SING A SONG: Fun fact: Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, is a closet musician — has been for decades.
The keyboard player in a New Wave band called King Lear back in the ’80s, he’s kept up his musical sideline, and on Tuesday night took to the stage at New Morning, a Paris nightclub renowned for jazz and blues.
With his baritone voice and the bossa nova stylings of his band, it wasn’t long before he had the audience singing back “Oh la la,” and howling with delight.
The concert took place between men’s fashion week in the French capital and Paris Couture Week, letting Morand and executives from LVMH, Rick Owens, Ami, 3.Paradis, KCD Paris and Palais Galliera blow off some steam.
Morand describes his genre of music as “contemporary French songs,” and on Tuesday he flitted between the solo mic and the keyboard as a string quartet shared the stage with a harpist, bass guitar player and other musicians.
The brainy executive, who holds a doctoral degree in economics from the University of Rouen, assumed the helm of French fashion’s governing body in 2015.
Before that, he was the former director general of the Institut Français de la Mode and former dean of business school ESCP Europe, and was previously deputy director general of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Paris region.
He never fully gave up performing, doing a few concerts and festivals around the Millennium and 2011, but only recently returned to songwriting in earnest, composing on the piano, he told WWD. In tandem with Tuesday’s concert, and with the support “of a community of friends,” he released a five-track EP.
