Fashion designer Coqueline Courrèges takes a Metro writer for a spin
When fashion brands get involved with cars, it’s usually limited to natty trim or logos, but one French fashion house has actually started making them.
André and Coqueline Courrèges invented the space-age look of the 1960s, with their white PVC boots and A-line minidresses. But they’ve always designed more than clothes as their new book Courrèges testifies, creating furniture, interiors, Olympics uniforms — and cars.
The Courrèges’ first prototype was a one-seater electric car, sent down the runway with their 1969 collection as an ecological comment.
In 2002, Coqueline, horrified by the car industry’s failure to address the urgency of climate change, set about showing how easy is is to develop a practical green car. “Car manufacturers need a kick in the butt,” she says when I hitch a ride with her in Paris. “We urgently need to put the brakes on consumption.”
Coqueline built the white bubble-shaped Bulle, an EV with a range of 170 km and top speed of 110 km/h, then tried different batteries in her next two prototypes, the EXE and Zooop, each lighter and more energy-efficient than the last.
EVs have a reputation for looking lame and driving like golf carts, but these cars combine stunning design and high speed. Pedestrians gasp as the blue-framed lithium ion battery-powered EXE fires straight to 90 km/h, just half way to its top speed.
The rear-wheel drive, egg-shaped and yellow Zooop is even more powerful, reaching 180 km/h, earning it a prize for performance at Michelin’s annual sustainable mobility event, Challenge Bibendum. You could overtake a truck on the highway in this, and it also has a range of 450 km.
They’re the dream car for the city — big enough for three, fast but efficient and totally cool. While we wait for a Courrèges production car, Coqueline is exploring new technologies. She’ll reveal two new prototypes in January and plans to use solar power within the next five years.
