"THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER" - Slavik
=> Learn more at the bottom of the page
In 1963, Renault commissioned Slavik to create a unique venue on the Champs-Élysées.
He introduced the pub concept in Paris, adapting it in the French style: neither a café, nor a restaurant, nor a brasserie, but a collective space with private booths, where everyone could feel both together and protected.
Slavik crafted a Belle Époque ambiance — upholstered leather banquettes, car headlights transformed into lamps, complicit rearview mirrors, mischievous portholes — while subtly incorporating industrial modernity: exposed ventilation ducts, copper, and brass.
Thus was born a space both nostalgic and resolutely contemporary, a tribute to Renault, its workers, and its cars, which Maurice Chevalier, Yves Montand, and Sugar Ray Robinson discovered during an unforgettable inauguration.
Location
53 Av. des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris
Press Review
Text by Pascal Bonafoux
In her then highly targeted “Potins de la Commère” column in France-Soir, Carmen Tessier reported that Maurice Chevalier, the first to arrive for the inauguration because he had to sing at 9 PM at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, was delighted to rediscover the putt-putt cars of his youth at the Renault Pub.
It was Slavik who, for its opening in 1963, chose this nostalgic Belle Époque ambiance. Upholstered leather banquettes, car headlights serving as lamps, rearview mirrors to surprise arrivals or avoid being surprised—everything in these interiors invited intimacy. Even if low-placed portholes allowed one to discern the curve of a pretty leg.
If, during this inaugural evening, Sugar Ray Robinson and Yves Montand were able to (amicably) box each other, Carmen Tessier assures that they agreed on declaring the Renault Pub incomparable.
This was Slavik’s second intervention on the Champs-Élysées. The Renault Pub, which would open in autumn 1963 — it began operations on October 3rd — must not, for good reason, be confused with the Drugstore.
While it is a pub and is supposed, because it is a pub, to adopt Anglo-Saxon appearances, it is out of the question not to consider that this place must be the most attractive showcase for the Régie Nationale des Usines Renault. We have known since Jean-Paul Sartre affirmed in the 1950s that one must not “despair Billancourt” (it was in Boulogne-Billancourt and on Île Seguin that the Régie’s factories were then located).
Everything must be done for this pub to be a hymn to the glory of the workers of the Régie Nationale, to the automobile, to these Renault cars that appeared at the end of the 19th century, as early as 1898.
Why not give those who enter the feeling of being able to once again get into a Type BX or Type BY car from 1910, or a Type EU from 1919?
Who knows if this nostalgia won’t encourage the purchase of an R4, which appeared in 1961, or a Caravelle, released from the factories in 1962?… But, a fundamental counterpoint, beyond this necessary nostalgia, wood, leather, and brass must illustrate and highlight Renault’s modernity. The air circulation ducts, not concealed by a false ceiling, a striking metaphor for both the factory and the engine, are the sign of this modernity.
"The one who invents atmospheres": SLAVIK
However, he himself designed every seat of every banquette. The “cabins” that make up the “Pub” he recreated from his memories: reminiscences of a Hamburg brasserie, a Milanese café, a definite influence from the House of Lords in London, etc.
He did not merely add or juxtapose objects and furniture elements. He did not merely create a decor. He, in fact, “invented” an atmosphere.
He says: “Eventually, one creates a style; and one has succeeded when, immediately, people put your name on your creations.”
Thus, there can be no mistake: the Drugstore, the Prébac stores, the Pub—it’s Slavik.
He began his studies like everyone else; he obtained his baccalaureate, his PCB (he wanted to study medicine). But, for financial reasons, he had to change his orientation.
After the École des Arts Décoratifs, he worked for 10 years at Galeries Lafayette: form studies, exhibitions, window displays, merchandising, graphics.
He then left for Italy, staying notably in Venice. He designed: glasses, bottles, shoe models, and even machines and advertising trucks.
But he observes:
“The appreciation for objects is not developed in France; the French are too Cartesian. The object for the object’s sake, for the pleasure of the eyes, for the caress of the hand, the gratuitous object, it doesn’t catch on in France. At least not yet. So, I no longer present objects; I bring people ‘into their presence.’ I invent spaces a bit like organizing safaris. I propose atmospheres: warmer, colder, more intimate…
My job is to create spaces ‘on the scale of our feelings and our bodies.’ I am resolutely against the grandiose. I am for tenderness. We must rehumanize the places where we live, restore their mystery.
Our profession is truly versatile.
For example, I am currently designing a baker’s oven. And I am preparing a new ‘pub,’ very different from the ‘Renault,’ with a lot of marble and greenery: the ‘Jardin des Plantes greenhouse’ style.
He is also preparing two ‘bistros’ in the heart of Paris, for the café-crème of the young saleswomen he knows well.
True Auvergnat-style bistros.
Unlike all others, Slavik works alone.
He conceives at length, he draws plans, he chooses materials. He even chooses his contractors and workers. He maintains very close emotional relationships with them, ‘direct contact’ relationships, as he says, which lead to surprising results.
Thus, the famous Champs-Élysées ‘pub,’ which he conceived and ‘nurtured’ like a child for a year and a half, was practically built in five weeks.
“The workers slept on the very site of their work without being forced, simply because they felt they were participating, creating with me. It was a true kibbutz.”
