A year ago, the designer Florian Thiercelin, who at the start of his career produced the designs for two iconic and flamboyant Renault concept cars (Initiale in 1995 and VelSatis in 1998), succumbed to what is being described as a long illness, but which took his life far too quickly. The world of designers is supposed to be one big family, and as in all families, there are people who are more or less close, with whom the current passes more or less well. The world of designers is ultimately the same as the world we all live in, with its dramas, its joys, its secrets… But also, and above all, the people we meet.
In a career spanning more than forty years, I’ve had the opportunity to interview a great many designers. Including those who make me feel terribly old when I mention their names: Nuccio Bertone, Sergio Pininfarina and Gaston Juchet… Among all the other designers, there’s one I’ve rubbed shoulders with and had the pleasure of lunching with a few times, but whom I’ve never interviewed: Florian Thiercelin. Why not? Because this discreet, almost mysterious man didn’t want to. On the other hand, he was adamant that we should have an off-the-record chat, and if possible at a good table. ‘‘It’s true, Florian was a fan of good restaurants,’’ confides his wife Caroline.
These lunches, too rare but too late to regret, didn’t allow me to fully understand the personality of this singular designer who, according to Caroline, ‘’was sometimes clumsy, a bit brusque, but at the same time had a very childlike side.” The discussions I had with Florian were nothing like those I’d had with other designers. When I marvelled at the work he’d done on his Renault concept cars in the past, he wasn’t exultant, but rather immersed in a sort of bitterness. Regret? Caroline tells me that ‘’it’s hard to say. He was passionate, but yes, he also had regrets, and not just about his job. He was quite nostalgic, and found it hard to be satisfied with what he had. At the beginning at Renault, there was no problem, but then he became a bit disillusioned, and by the end he felt a bit overwhelmed by the younger people! It wasn’t quite the same job any more, and he was certainly nostalgic about his early days…”
Its beginnings lie primarily in the work carried out on the large Initiale saloon below, under the direction of Patrick le Quément and Jean-François Venet. Florian was responsible for the exterior design. And for the interior, Fabio Filippini, who had this to say about Florian: ”He was a very talented designer, iconoclastic and “terribly” French in his creative approach. Strong and shy at the same time, introverted and individualistic. I worked with him on his first project, the Renault Initiale Paris. It was a thunderbolt in car design at the time, challenging conventional automotive codes. It was a project that influenced Renault design for a decade, and I believe, the contemporary world of car design.”
It’s true that during his entire career at Renault, Florian has met a number of different bosses, managers and colleagues. He sent me an e-mail about the aftermath of Initiale and VelSatis, in which he concluded with these words: ”Thank you again, Christophe, for your attention. If only we could talk only about design… as you can see, the outcome was not what I could have hoped for”, without forgetting to take a realistic look at himself, adding that “perhaps I’m not distancing myself enough from the past”.
Fabio Filippini gives us his personal view of this period: ”With the Initiale concept and then VelSatis, Florian immediately found himself at the forefront of the scene and, given his youth, he was probably not prepared to take on these challenges with the necessary hindsight. Subsequently, he pursued his career with rigorous professionalism, but often with a highly critical approach to the complex issues facing a company. A strong but fragile character, an enormous knowledge of automotive history, all combined with a creative style that was extremely personal and uncompromising. He would have been perfect in a bygone era.”
As Caroline herself says, ”Florian was quite critical, and not just of car design, but of everything he saw around him. He was critical of others and, above all, of himself. He was constructive and listened to the arguments put to him. But I used to tell him that at work he should have been more political… He was very cultured and interested in French history. When we first met, he told me that he wasn’t that interested in cars. I later realised that wasn’t quite true!”
Caroline remembers that at the time of Florian’s illness, ”a large number of colleagues were great with him and then with us, such as Nicolas Jardin, Benoît Bielliaef, Bertrand Grisard, Philippe Laporte… There was also Serge Cosenza, whom Florian liked, and Udo and Michel Velay, who also came to see him in palliative care.” In the wake of Florian’s death, Caroline was keen to point out that ”Laurens van den Acker – Renault Group Design Director – was really good. I don’t know him, but he wrote a letter for us that really touched us, and he had a little model (below) sent in Florian’s memory, with a little note: As a token of our gratitude, I’d like to send you this silhouette mocked up at Design, representing the unique appeal of the VelSatis concept car as well as its purity.”
The close circle of the family is obviously strongly affected by emotion, mourning and remembrance… Caroline agreed to extract a few sketches from Florian’s personal work, despite this anniversary date (Florian died on 5 December 2023). She has given me permission to publish them here, and I thank her for that. It’s a personal choice, because she tells me that ”I don’t know anything about cars! When I first met Florian, I used to watch programmes like Turbo and Auto-Moto, and I thought they were great, but after a while, he started talking so much about cars that it was too much for me, so I stopped watching them!” In December last year, to pay tribute to Florian, his Vel Satis concept car was exhibited at the Technocentre.
In his family life, Florian had no ambition to encourage his two children, Edena and Thomas, to follow in his footsteps. ”Our daughter has a gift for drawing, and although her father pushed her a little to work on this gift, he was against the idea of sending her to drawing classes. He was afraid she would learn too much and lose her spontaneity, that she would draw like everyone else.” And Florian wasn’t necessarily soft on the design schools that train so much. ”He was particularly critical of the fact that everything looks the same.”
Of course, his early days at Renault, with the two concept cars, are undoubtedly the best. ”It wasn’t long after we met that he was enjoying all this work and having a great time. He spent hours on the design, but it didn’t bother him because I was working just as hard on my own.” Did the family discuss leaving Renault for an international career? ”Yes, he talked about it a lot. We even came close to moving to Japan when the children were little, but then there was Fukushima… We talked a lot about international issues.” Not easy to follow your husband in those circumstances? ”In fact, it all depended on where we were going. I was really keen to go to Japan, because he’d loved it so much on a previous trip, which had made such an impression on him.”
The children were inundated with toy cars from an early age. ”He bought them so many that at one point they stopped playing with them,” says Caroline. ”Like their father in the face of illness, the children showed exemplary courage right up to the end. I’m lucky enough to have fabulous children who help me to hold on and move forward. Florian has asked me to continue travelling with them, and we will. They obviously had – and still have – a hard time overcoming this ordeal, and the lack of kindness of some people at this difficult time didn’t help. It wasn’t until we saw all the people at the mass and all the testimonies that we realised Florian was so much appreciated. Unfortunately, he didn’t even know it himself.”
”We obviously regretted not getting to know some of the designers who came along. Designers who were really good to us and who kept in touch afterwards. We knew what he did, but we didn’t realise what he meant to so many people. As a man, he was very secretive… Despite 26 years together, I sometimes found it hard to get to know him. He had his own secret garden.”
From his palliative care room window, Florian could see a tree and ‘’trees, even if he didn’t draw them, were very important to him. He let me understand that it was a way of breathing. In the bedroom, he’d look at it and say to me ‘thank goodness it’s there, it lets me escape a bit’. And the last book he read was by Jean D’Ormesson: ‘Despite everything, I would say that this life has been beautiful.‘
A year on, our thoughts are still with Edena and Thomas, now 17 and 18, and of course their mother Caroline. The designers who have accompanied Florian professionally, but also in the more difficult moments, and who have not been mentioned, will excuse Caroline and the author at this delicate anniversary moment…
All sketches, drawings and photos of Florian Thiercelin published in this tribute are the exclusive property of the family.
