As 2023 draws to a close in a few hours’ time, a new page is about to turn. If you’re feeling nostalgic and anxious about the way time flies, don’t panic: here are 31 reasons to look forward to 2024.
Goodbye 2023, hello 2024! The coming year is synonymous with intense events, store openings, anniversaries and large-scale business operations.
Let’s continue our micro time travel with 16 more good reasons to leave the year of the water rabbit for that of the wooden dragon, according to the Chinese lunar calendar.
16) Year of the Wooden Dragon
Fifth of the twelve Chinese astrological signs, the Dragon is the embodiment of power, passion and luck. Associated with its original element – wood – it gains in creativity and personal growth. People born under this sign are endowed with a natural charisma and adventurous spirit that will serve their entrepreneurial ambitions. This Wooden Dragon marks the end of a cycle (each lasting 12 years). This Lunar New Year will run from February 10, 2024 to January 28, 2025, with the traditional Spring Festival festivities. These last 15 days and feature lion and dragon dances, fireworks and firecrackers. In collaboration with the Malherbe Paris design agency, Hennessy has proposed an installation featuring the mythical animal particularly honored in China, serving as a showcase for the limited-edition bottle of cognac proposed by artist Yang Yongliang.
17) 50 years since ABBA’s Eurovision victory
In April 1974, the Swedish group ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their song Waterloo. This story of a woman’s renunciation of a man, seen as an analogy of Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat in 1815, enabled the quartet to break into the American Top 10. Replacing Hasta Manana, the first track on the list, with this other pop-sounding track, featuring the band’s female vocals – Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad – was a winning choice. The track on the eponymous album went on to sell over 6 million copies, making it the band’s second most famous song. To date, Sweden remains the nation – tied with Ireland – with the most Eurovision wins. Today, the program is watched by 162 million viewers, making it one of the most important TV shows worldwide.
18) 70 years of the Comité Colbert
Founded in 1954 by Jean-Jacques Guerlain, the Comité Colbert will be celebrating its 70th anniversary. The association representing 93 French luxury goods companies and 17 cultural institutions, headed since March 2020 by Bénédicte Épinay, is set to celebrate this anniversary with several events, exclusive announcements and new partnerships in favor of the high-end industry. At the end of the year, the Comité Colbert will unveil the first-ever mapping of France’s métiers d’art.
19) Gabriel García Márquez’s unpublished novel
To mark the 10th anniversary of Gabriel García Márquez’s death, an unpublished novel will be published in 2024, Random House has announced. Named En agosto nos vemos, the book is the last work written by the renowned Colombian writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
20) “Paris 1874. The Impressionist Moment” at the Musée d’Orsay
From March 26 to July 14, 2024, the Musée d’Orsay will be presenting 130 works focusing on nine key dates in the Impressionist art movement. An exhibition to mark in your cultural diary, 150 years after the first presentation on this theme in Paris.
21) Usher on the Super Bowl Halftime Show
On February 11, Usher, the American rapper known for his hits “Yeah”, “U Remind Me” “My Boo” and “U Got It Bad”, will perform in Las Vegas as headliner of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the famous American soccer season finale and must-see event for advertisers. A return to form for the star of the 2000s RnB sound, who released his seventh album in 2018. The Super Bowl remains the most watched event on American television.
22) Reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris
An emblematic monument of Paris and France saved by Victor Hugo through his eponymous novel published in 1831, ravaged by fire on April 15, 2019, Notre-Dame de Paris is due to reopen on December 8, 2024. One year away from its resurrection, the illustrious 12th-century building, modified in the 18th century and restored in the 19th century by medievalist architect Viollet Leduc, is once again topped with its cross, its rooster and its 96 meter spire. This “site du Siècle” required some 150 craftsmen to work for five years, tirelessly attempting to rebuild the famous cathedral using as many original techniques and materials as possible.
23) The 81st Golden Globes ceremony
The 81st Golden Globes ceremony takes place on January 7. Every year, the event rewards American films and series. Best Drama, Best Director, Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Score are just some of the categories in the competition. The ceremony will be under the sign of the summer phenomenon Barbenheimer (hashtag taken from the blockbusters Barbie and Oppenheimer) with 9 and 8 nominations respectively. While Greta Gerwig defends her 4th film (Barbie), Bradley Cooper’s biopic Maestro about film composer Leonard Bernstein – in which he plays the title role – will be his second behind the camera. The 2024 vintage also features Pauvres Créatures, Killers of the Flower Moon and Anatomie d’une chute. On the series front, the final seasons of The Crown and Succession, as well as The Morning Show, The Last Of Us and Only Murders In The Building will be on show. Succession also holds the nominations for Best Actor in a Series, with Brian Cox (patriarch Logan Roy), Jeremy Strong (Kendall Roy) and Kieran Culkin (Roman Roy). The female cast is not to be outdone, with Sarah Snook (Shiv Roy).
24) 60th anniversary of the Venice Biennale
Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale offers a series of events focusing on architecture, contemporary art, cinema, dance and theater. This not-to-be-missed event in the Serenissima calendar will return from April 20 to November 24, 2024, focusing on the theme of foreigners. Entitled “Foreigners Everywhere”, the event will showcase “artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, emigrants, exiles and refugees.” This theme refers to a series of works by the Claire Fontaine collective, founded in Paris by Italian artist Fulvia Carnevale and British artist James Thornhill.
26) The return of The Count of Monte Cristo
Following the public success of Mathieu Bourboulon’s two-part Three Musketeers (2023), another landmark work by Alexandre Dumas Père, published in 1844, returns for its eighteenth film adaptation: The Count of Monte Cristo. As a young, falsely-accused ship’s captain, he loses his wife, his freedom and his honor, but manages to escape from the inextricable Château d’If, where he manages to get his hands on the fabulous treasure of his cellmate, Abbé Faria. Pierre Niney takes on the role of this battered man, passed over for dead, hardened and determined to take methodical revenge on all those who betrayed him. Joining him are Pierfrancesco Favino, Anaïs Demoustier, Laurent Lafitte and Patrick Mille. This new adaptation by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, authors of the play and film Le Prénom, will be released in cinemas on December 11, 2024.
27) Fyre Festival rises from the ashes
What was considered in 2017 to be the biggest scam of the social networking era, is finally about to become a reality. The Fyre Festival, a festive and musical event created by businessman Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, which was supposed to take place in the Bahamas on the secret island of notorious Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, is planning an epilogue, this time in the Caribbean. And it was Billy McFarland himself, convicted of fraud and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment and a fine of 26 million euros, who announced the holding of this event, whose organization on Great Exuma had turned into a total fiasco at the time, leaving thousands of festival-goers to fend for themselves, with no food on the deserted island and admission tickets ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 dollars. This dead festival inspired the hit documentary “Fyre: The Best Festival That Never Happened” on Netflix in 2019.
Determined to make the Fyre Festival Il “the island adventure of a lifetime”, the boss of Fyre Entertainment has set a date for revelers at the end of 2024.
28) Adele’s latest Las Vegas shows
Adele, the 15-time Grammy Award-winning pop star and performer of “Someone Like You”, “Hello”, “Rolling In The Deep” and “Easy On Me”, continues her residency at Caesar Palace, Las Vegas. Fans of the British mezzo-soprano can look forward to 32 dates between January 19 and June 15, 2024. Let’s bet that the end of her contract with the gambling establishment – which began in November 2022 – will give rise to the dream world tour that shook social networks a few months earlier. Unless, of course, it’s the long-awaited follow-up to her rare albums 19 (2008), 21 (2011) – certified diamond disc – and 30 (2021).
29) 40th anniversary of the TV series Two Cops in Miami
In 1984, Sonny Crockett and Don Johnson, two intrepid cops with expeditious methods and a terribly bling style, arrived on the small screen for five seasons. In their pastel-colored outfits, successively at the wheel of their Ferrari 365 GTS4/ Replica Daytona Spyder and their immaculate 1986 Ferrari Testarossa, they criss-cross a seaside paradise grappling with an unprecedented war against drug traffickers. When reality surpasses fiction. The TV show was as much a success for its fashion inspiration as for its iconic soundtrack of the decade (Phil Collins, Cyndi Lauper, John Waite, Sheila E, Bryan Ferry….), from which Studio Rockstar drew much of its inspiration for its 80s-style video game GTA Vice City. His proximity to the artistic world has earned him numerous collaborations. One of the most recent was with watchmaker Urwerk in 2022, with a reworking of its iconic UR-220 model.
30) 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy
If Philip K Dick’s “Master of the High Castle” (1962) (a fictional work in which the world came under German domination) has remained a work of science fiction, it’s because on June 6, 1944, the British, American, Canadian, Belgian and French armies launched the unprecedentedly large-scale military operation Overlord to liberate France from German occupation. Some 4,266 transport ships and 722 warships carrying 130,000 men set sail for the Cotentin coast. On D-Day and in the days following the landing on the Normandy beaches of Omaha, Gold, Utah and Sword, 10,000 Allies lost their lives. To commemorate this historic period, a series of festivities will take place from March 1 to October 15, involving giant picnics, concerts, parachute drops, balls… The international ceremony will take place in the presence of numerous heads and ministers of state on June 6 at Saint Laurent Sur Mer (Omaha Beach).
31) China back in the stars
Ever since the legend of Wan Hu, a 16th-century Chinese official who took his space dreams too seriously, equipping his chair with 47 fireworks rockets before perishing, the Chinese have nurtured the desire to get to know the lunar star better. In 2024, the expedition begun in 2018 will reach its sixth stage with the Chang’e 6 mission – named after the probe. This will involve recovering the first samples from the far side of the moon. This will be China’s second mission to return lunar soil samples, the previous one dating back to the end of 2020.
BONUS #1 Taylor Swift, a bulwark of the American election?
On November 5, 2024, the long-awaited – and dreaded – American presidential election takes place. With Donald Trump more determined and vengeful than ever, the outcome seems more than uncertain for incumbent President Joe Biden, who is falling in the polls (40% according to FiveThirtyEight). One hope remains for the Democratic camp in this country, where artists have far more influence than in Europe: the exceptional popularity rating of pop superstar Taylor Swift. According to the Institut Marist polling institute, the “Anti Hero” singer is credited with 70% of favorable votes. The beauty had backed Joe Biden in 2020 to counter a Trump who had “fanned the flames of white supremacism and racism throughout his tenure”. Voted Personality of the Year 2023 by Time Magazine Taylor Swift, whose world tour The Eras Tour has already passed the $1 billion mark in revenue over 60 dates, could be counting on the women’s vote in the USA. Her tour is also set to continue into 2024, with 4 dates at Paris La Défense Arena (May 9, 10, 11 and 12). The former country music guitarist also returned to the studio on her 33rd birthday (December 13), with the possibility of an eleventh album in 2024.
BONUS #2 Illustrious tributes on the horizon
In 2024, we’ll be celebrating a number of illustrious personalities from the world of the arts and sciences. These include Hollywood actress and archetypal film noir femme fatale Lauren Bacall (100 years since her birth); American-Hungarian illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini (150 years since his birth); and Polish physicist Marie Curie, the discoverer of radioactivity (90 years since her death).
They will be joined by jazz singer Nina Simone (90 years since her birth), poet, master of the supernatural and dandy Lord Byron (200 years since his death), playwright Jean Racine (325 years since his death), composer Frédéric Chopin (175 years) and landscape painter Eugène Boudin (200 years since his death), Eugène Boudin (200 years since his birth), revue performer Zizi Jeanmaire (100 years), astronaut Yuri Gagarin (90 years since his birth), writer Franz Kafka (100 years since his death), Mexican artist Frida Khalo (70 years since her death), painter Henri Matisse (70 years since his death) and the most famous opera composer Giacomo Puccini (100 years since his death).
Explorers will not be outdone by the likes of Marco Polo (700 years since his death) and Vasco da Gama (500 years since his death).
BONUS #3: new exclusive events for our subscribers
To get the year off to a good start, Luxus Plus invites its subscribers to a webinar at the Packaging Première trade show in January, and reserves a tasting evening for them in Paris, in the sumptuous setting of the Pavillon Elysée, next spring.
Read also > 31 GOOD REASONS TO BE IN 2024! – PART 1/2
Featured Photo: Getty images/Unsplash+
