From Houellebecq to Surfboard Blades: Lucas Lecheur’s Quest to Shatter Surfing’s Norms

"Surfing to me is as absurd as it is eternal."

“I want to be loved despite my faults. It isn’t exactly true that I’m a provocateur. A real provocateur is someone who says things he doesn’t think, just to shock. I try to say what I think.” – Michel Houellebecq

It is the common practice of filmmakers in the Anglosphere to compress the French experience into a flickering montage of berets and baguettes cut to the wheezing of a squeeze-box. 

France, immobile as marble. A country fixed sixty years hence when Brigitte Bardot was the epitome of beauty, Goddard and Truffaut owned cinema, Catholicism ruled the heart and the African colonies had yet to revolt. 

France is Emily in her brittle theme-park Paris, Dion Agius and Craig Anderson in Kai Neville’s whimsical version of Hossegor, all Bolex camera grain and his stars inhaling the ubiquitous Alsace pale lager Kronenbourg 1664. 

It is, of course, a dismissal of reality. 

France is as fast and warm and electric as the patois and rap from Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, Cameroon and Nigeria and as terrifyingly based as the uncomfortable internal meanderings of Houellebecq’s anti-heroes.

And, here, here in modern France, we must insert the iconoclast Mr Lucas Lecheur, an uncommonly beautiful man of twenty nine years old with a penchant for ultra-formal dress-up. Prussian-style military jackets, high-waisted pleated trousers and double-breasted suits fill his armoire. In photos, Lecheur’s face is inscrutable as he stares down the camera. 

Lecheur is living in Paris now, in the eighteenth, that heady part of town bathed in a culturally diverse, ie West African, richness but his surfing came from Ile de Re, a nineteen mile-long island off La Rochelle described by the New York Times as “the true heart of seaside chic.” 

Lecheur is a DJ, a frontman for the band Bad Pelicans (“Too Cool for the Wave Pool” one surf-themed song) and a surfboard shaper under the name Perfect Designs. His stated goal is to “reignite the cutting edge spark that once fulled the world of surfing.”

Several years ago, we began to see the fruits of his labours. Lecheur and his “Chainsaw Guts Fuck” surfboard fin, a spinning steel blade; the Medusa surfboard where curving prongs twist from the vertical space; a chain-link legrope, the coffin board, a surfboard in the shape of a door.

It culminated in a documentary last year called Bloody Knuckles, Lecheur personally proving in waves near Biarritz that, at least to some degree, his surrealist surfboards work. 

At just before one pm on an afternoon this winter, I found Lecheur on a train to Méribel in the Swiss Alps on what he called his “new quest for perfection.” 

His fit? Black cowboy boots, a black leather jacket jeans and black jeans. Lecheur’s black hair was harnessed by a black Diamond Horseshoe cowboy hat from the Texan house Resistor, a five-hundred dollar purchase no man would ever regret.

When asked of his plans after the interview concluded Lecheur said, “Find some good Swiss chocolate and change snowboarding forever.”

How did surfing come into your life? 

When I was eight, I went to a music school to learn the guitar and at the same age I took my first surf lesson. I never let go of these two dreams. I used to go surf after school and it was the only thing that kept me active in winter. My home spot is a really crowded and extremely soft left, a perfect longboard point and a good wave to develop an elegant silhouette.

When was the last time you went surfing? 

It was in Sweden in the Baltic ocean. A stormy left which surprisingly happened to deliver an hour of great waves. I was surfing a new design called “Satan”.

What does surfing, the act, give you, if anything? 

I love surfing, it’s great, it’s cool, it’s pure. The art of adaptation, the impossible quest for perfection. Surfing to me is as absurd as it is eternal.

You talk about “freedom, modern society, and the increasingly urgent need to reinvent oneself, to see oneself through new eyes.” Why is it becoming increasingly urgent?

Our lives are becoming more and more individualized but we’re behaving less and less like individuals. It’s important to keep breathing differently, have personal and unique references and be able to tell stories of your own. 

Perfect Designs facing a hostility from surfers, which isn’t terribly surprising. 

We didn’t do it on purpose but it was really fun reading all the people arguing with each other about two men (Perfect Designs used to include Lucas’ pal Fernando Leao) in black shaping a cowboy-boot surfboard while wearing suits. It started as just an internet thing. But then we appeared in public, at a surf festival in the southwest of France, parading around in our black sunglasses at night. At first people where honking at us yelling “Perfect Designs!!” People were asking our friend for a picture with Perfect Designs. But then things got pretty wild and some people started to hate us so much, to the point of a real death wish.

What exactly happened? 

This French dude at a Portuguese longboard festival was so mad at us that after yelling his heart out, he stood up and kicked a trashcan with all his anger. He broke his toe. The next day he appeared with a bandage. I believe he was supposed to be in the competition and couldn’t. Many people were mad at us for that, like,  “Did you see what you made him do?”

What codes of surfing do you wish to transgress? 

The norms, the “how a surfer should be,” “should look”. All these things that tie down creativity and the possibilities of being unique. Surfing is also a travel experience but it feels that everyone travels the same way. In that way, is the “travel” even real? I wish surfers in general were more open minded, curious about what they don’t know and would take themselves less seriously.

What aspects of the original spirit do you wish to connect with? 

I suppose I would say the freedom of self expression and not being scared to try things. But that also means allowing a new spirit to come through, and not just rotting in reverence for the old one.

What do you wish for the surfing world?

I wish surfers could ride the waves in their minds more often.