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French press review 20 November 2017

The editorial of Le Monde looks back to last Thursday’s day of strikes and industrial action and brands it “a bitter failure”.

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Only about 80,000 people made any kind of demonstration across the entire country. That was a paltry number, says the centrist paper.

In the battle for labour reform, according to Le Monde, “Macron has won by a knockout”.

“Six months after his election, the President of the Republic has won his bet.”

On November 28, his labour reforms will pass into law without any real opposition.

Not that the paper is surprised, of course. This outcome has long been predictable due, it says, to two key things.

First, the political skill of the young president. During his presidential campaign he made it clear that labour reform was on the table.

When he was elected by such a wide margin, he decided that he had enough of a mandate to take on the unions.

He did this with four months of talks and negotiation. Ultimately, while the CGT union walked away from the table, the other unions chose to stay.

And it was this division, says the paper, that was the second factor working in Macron’s favour.

“Union unity is never a guarantee of success,” says the paper, “but their division is a guarantee of failure.”

Insider says Hariri will resign

Le Figaro has a front page piece about the visit to Paris by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The paper says it spoke to an unnamed Lebanese official, who visited Hariri in Paris over the weekend.

That official assured Le Figaro that the Lebanese prime minister would indeed resign on his return to Lebanon.

Hariri has said he will be back in Lebanon on Wednesday for the nation's independence day celebrations after spending two weeks in Saudi Arabia amid rumours that the Saudis pressured him to resign.

So far he's not made any comment about his resignation since arriving in France.

But Le Figaro's source said he was still on track to put in his papers as soon as he returned to Lebanese soil.

The source also said Hariri was relieved to be here in Paris.

"It was a celebration," the source told the paper. "He's in good shape". "He's joking ... even though it may be his way to avoid saying anything."

The celebrations may be short lived, however. As Le Figaro's source says Lebanon is entering "a new period of political crisis".

It remains to be seen whether Hariri's resignation, if indeed it does happen, will undermine the growing power of Hezbollah and Iran in the country, or whether it will do just the opposite.

Everyone knows that Hariri has been humiliated, Le Figaro quotes a separate, also unnamed diplomat. "If he goes back on his resignation, any sympathy he has won during this crisis, he will lose in a second."

He turned women into fighter planes

Meanwhile, Liberation looks back at the life of highly influential fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa.

The Franco-Tunisian died on Saturday morning at the age of 77, ten days after being hospitalized following a fall.

“Learning the news on Saturday morning, any connoisseur of fashion immediately had their mind filled with sculptural silhouettes and tapered bodies," said the newspaper.

"His speciality was aeronautics – Alaïa turned every women into a fighter plane.”

Born in Tunis into a farming family in 1940, he was raised by his grandmother.

He started to sew at an early age, copying Dior gowns for important local families.

He studied sculpture before turning to fashion and won a junior role at Dior as a tailor when he was 27.

He soon found huge renown, making gowns for French actress Arletty and Greta Garbo.

“But it was in the 80s that Alaïa became king,” Liberation remarks. He set up his own fashion house and pioneered the startling silouettes and statuesque gowns for which he is still know.

“The top models of the time, Naomi (Campbell, who called him "Daddy"), Linda (Evangelista) Cindy (Crawford), they all took on the appearance of queens, triumphant creatures rather than objects … powerful women, totally freed.”

The word "empowerment" did not exist yet, says Liberation, “but could have been created to characterize the Alaïa effect.

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