FRED / Beyond an icon: the story behind Force 10 with Loïc Prigent.

Key Highlights

• Maison FRED is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a dedicated creative programme honouring the house’s most enduring designs.
• The Force 10 collection was born in 1966, rooted in FRED‘s passion for the sea and a spirit of bold, unconventional creativity.
• The anniversary film was directed by Loïc Prigent, one of fashion and luxury’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers.
• The production was handled by DERALF, with a full creative team including photographer Hugo Gesta and colourist Victor Bonnard.
• The film draws on Maison FRED’s own archives and private collections to trace the origins of an icon.

A Maison at Ninety: FRED and the Weight of Creative Legacy

Few jewellery houses carry their history as lightly — or as confidently — as FRED. The Paris-based maison has long positioned itself at the intersection of fine jewellery and an adventurous, sea-inspired sensibility, a combination that has kept it relevant across decades and markets. Reaching a 90th anniversary is not merely a milestone to be marked with ceremony; it is an invitation to examine what has made a house endure, and why its most iconic pieces continue to resonate with collectors who value authenticity over trend.

For this anniversary, FRED has chosen not simply to reissue or retrospect, but to tell a story — specifically, the story of the Force 10. In enlisting Loïc Prigent to direct the commemorative film, the maison has paired one of luxury’s most sharply observed storytellers with one of its most beloved archival narratives. The result is a short film that treats jewellery not as an object of display but as a document of attitude and time.

The broader context matters for collectors across the Gulf, who have long recognised FRED as a maison that balances Parisian elegance with an energy less formal than many of its peers. In a region where fine jewellery is worn daily and chosen with genuine connoisseurship, a house with a coherent and traceable creative philosophy carries particular weight. The 90th anniversary celebration arrives at a moment when provenance and heritage are increasingly central to how luxury jewellery is understood and acquired.

Force 10: Born of the Sea in 1966

The Force 10 collection traces its origins to 1966, a year that FRED identifies as the moment when its passion for the sea crystallised into a design language. The name itself is a reference to the Beaufort wind scale — Force 10 denotes a violent storm at sea — and the collection reflects that same tension between power and precision. It is a piece of jewellery that carries maritime energy in its construction, a quality that distinguished it from the more classically formal offerings that defined much of fine jewellery at the time.

What made Force 10 an icon rather than merely a collection is the degree to which it embodied the house’s own spirit. FRED has always been characterised by what the maison itself describes as an audacious approach — a willingness to challenge convention in materials, structure, and wearability. The Force 10 expressed that audacity with a directness that made it immediately recognisable, and that legibility across decades is part of what the anniversary film sets out to illuminate.

Drawing from the Archives

The production of the anniversary film made deliberate use of Maison FRED’s own archives and private collections, a choice that grounds the film in historical specificity rather than nostalgic reconstruction. Archival material gives the narrative texture — it allows the viewer to understand Force 10 not as a static design but as a living idea that has evolved in dialogue with the maison’s broader identity. For watch and jewellery enthusiasts attending major industry events such as Watches and Wonders, this kind of archival depth is precisely what separates a heritage narrative from mere brand communication.

Loïc Prigent and the Art of the Luxury Short Film

The choice of Loïc Prigent as director is not incidental. Prigent has built a reputation as one of the most perceptive observers of the fashion and luxury world, known for films that find the human and sometimes unexpected dimensions of houses that can otherwise seem impenetrable. His involvement brings a documentary intelligence to a project that could easily have defaulted to pure visual spectacle, ensuring that the Force 10 story is told with curiosity and wit rather than simply reverence.

The production itself assembled a considered creative team: Adrien Privat behind the camera, Hugo Gesta responsible for photography, Clément Duché handling sound, and Victor Bonnard providing colour grading. Editing was by Konstantin Maslakov, with post-production overseen by Julie Lacor. The film was produced by Natacha Morice and Rafaële Nix Secondi for DERALF — a production company whose full name, Divertissant Et Révoltant À La Fois, is itself a statement of intent. Together, these collaborators give the film a craft sensibility that mirrors the attention FRED applies to the jewellery itself.

The two-minute-seventeen-second runtime is a deliberate compression: enough time to introduce a mythology, not enough to exhaust it. It is the kind of film that functions as both a standalone document and an entry point — inviting the viewer to look more closely at the object, the archive, and the history that produced them.

Why It Matters

For GCC collectors and luxury jewellery enthusiasts, the Force 10 anniversary film is a reminder that the most durable pieces in fine jewellery are those underpinned by a genuine point of view — in FRED’s case, the sea, audacity, and sixty years of creative confidence. The film, available to view on the official FRED channel, offers a rare and well-crafted window into how an icon is made and sustained across generations.

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