If Carlsberg made festivals……

I’ve just returned from a tiny French boutique festival. Calvi on the Rocks is situated on a picturesque rock pinnacle in the town of Calvi, Corsica, just off the south coast of France.

Though festival season is upon us, I’m not one for huge crowds, camping, queueing, or being cold and wet. Luckily none of that factored into Calvi on the Rocks. Well if you can count drinking cocktails in the sea whilst dancing to James Murphy as being wet…. then I take that bit back!

The 4-day line up was a mixture of a few well known bands, Friendly Fires, The Klaxons, Magistrates and Phoenix with a sprinking of smaller acts like David E Sugar, Man like Me and Anoraak. The parties were all about dance music and great Djing.

We hit the first beach party at Octopussy Plage and were dumbstruck by the beautiful boys and girls grooving in the sun. A vision of what heaven might be like if God was a DJ. My friends and I just gawped and wondered if the plane had crashed and we had all died.  The high density of stupidly good-looking people was really quite unbelievable

On the fashion tip, the festival goers were effortlessly stylish and this is a quite a feat when wearing very little. The girls wore cute towelling playsuits and there were bandeau bikinis’ a go go, I noted a surprising lack of cut-out swimsuits, French girls aren’t willing to sacrifice an even tan for a trend it seems.

 The afterparties were a glamorous affair of drinks on terraces overlooking the sea, with everyone sporting a casual laid-back look, cut off shorts, or light volume jersey dresses with sparkly accessories, reminiscent of Ibiza ten years ago. Or perhaps some might say it was Paris style meets Hackney-on-Sea! There were a few Brits but the ubercool audience was mainly French. With hardly any sponsors, it was refreshing to see such a non-commercial approach to a festival, though any brands wanting a fast track to the hippest kids in France might want to take a look.

Photos by Jean Baptiste Soulliat  www.facebook.com/l/;www.clichey.net 

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