In a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by algorithms, aesthetics engineered for virality, and the flattening effect of digital consultancy, Services Continu emerges as something deliberately harder to define — and therefore harder to ignore.
Founded in Paris by former buyers Raphael Deray and Floriano Vilasi Francolino, the multidisciplinary studio moves fluidly between fashion, food, design, image-making, strategy, and cultural production, rejecting the rigid structures of the traditional agency model in favor of something more instinctive, intimate, and deeply human.
Part consultancy, part curatorial platform, part living ecosystem, Services Continu is built on the idea that creativity should not exist in isolation from emotion, hospitality, or real-life experience.
Their world is one where a dinner can become creative direction, where a showroom functions like a social sculpture, and where strategy is inseparable from feeling. Rather than communicating like a corporation, the duo approaches the agency as an extension of their own personal universe — one shaped by travel, friendships, aesthetics, music, food culture, and an obsession with meaningful encounters.
At a moment when fashion is reckoning with automation, overstimulation, and the exhaustion of image culture, Deray and Francolino are proposing something radically analog in spirit: slowness, continuity, sincerity, and connection.
The result is a new kind of cultural practice — less interested in spectacle than in resonance, less focused on scale than on coherence.
In conversation, the founders reflect on redefining curation, building community through intimacy rather than exclusivity, and why taking risks may be the only truly contemporary creative act left.
You launched Services Continu in 2025 at a time of cultural and economic flux — did you see it as a disruptive act, a strategic reset, or both?
Raphael Deray: For me, it was neither a disruptive act nor a calculated reset. It happened very organically. Coming from fashion, it felt like a natural continuation of everything we had already been doing. People were already asking us for guidance, for connections, for creative direction, and we recognized a need for a more complete and meaningful approach to consultancy.
What we wanted to create was something more human. We wanted to provide services as individuals, not as a distant corporate structure. Human connection became central to the entire vision.
At the same time, 2025 was a complicated moment for fashion and retail. AI was becoming increasingly present, and we felt an even stronger need to create physical experiences that could genuinely connect people. That’s one of the reasons we opened a space. We wanted to rethink the idea of retail and even the traditional art gallery by creating experiences that mix fashion, food, design, and culture in a more immersive way.
In that sense, perhaps it became disruptive naturally, but it always came from something very instinctive and personal.
Floriano Vilasi Francolino: Today, people are slowly losing human interaction and sincerity in many industries. We wanted to bring that back. Even during difficult economic moments, people will always want to gather, discover new places, experience culture, and spend time together. That human need never disappears, and it became one of the foundations of Services Continu.
Paris is saturated with creative consultancies and agencies; what void were you trying to fill that you couldn’t find in the existing ecosystem?
Raphael Deray: What we noticed was that very few agencies were able to provide a complete vision under one structure. At Services Continu, we can work on creative direction, PR, graphic design, logistics, food experiences, image consulting, and cultural production all at once.
Some people might think that doing many things means sacrificing quality, but for us it’s the opposite. We are not interested in creating the biggest projects; we are interested in creating meaningful ones. We would rather invite ten people who truly connect with a project than five hundred people who have no emotional link to it.
A lot of international brands — especially from Japan and Korea — were coming to Paris wanting to create experiences, but they didn’t know where to begin. They needed guidance, curation, and trusted connections. That was one of the first gaps we wanted to fill.
The second aspect was curation itself. We see ourselves as curators as much as consultants. We curate spaces, atmospheres, people, collaborators, photographers, chefs, and creative energy. Everything has to feel coherent and intentional. When too many agencies are involved, the original message can easily become fragmented.
We wanted to create one unified vision around every project.
How do you balance strategic consultancy with cultural and creative production — are these spheres opposite, complementary, or inseparable in your work?
Raphael Deray: We often felt that people in the industry were positioned at one extreme or the other: either very business-oriented with little emotional vision, or extremely creative without understanding strategy or long-term impact.
What we wanted was to stand exactly in the middle. Every project should make sense creatively, emotionally, and economically. An event should express a brand’s identity while also creating long-term value and resonance.
That balance is extremely important to us because creativity without structure can lose direction, and strategy without emotion becomes empty.
Your Instagram presence feels less corporate and more poetic — to what extent are you deliberately dissolving the boundary between corporate leadership and cultural authorship?
Raphael Deray: Services Continu is an extremely personal project. It reflects our vision, our lifestyle, our references, and the things we genuinely love. From the beginning, we didn’t want the agency to communicate like a traditional corporate structure.
We wanted people to feel, when they look at our Instagram, that they are entering someone’s personal universe rather than scrolling through a polished business account. We share places, moments, textures, food, music, and emotions the same way we would on our own personal profiles.
That intimacy is important because people connect more easily to sincerity than to perfection. We want our audience to feel involved, almost like they are part of the journey with us.
There’s also a strong sense of friendship and community behind everything we do. That’s why our bio says that we are not only an agency — we are also your friends.
Letter to your future self: In ten years, when you look back at Services Continu’s first decade, what do you hope you will have challenged, dismantled, and rebuilt — both in your work and in yourself?
Raphael Deray: Personally, I hope I will have inspired people to discover new perspectives and new forms of creativity. I would love to contribute to making fashion, food, and design feel more open, accessible, and understandable for a wider audience.
For Services Continu, I hope we will have created a true ecosystem — something alive and interconnected across fashion, design, food, wellness, beauty, sports, and culture. We never wanted to be limited by one label or one discipline.
The goal has always been to create a universe where different creative fields can coexist and constantly influence one another.
In an era saturated with consultation models, what’s your compass for originality — data, intuition, aesthetic instinct, or something altogether different?
Floriano Vilasi Francolino: It’s definitely a combination of all those elements. Our background in buying taught us how to work with data, research, analysis, and strategy. We managed large portfolios of brands and constantly had to study markets and consumer behavior.
At the same time, our role was also deeply creative. We were curating brands, identities, and stories inside physical spaces. For six years, we traveled constantly during fashion weeks, discovering designers, craftspeople, cafés, creative communities, and cultural movements around the world.
All those experiences shaped our perspective. We absorbed a huge amount of inspiration over time, and now Services Continu feels like a continuation of everything we have lived, seen, and loved.
It’s not a constructed identity. It’s something very personal and instinctive.
What does authentic creative identity mean to you when advising clients versus when building your own voice?
Floriano Vilasi Francolino: For me, authenticity is about coherence between what you believe and what you actually create. When we work with brands, we never try to impose our own aesthetic onto them. Instead, we try to reveal and amplify what already exists inside their identity.
We only collaborate with brands and projects that we genuinely connect with emotionally. That allows us to work in a very honest way.
At the same time, we don’t only provide fashion advice. We think about the entire experience — the design, the atmosphere, the food, the music, the energy, the storytelling. Every detail matters because every detail contributes to the final emotion.
Having visited thousands of showrooms and events throughout our careers, we developed a strong understanding of what feels meaningful and what feels empty. Now we want to reimagine those experiences in a more human and curated way.
Services Continu positions itself as both strategy and cultural intervention — do you see your future role more as creator, curator, strategist, or philosopher of practice?
Floriano Vilasi Francolino: It’s really a mix of all those roles. If I had to summarize it simply, I would say we are creative people who curate experiences through strategic thinking.
At the same time, the human aspect remains essential to us. That’s why we always say that Services Continu is also built around friendship, emotion, and connection.
How does your creative practice on social media inform your vision for the agency — does your personal narrative shape corporate identity, or is it the other way around?
Floriano Vilasi Francolino: Our personal narrative absolutely shapes the identity of the agency. Everything we communicate comes from our own vision and our own sensibility.
Even if Services Continu grows significantly in the future, we want to preserve that human dimension and that feeling of closeness. We often talk about brands like Jacquemus because even at a large scale, they still communicate in a very personal and emotional way.
Today, people are tired of artificial communication. They want sincerity, honesty, and emotion. That authenticity is fundamental for us and for the future of the agency.
Letter to your future self: Ten years from now, as the landscape of cultural consultancy has changed — what’s the one creative instinct you want your future self to have never betrayed?
Floriano Vilasi Francolino: Life moves very fast, and everything is temporary in some way. I hope I never lose the ability to genuinely enjoy the process, the people, and the experiences around me. That sense of joy and curiosity is the most important thing to preserve.
Last question for both: if Services Continu was a work of art, a manifesto, and a life philosophy all at once — what would its title be, and why?
Raphael Deray: I think the title would be Take More Chances.
For us, that phrase carries many meanings. It means having the courage to express your voice, to share your ideas, and to create something personal even when the outcome is uncertain. It also means giving opportunities to people we believe in and supporting individuals who share our values and vision.
Starting Services Continu required us to leave very successful careers behind. Being buyers allowed us to travel the world, discover incredible places, and experience an amazing lifestyle. Walking away from that stability was frightening because the future is always uncertain.
But ultimately, we realized that you have to follow what genuinely moves you emotionally. If you never take risks, you never fully live your life.
In many ways, Services Continu itself became the result of taking that chance.
Photos by Frédéric Troehler