How do the French display their local attachment?

Lille, Marseille, Arcachon, but also Zuydcoote, Villedieu-les-Poêles, Pornic, Annœullin, Sucy-en-Brie… The posters of the Wim graphic agency offer a visual tour of France. Four hundred destinations are already offered in two hundred businesses across France by Matthieu Prudhomme and his five collaborators, installed in Wimereux (Pas-de-Calais).

The number should further increase. And for good reason: WIM ‘has just made the official poster of the Tour de France Cycliste 2025. “Since then, the calls for communities or shops wishing to make an image of their territory have multiplied,” confides the founder.

No more reign of posters who reproduced the New York yellow towers in the 1980s in the 1980s. For a decade, a Franco-French wave has started to cover our interior walls. Whether signed Wim ‘, La otre, Marcel Travel Posters or Montcouleur, these new illustrations often borrow a graphic style from retro accents, sometimes close to the advertisements of the railways of yesteryear, with a pencil – or computer – modern.

Their favorite subject? The heritage or natural attire of our territories, famous … or not: who knows Lake Matemale (an artificial water body of the Pyrenees) or the villages of Mondement-Montgivroux, in the Marne, and Allennes-les-Marais in the North?

To see their profusion in the decoration shops, memories and in tourist offices, these images please! And not only to passing visitors who find in the neovintage representation of a villa in Soulac-sur-Mer (Gironde) or the Font-Romeu ski trail (Pyrénées-Orientales) an alternative to traditional snow balls or dish.

It was to people of the vintage that Urore Billod-Cernelus, manager of the Ambiance & Styles boutique in Pontarlier (Doubs), sold most of the six posters made in collaboration with the graphic designer Émilien Rogeboz: the hamlet of Port-Titi, the Château de Joux, the Saint-Pierre gate…

Olivier, in his fifties, bought them all for his second home in Corsica: “I wanted to bring a high-change piece. Beyond the visual that I appreciate, from the fact that they integrate well into my interior and the form of authenticity they give off, it is a wink, because my heart is partly in Pontarlier, where I have lived for almost forty years. »»

At 24, Evan lives in full time in the Doubs prefecture, which does not prevent him from hanging four of these representations at his home, including that of Lac de Saint-Point, “the place where we spend our summers” with friends.

Among the reasons for this enthusiasm, we will quote the celebration of an attachment to our territories and our roots, the personal touch conferred on our interiors, as well as the intergenerational side-the municipality of Estavar (Pyrénées-Orientales) slipped one of these posters in the garnished basket intended for the elders-, timeless and even reassuring in a world in motion.

These posters and their variants, the decorative postcards, all tell an intimate story, synthesizes Matthieu Prudhomme, the boss of Wim ‘: “When people enter the shop, they quickly smile. We hear: “I spent a vacation there”, “I grew up here”, “You remember when we lived there?” The poster of a territory that we know creates an emotion, it has a little Madeleine side of Proust. »»

Local textiles

The “regionalist” textile references have also multiplied in recent years: here it is Corrèze, Calaisfornia, Nîmes, LH (for Le Havre), the Caenca, DD of the Pwatoo (Poitou) follow the wake of a pioneer, 64 (the Official Code of Pyrénées-Atlantiques) launched almost thirty years ago, when the sweatshies were Acquired by the name of universities across the Atlantic or major tourist places.

Unlike a poster, reserved for the intimate sphere, the garment is intended to be shown. In the Calaisfornia boutique, installed in the city center of Calais since 2018, Marinette, who wishes to buy a zipped vest for her husband on the occasion of Valentine’s Day, claims this almost militant approach: “I come regularly. It is a nice gift, of quality and original, because it is not the brand that everyone carries. I am delighted to be able to wear Calais and make people in my city work. »»

Emmanuelle, whose wardrobe has several brands in the colors of the northern coast, underlines this feeling of belonging to a “community”, “this chauvinism in the good sense of the term”. In his Caenca store (with word games like “Caen we want we can”), Erika Delaune confirms: “Whether it is to offer it to” an expatriate “or for oneself, attachment to the territory is predominant among buyers. Even if in the textile field, Made in France remains rare for cost issues.

The local, a marketing asset

Posters or clothing, this appetite for the premises does not surprise France Guérin-Pace, geographer and researcher at the National Institute of Demographic Studies: “There is a resurgence of local identities, extremely valued in front of a global scale. At one time, New York University sweatshirts were dreaming. This is less the case. »»

Associated with a smell, a light or a souvenir, a place is also easily available from several angles and representations, an undeniable marketing asset. And in a period when the slightest difference can be eruptive, it has another great advantage: it will not be angry a priori.