Cheryl Pegues:
CLASS OF 1973
Cleveland High SchoolClass of 1973
Seattle, WA
Cheryl's Story
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Thursday, February 2, 2012
Black Paris Profiles™: Cheryl Pegues – Part 1
Cheryl Pegues has one of the most fascinating stories that I’ve had the pleasure to follow over the years. She has experienced very difficult times personally and professionally in the City of Light (bankruptcy, serious physical and psychological illnesses, theft, heartache…) but has always come back stronger and more determined, and has consequently reached higher heights. Her saga is one of hard-earned success as an American in Paris. Part 1 follows below.
Cheryl has lived in Paris on and off since 1981. She obtained a “long-stay” visa in 1995, studied at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, and received her certificate in Draping on the Mannequin in July of that year. Changing her status from student to business owner in 1996, she opened a prototype development, pattern making and custom clothing atelier under her own name. Eventually, to make ends meet, she also began teaching English to entertainment professionals part time. Her textile business did not bring her the success that she hoped for, but she continues English training, coaching and consulting in various capacities today.
When a twist of fate landed her a position in French cinema as assistant to the director of the docu-drama La Grande Inondation in 2006, Cheryl found that she had entered a fascinating new world. She describes the experience as being “like going on an exciting grade school field trip every day.” Her work behind the scenes of La Grande Inondation (reviewing storyboards, coaching actors regarding their English-language lines and body language, rewriting the screenplay) led to an opportunity to play a small role in the Catherine Corsini film Les Ambitieux and a lasting friendship with this French director.
She also met Antoine Cormery, who is currently an anchor at the television station France 24, as a result of her involvement with the film. Cormery was so impressed with Cheryl’s coaching that he recommended her for a post at the Centre de Formation de Perfectionnement des Journalistes (a continuing education center for journalists) as a trainer. This, in turn, gave her connections to all kinds of people. Subsequently, she began coaching and training industry executives from various sectors of the French corporate world in English language and culture.
Cheryl has successfully weathered the economic downturn that brought several of her coaching contracts to an end beginning in 2009. Numerous referrals from her former clients have led to lucrative, new contracts at EDF (France’s electricity provider). She is engaged in a development project for a Web television cooking show with TV5 Monde that would feature her as the host. This will reconnect her with the culinary field (before moving to Paris permanently, she worked in a number of cooking positions during the 80s, including chef of the restaurants Les Petites Sorcières, Le Limonaire, and Les Sept Lézards in Paris and owner/operator of The Illustrated Plate Caterers in Seattle). She jokingly aspires to become the French “Oprah,” dispensing advice an...Expand for more
d social commentary while cooking!
Engaged to provide simultaneous French-to-English translation for the quarterly two-day International Boutique Managers meetings for the Sonia Rykiel house before the recession, Cheryl continues to provide this service today. The combination of her fashion background and excellent French and English has endeared her to the boutique owners and the management and design teams. She loves interpreting the patterns, textures, lengths and looks of the beautiful yarns and fabric displays in the room and those worn by the showroom models for the Anglophones on the team. She is always thrilled to get a first look at the latest collections and feels that she has a real stake in their success.
Impressed by her work at Rykiel, Cheryl was recently called on to lend her talents at Karl Lagerfeld for the recent launch of the new Karl Lagerfeld line and boutique opening in Paris as simultaneous translator during the merchandising training for the new boutique’s manager and sales team.
Cheryl is also teaching business and marketing English for university students at the Paris branch of an international university for fashion and fashion management called Mod’Art International, as well as assisting final year students in drafting their English-language fashion portfolios required for the graduate final line runway show and their subsequent employment candidacies. She is thrilled to have this opportunity to be involved in the design side of fashion at this institution, which also entails working one-on-one with the fashion design students throughout the semester.
For the first time since she started coaching in earnest, Cheryl has begun creating fashion accessories again. She created a scarf collection in 2011 and held two trunk shows in the U.S. to sell them – one in Hyde Park in Chicago and one at Exeter House in Seattle, and participated in the 2012 American Church of Paris Christmas Art Boutique and the Christmas Art Fair at the American School of Paris in Saint Cloud. She decided to incorporate bead accents into her designs, then took the process further and created a line of earrings. She finds that working with beads and findings is extremely relaxing and describes the gemstones that she uses as “marvelous bits of rarified color.”
Cheryl first came to Paris because she was encouraged by one of her college professors at The Evergreen State College to look to New York or to Europe to find an environment where she could nurture her creative talents and “be herself”. From that time onward, her favorite leisure activity has been walking the city’s streets “in all their moods and seasons.” She finds herself particularly enamored of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd arrondissements these days, with heavy emphasis on the quartier Montorgeuil and the Sentier. She loves “discovering the tiny streets and hidden passages that are a new place inside a place I already know.” Yet, the provincial city of Saint Maur des Fossés (9 miles to the southeast of Paris), which she now calls home, has also captured her heart. She spends much of her leisure time cycling along the bike path that follows the Marne River and in the Sainte-Catherine Islands area of the city of Créteil.
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