From ‘Ku De Ta is now Ce La Vi’, 4 June 2015, article by Serene Lim, Today
Say goodbye to KU DE TA and hello to CE LA VI.
L Capital Asia, the Asian private equity business sponsored by French luxury group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), which owns the majority stake in KU DE TA Singapore, announced today (June 4) the creation of its new entertainment brand CE LA VI at Marina Bay Sands’ SkyPark. The name is an abbreviation of the French phrase “C’est la vie,” meaning “This is life”.
…This move comes after the Courts of Appeal ruled last week that KU DE TA in Singapore had to stop using the name, which belonged to the eponymous beachfront club in Bali. It follows a court ruling last December, where it was revealed that Nine Squares, the licensor of the KU DE TA trademark in Singapore, did not own the trademark.
But CE LA VI’s chief executive officer Kirk Martin told TODAY plans for the name change had already been in the works even before last year’s court ruling. “When I came on board in April last year, we had already started raising questions such as ‘Who are we? What does our brand mean? Where do we want to take our business?’” he said. “We wanted to raise it to an international brand level, especially with L Capital investing.”
…“Sure, we could make a deal (with KU DE TA Bali) but we made a decision that the best way forward is to have our own name. To build a global brand, we have to own our own destiny. We’re still young enough to build a new brand platform. We were ready — we just had to accelerate the announcement of CE LA VI.”
No Singaporean I know would use the pompous ‘C’est La Vie’ in ordinary speech. We usually express stoic resignation when shit happens with the Singlish ‘What to do?’, the standard English ‘Life’s like that’ or the slightly vulgar Hokkien ‘Lan Lan’. Trust the French to dress up an emotion verging on hopelessness with carnival flair. You could be at the end of the rope and instead of writing a suicide note, you just need to say to yourself, with a nonchalant shrug, ‘C’est La Vie’! and next thing you know you’ll be out skipping in the garden sniffing the roses.
‘Ku De Ta’ itself is a bastardisation of the French ‘coup de’tat’, though its clientele are mainly the creme de la creme of high society, the hors d’oeuvres-nibbling nouveau riche, well versed in haute couture with little tolerance for the bourgeoisie, rather than the anarchist agent provocateurs in Les Miserables. Maybe the CLV owners really meant ‘This is THE life’, an expression which looks similar but means something else entirely despite the addition of a single word. It is a phrase people ejaculate when they’re tucking themselves under a duvet made up entirely of 100 dollar bills.
There’s also nothing unique about the new name. We already have a locally registered gift company called C’est La Vie, who’re unlikely to take CLV to task for copyright infringement, though a suit may come the other way round, like how Subway once tried to bully small-time confectionery Subway Niche. Elsewhere in the world we have CLV-themed guest houses, bakeries, farms, talent companies and, strangely enough, cigars. The only thing missing is a funeral business, one with an accompanying slogan that says ‘Everyone dies. Get over it. C’est La Vie’.
To anyone who has absolute zero knowledge of French lexicon, CE LA VI looks like a really large Roman numeral. It is also an anagram for VICE LA, which sounds the title of an 80’s cop drama with mustaches. It’s like naming a sleazy karaoke bar ‘Do Re Mi’. Pardon my French, but this new name for a club this swish is quite the ‘faux pas’.
