PARIS — “I never knew leather was so heavy,” gasped a teenager as she picked up a scrap of raw material at the Compagnons du Devoir booth, one of the 15 schools at this year’s edition of the Village IME, a vocational fair sponsored by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s Institut des Métiers d’Excellence, or institute for métiers of excellence, held on Jan. 15.
Founded in 2014, the program aims to open up opportunities for kids to discover the group’s métiers across a range of domains and learn about work-study apprenticeships done in partnership with top French schools in jewelry, dressmaking, watchmaking, leather goods, client advisory, retail design, winemaking, gastronomy and beauty. They include the École de la Bijouterie-Joaillerie de Paris for jewelry, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne for fashion and Les Compagnons du Devoir for leather goods.
The fair is held at Espace 93 in the notorious Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. “It’s important to be where the people we are reaching out to are,” explained Françoise Schoenberger, director of social development at LVMH. “In 2016, the IME embarked on this project in partnership with Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil to help end any self-censorship. We want kids from the area to
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