upbringing, surrounded by a family of creatives and a beekeeper-farmer great-grandfather, fostered a profound appreciation and reverence for life on our planet.

Today, Grignon’s work encompasses art, crafts, agroecology, spirituality in various forms such as yoga, meditation, astrology, myths, and ecofeminism.

She employs seven verbs to inform and enrich her creative output: peregrine, observe, harvest, manipulate, assemble, play, and shell. Through these, she weaves a poetic and committed constellation.

For our Paris pop up, Grignon hosted a two-stage workshop, combining natural processes, such as fermenting, with a meditation ritual. This left attendees reconnected with the natural world on both a physical and mental level.

An evening with Fredrigoni

For 125 years, Fedrigoni Paper has been a global paragon of paper manufacturing.

Throughout this history, the Italian brand has continually inspired and assisted the best designers to create one-of-a-kind projects.

Sustainability is an integral part of Fedrigoni's ethos, and the brand has a lengthy track record of prioritising low environmental impact processes.

Through innovation and technology, the company is committed to developing products that meet ESG criteria. Every day, Fedrigoni strives to enhance its materials, inspire creativity, and empower its people.

Sowvital uses Fedrigoni paper on all of its product packaging, the stunning textures and colour reproduction are essential to making the products look and feel as good as they are effective.

While in Paris for our Marais pop up, Sowvital co-hosted an event with Fedrigoni, celebrating our relationship and allowing designers to meet the Fedrigoni team and explore their paper range in person.

An evening by Laszlo Badet

Laszlo Badet, a skilled ‘petite-main’ who works for high-end fashion houses in Paris, has a passion rooted in rustic and creative cuisine that reflects her Swiss-Italian roots.

Featuring meticulous presentation, Badet’s cuisine is distinguished by her attention to detail, which stems from her background in tailoring and seamlessly transitions into her cooking.

Primarily catering private dinners and events, she also lends her creative touch to food design for film and photography. Additionally, Laszlo develops restaurant menus, conducts cooking workshops, and undertakes cooking residencies worldwide to further her research.

Constructing a mossy, culinary dream, Badet helped us host an event during our pop up in the Third Arrondissement of Paris, inviting our guests to delve further into the indulgence within the natural world.

Botanical cocktails with Little Red Door

Little Red Door, a charming cocktail bar, can be found in the heart of the Third Arrondissement in Paris. Despite its unassuming exterior, the bar boasts an inviting and relaxed atmosphere inside.

Over the years, Little Red Door has established itself as a popular spot in the Marais district by embracing the creative scene and offering conceptual yet accessible menus.

Drawing inspiration from art, flavour perception, and anthropology, the bar has been recognised as one of the World's 50 Best Bars nine times since its opening in 2012.

Little Red Door’s Farm-to-Glass Approach:

• Locally sourced ingredients: Partnering with French producers to ensure quality and freshness.

• Homemade products: Creating in-house ingredients that form the base flavour of their cocktails.

• Producer-centric drinks: Highlighting the craftsmanship of farmers and producers in every cocktail.

• Unique guest experience: Focusing on the farm-to-glass journey as an integral part of the drink’s story.

Little Red Door produced and bottled a unique cocktail for Sowvital’s Paris pop-up, serving it alongside a selection of unique, French-grown herbs to enhance the flavour and experience.

Paris Pop Up: Art through cuisine with MANGER MANGER

Marie Méon, founder and culinary mastermind behind MANGER MANGER, initially worked as a retail designer for luxury brands such as Dior and Chanel for a decade, learning the importance of excellence and high standards.

From 2010 to 2012, she opened the doors of her Haussmannian apartment to host ‘clandestine’ dinners several times a month for up to 30 guests.

Her unique menus were inspired by the seasons, her travels, and her encounters. The concept quickly became successful, and her friends started requesting her to cook for special events.

For Méon, food and ingredients are thought of as creative tools. Now, through MANGER MANGER, Méon is a widely-appreciated presence internationally, providing culinary creations for some of the most elevated and luxurious brands available.

Méon, along with her talented team, pulled together 3 unique and stunning edible displays for our Paris pop up in the legendary Marais neighbourhood.

Taking Sowvital’s approach of reconnecting people with their plants, Méon created elegant culinary journeys, representing the process from seed to bloom, and from bloom to decay.

Conclusion

The Paris pop-up was a celebration of creativity, art, and nature, seamlessly blending these elements into a cohesive and immersive experience.

Each event, from Andrea Sham’s botanical patisseries to Marie Méon’s artful culinary displays, demonstrated the diverse ways in which art and nature intersect.

Our time in the Marais not only highlighted Sowvital’s commitment to innovative and eco-friendly practices but also fostered a deeper connection between attendees and the natural world.

This vibrant chapter in our journey underscored our dedication to celebrating and nurturing nature through creative expression.