by Paris — French daily newspaper Le Monde is expanding its lifestyle vertical with the launch of its first physical event inspired by its weekend magazine M and its Le Goût de M segment.
Le Goût de M Festival, which will take place this weekend at the École Duperré school of fashion and applied arts in Paris, will include discussions with designers Simon Porte Jacquemus, Matthieu Blazy, Marine Serre, Julien Dossena, Rabih Kayrouz and Pierre Hardy, together with creative people from various other fields, around the theme of sustainability.
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Marie-Pierre Lannelongue, deputy editorial director of Le Monde and M le Magazine du Monde, said this is the first time she and her team have met readers since the launch of the weekly magazine 13 years ago with its remit of news and lifestyle cover.
“With this event, we are trying to provide a live M experience and the idea is to grow the M brand,” she explained. “Holding the event at a school gives us the opportunity to organize it like the table of contents in a magazine. There are shorter formats and longer formats, so it’s like a magazine in 3D.”
The two-day festival is named after Le Goût de M, which started as a podcast and from 2022 has a dedicated vertical on the homepage of Le Monde. A paper supplement comes out three times a year, with four separate covers focused on fashion, design, food and travel.
Lannelongue, who began her career at Elle magazine, said that when M first launched, there was a strong bias in the newsroom against fashion reporting, especially given Le Monde’s reputation as the newspaper of choice for France’s left-wing intellectual elite.
In addition to the growth of the luxury industry, and fueled by the surge of interest in lifestyle topics among young and female readers, M magazine is growing steadily in print and online.
It now reaches 1.6 million readers a week, with a circulation of around 490,000 copies in the second half of 2023, according to the Alliance for Print and Media Data, or ACPM. Le Monde and the magazine have a total of 607,000 subscribers.
“It works because we cover these stories with the same journalistic integrity that we cover the news. Readers are starting to see Le Monde as a credible source for lifestyle topics and a guarantee of quality. Another reason it works is because people are looking for light relief, and that’s something we’ve seen very clearly since COVID-19,” she said.
“You can talk about fashion and food and travel, and still be aware of terrible world events from wars to the rise of the right wing and climate change. It’s not always easy to run a fashion cover in that context but I feel more comfortable doing it now, because people are asking for it. Le Monde has evolved a lot,” she said.
Elisabeth Cialdella, managing director of M Publicité at Groupe Le Monde, reported that advertising revenue at M magazine was up 18 percent in 2023 compared to 2019.
“Its success depends on a foundation of loyal brands, which represent 60 percent of the portfolio, and its ability to overcome new advertisers that attract its exclusive readers and the originality of its editorial content,” she said.
The festival is expected to attract 2,000 visitors with activities on the theme of “second life, repair, joke”. Serre will lead a workshop on upcycling, and Blazy Bottega Veneta will talk about blending craftsmanship and innovation. Dossena, creative director of Rabanne, will be in conversation with director and actress Géraldine Nakache.
Brigitte Lacombe and Malick Bodian will have their portraits taken by a number of attendees, while experts in weaving, embroidery and engraving will give demonstrations.
Partners for the event include Nespresso, which is launching a compostable coffee capsule; Refashion, an eco-organization accredited by the French authorities to cover the textile industry’s legal obligation to sustainably manage waste; resale platform Leboncoin, and other brands including Diptyque, which recently launched its first refillable candle.
Lannelongue said the event was designed to reflect M’s editorial approach, at a time when the boundaries between lifestyle journalists and influencers are becoming increasingly blurred. “It’s less about celebrities, and more about authenticity and things that stand the test of time,” she said.
She noted that strong media brands are increasingly diversifying into new areas, including apparel, suggesting that the festival could be the first of several initiatives in the works for M.
“If you are a significant and strong media brand today, you have to develop your brand and find other sources of income,” she said. “So the idea is to grow our brand and expand our scope. That’s why it’s important to have a strong editorial bias, so that both speakers and audiences feel like it’s an M experience.”
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