top names in men’s fashion design beautiful pastries for guests at intercontinental’s cafe de la paix, paris
Claude Montana latest designer to apply skills to culinary craft
The renowned Café de la Paix at the InterContinental Paris Le Grande, has added some of the biggest names in fashion design to its employee list. Paco Rabanne and Claude Montana are among several impressive names from the fashion world who have taken their creative art to a new level by designing special pasties for the world-famous patisserie.
Following the success of limited edition ‘Fashion Pastries’ during the 2005-2006 season designed by four leading ladies of haute couture, a new collection has been designed by their male peers called simply ‘Designed by Men’.
First Paco Rabanne produced the devine ‘Cross Flavours’ pastry, then Gaspard Yurkievich introduced the hugely popular ‘Cream Passionnel’ and now Claude Montana has invented ‘Passion Victim’, which is set to hit the Café de la Paris shelves by September.
Discreet in its elegant snowy outer layer, ‘Passion Victim’, the very first patisserie invented by Claude Montana, is inspired by his bottle of ‘Parfum d’Elle’, launched in 1989. This dessert, with its streamlined look, has a structured style that is so typical of the famous fashion designer.
The delicate sweet is made of white chocolate mousse, filled with a cream of passion fruit and set on a crunchy coconut-flavoured praline.
“’Passion Victim’ appeals to the eyes and taste buds. The white colour evoking purity is a distinctive feature of this architecture of oval layers, with its smooth taste of passion,” explained Montana. “The idea was to play with words – why not interpret this culinary experience through a witty verbal game, since one can be the victim of both fashion and passion?”
Laurent Delarbre, the new chef at the Café de la Paix, together with his pastry chef Guillaume Caron, is responsible for concocting the bouquet of new flavours.
Passion Victim will be available from 17 September 2007 to 13 January 2008 at the Café de la Paix.
