The house
Discover
It all starts here, in Tunisia. Under the sun.
The smell of jasmine in the streets. Fresh mint. Bougainvillea spilling over the balconies. The Mediterranean. Houses you walk into without really needing to call ahead. Cafés, conversations that go on forever, visits that start with « just five minutes » and end much later.
Papier & Vie was born from this attachment to Tunisia, to its colours, its smells, its light, and above all to our very own way of bringing people together.
Papatou is in love with plants. He gives me flowers. He plants them for me. He grows them wherever he can.
Maybe that's where my love comes from, for things that take root, that grow and that come back to life.
As for me, I've always had another little flaw: I keep everything. A card, a scrap of paper, a label, a wrapper, a dried flower… Anything that can remind me of a memory finds a place somewhere in my home.
I don't necessarily keep things for what they are. I keep them for what they remind me of.
A moment. A person. A day. A feeling. And maybe that's exactly why waste has always bothered me.
I see paper everywhere. Invitations printed for one event and used only once. Cards that told a story and end up forgotten in a bin. Wrapping, labels, printed materials that will have lived only a few minutes.
So a question started going round in my head:
What if we could keep the memory without having to keep the paper?
The idea came almost overnight. And like many great ideas in Tunisia, it was first told to girlfriends… a day at the beach, between two conversations, in the middle of the sun and the Mediterranean.
Take a wedding. In the past, an invitation wasn't sent on Messenger. It went from house to house. You took the road. You rang a doorbell. You sat down. You talked. You caught up on the news. You shared a coffee, a mint tea with almonds. You announced the wedding.
And, of course, you ran your little investigation:
Weld chkoun ? Mnin ? Chyaamel fi hyetou ?
Whose son is he? Where is he from? What does he do? You looked for someone who knew someone. A cousin in common. An old acquaintance. An unlikely connection that always turns up in the end. In short, you got to know each other the Tunisian way.
The invitation was a piece of paper. But above all, it was a reason to get together.
Today, invitations are more and more digital. It's practical. It's fast. And it avoids some of the paper waste. But do we really have to choose?
What if we could have a little of both?
We don't want to replace our traditions. We want to give them a new life. An invitation that keeps the gesture, the paper, the meeting, the beauty, Tunisia. But one that, once the wedding is over, doesn't become waste.
And the memory gently leaves the paper to take root. A flower appears. A few shoots. A plant. Something you can watch grow, and that reminds you, once again, of that day.
The wedding is over. The story goes on.
Very quickly, the idea grew much bigger. Because paper thrown away after a few minutes isn't only found at weddings. It's everywhere.
A PR box carefully designed by a brand. A card slipped into an order. A label tied to a product. A flyer handed out at an event. A short note sent to a client. Objects made to carry a message… but which, too often, have only one destination: the bin.
Paper would no longer be the end of the message. It would be the beginning of something.
Français
English
تونسي