The French designer and American singer were in Paris together yesterday to launch the Xmas illuminations of the BHV department store. And he designed to lights himself! Impressive, or disappointing then? We tell all…

The BHV store is a handy Parisian institution for all sorts of practical shopping: very central, not that expensive (compared to some places), and with a vast DIY basement that everyone who lives here has been to at one time or another. However, they do have an image problem. Despite having redesigned various aspects of the place, they still don’t have the class or sexiness of, say Les Galeries Lafayette, Le Printemps or Le Bon Marché. In fact, you could safely say that they are just a little, er, naff.

So, time to shake things up a bit with multi-talented French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (or JC/DC to his friends), invited to design the store’s Xmas logo, window displays, some special limited edition items and – above all – the Xmas lights! And it was his genius (incongruous?) idea to invite rock goddess and 300% cool kid Beth Ditto of The Gossip to kick things off!

And so, on 17th November 2009 à 5.30pm, huge expanses of metal barriers were erected on both sides of the road outside the store, ready for the thousands of people who… didn’t turn up. Only a couple of hundred made the effort. The two stars had their own podium for a few minutes, told us how excited and happy they were about their cheque the event, then Beth – who seems excessively nice – sung an impromptu acapella version of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. Stunning faux-pas, or daring irony? We’re not quite sure, and neither were the crowd.

Then it was time to switch on JC/DC’s luminescent wonder. Unfortunately, they didn’t even have time to get to the end of their bilingual countdown…

And the result? Fake neons that change colour in a pretty basic way. JC/DC and Beth quickly shuffled off to the VIP buffet, leaving us to marvel at the mock-80s splendour of it all.

To experience it for yourself, get down to the BHV store (here) from 5.30pm onwards, every night until the end of the year.

Official BHV site:: www.bhv.fr