Last night was awesome. First off, there was the Fashion Show, Ze L'Oreal Trophee, or Ze Cat Walk, and your opportunity to be Ze Star of Ze Day.

There was a stage, elegant armchairs for the jury, large posters from Ralph Lauren, Lancome and other various L'Oreal brands, a full-blown PA system, including wireless mics, and about 80 chairs. The whole set up looked extremely professional. French music soon started to overtake all possible noises. The jury was the Director of the MBA program, a star Finance Prof from France, a star Entrepreneurship prof from the UK (although given the way he talks French, one might entertain doubts about his actual citizenship) and a L'Oreal senior manager. The jury was being served Champagne and was comfortably seated.

Que le spectacle commence.

Two French guys, wearing a pre-historical style short, made up of Financial Times remains and a toilet seat around their heads started a provocative dance. They were the presenters of Ze Fashion Show. "Welcome to the Fashion Show - We are the TALKING TOiLETS". Then they started to introduce the various teams who were going to do their little catwalk. I remember

- Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz (pronounce Tom Crooooze and Penelope Croooooze)
- The Fontainebleau Rugby Team wearing a Paris By Night Street Worker outfit (including the men)
- The Versatile Man (who turned a man suit into a diving gear)
- Reverse Order: women dressed up as men in suits and men dressed up as women in evening dresses
- Marianne (symbol of the French Republic) and her boys: : three boys dressed up in Blue White and Red and three ladies wrapped in three pieces of Blue, White and Red Sheets, unrolled to make up the French Flag and doing a little fun choreography, as a suggested striptease on a "Deshabillez-moi" song (take my clothes off)
- Natural Costume: cellophane based costume for the French Adam and Eve: the natural protection was changed from a leaf to a Blue White and Red cocarde
- The French Chefs doing French Can Can
etc...

There were three winners, loads of prizes with L'Oreal, bottles of wine and French liqueurs. Interestingly, the L'Oreal person stood up on stage at the end of the show and said that he'd been very impressed by the quality of the show, and by the creativity displayed by the students (the costumes were truly truly excellent or absolutely HILARIOUS) and that he did not think that the prizes that he had already given would be enough to reflect the efforts that went into the show. He will be sending some more next week. This is the first time EVER in my life that I hear a sponsor publicy stand up and say: "I will be giving you more". He was grandiose. He stayed the whole evening to talk to the participants. Many professors and staff members came to the show, which lasted for an hour. It looked well-oiled, extremely professional and was truly hilarious.

Most sponsors of National Week are interested in recruiting at INSEAD and set up partner deals with the school.

I have heard comments that the show was remarkably well organized, there was no dead time, good flow, great music, cool costumes and it was one of the funniest event I ever participated in as an INSEAD student (am I won't be telling you which costume or team I was part of...I will let you guess)

What followed was also pretty good.

Grand Marnier based cocktails
Over 25 kgs of cheese in including Goat Cheese, Reblochon, Gruyere, Brie, Tome de Savoie and other variety
100s of bottles of white and red wine, and French aperitif
400 crepes for dessert
fruits, olives, lettuce, juices...

All this absolutely free, curtesy of a very successful French retailer: Carrefour...Hundreds of people turned up, including the Dean of the Asian Campus, happily shared all the Cheese toasts (on baguette, pain campagnard, pain aux olives, etc...) that the organization team spent the whole afternoon preparing.

Carrefour is very good at expanding internationally so it made a lot of sense for the company to talk to an international and culturally aware crowd.

I am not sure that this type of event would have been successful in Fontainebleau. The show took place in the middle of the campus, in a very central part. There was not much happening at the same time and there isn't a National Week every week, like in Fontainebleau, so the turn out for every event was high. After 10 minutes of serving them, all the crepes were gone. Professors and staff members participated in the event, mingled with the student body and everyone was very relaxed about everything. The sense of community is much stronger in Singapore and people really sign up to any community building event much more easily than in Fontainebleau. A larger portion of the student body has no relative nearby to visit in the evening. As a result their lives revolve more around campus-linked activities.

All in all, it was a fantastic evening.

I helped with cleaning up, then moved with the rest of the organizers over to Heritage to celebrate around what remained of the wine - not much...