Veuve Clicquot has always defended the valor of bold enterprise. This brand owes its very reputation to courage, to risk-taking, and to one woman, Madame Clicquot or “La Grande Dame de Champagne”. Naturally disarming, she was able to establish herself as a great female figure in the business world in an era when this was, needless to say, not the simplest of feats. She was 27 when her husband, owner of a Champagne brand, passed away. In Champagne, vineyards are transferred from spouse to spouse; that’s how she found herself at the head of a brand that was producing close to 100,000 bottles a year. Equipped with an uncommonly strong character, she became the first woman to run a Champagne brand – at the time of her death, this widow, the “Veuve Clicquot”, had already grown the brand to producing 750,000 bottles a year.
In 1972, for the brand’s bicentennial, the Prix Veuve Clicquot was introduced to reward businesswomen – the prize has been granted to a number of exceptional women every year since. Among them, the Prix Clémentine honors women who best represent future generations in the brand’s estimation; Clémentine was the name of Madame Clicquot’s daughter. The prize’s third edition went to Anaïs Barut, already recognized by the MIT Technology Review as one of the 10 most innovative French people under 35 for her Damae project.
The project in question? A startup founded in 2014 and focused on developing an innovative imaging process that allows dermatologists to visualize the internal cellular structures of skin anomalies simply by touching a device to the patient. Without having to resort to a biopsy, the physician can detect skin conditions before the first signs of a disease appear on the surface – an innovation that’s as important as it is bold.
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