Crew: What’s Your Name

BACK IN THE PYRéNéES, we continue our trip into these "fake" mountains. This time, we are getting closer to the Spanish border, at the eastern point of the range. For some, it’s just a place where a bunch of lost people live. For many, it’s the end of the world... or just it's beginning... they don’t really know. Welcome to the Pyrénées-Orientales, in a place called Cerdagne. Trapped between Spain and France, this little place is just what Catalonia would look like if it was independent: Spanish crowds on the lifts, and French people getting angry... what a beautiful place.

Last time we introduced you to a young crew of skiers: Aigre Douce. Living not so far from them, on a plateau surrounded by mountains, another crew has been living and riding together for several years. What’s their name? What’s your name.

CREW: WHAT’S YOUR NAME

HOME-RESORT: FONT-ROMEU

FOUNDED: 2013

Name: Clement Picart
Age: 31
Description: always on time

Does: Freeski

Currently Living: Pyrénées (Font-Romeu) / Alps (Courchevel)

Hobbies: Surfing, climbing and music
Likes: Watching the sunset and smelling flowers
Hates: Rain on fresh snow

Fav Trick: 360
Anecdote: We tried to help him... but after 20 days in Japan, Loïc still hates sushi...

Name: Loïc Doval
Age: 31
Description: Connected
Does: Freeski (slopestyle)
Currently Living: Font-Romeu « sud de France » with accent please.

Hobbies: skiing, trailing , bicycle, and cleaning (the chores)

Likes: My crew, sports in general, moments with the homies, thrills, women, shoes, snow and cold, clumsiness, horror movies, life, pasta, cleaning (again), I like you too, nature, loneliness sometimes, cacolac, couscous, and above all family.
Hates: Warmth, tribal tattoos, Jul (a French rapper), Spanish music, spinacs, scooters, manners, puppets, orthography, spiders, injustice, guys prettier than me, speaking in public, maybe I hate you, people who don’t eat pizza crust, the city and above all Clement and Julien.

Fav Trick: Switch Bio 9
Anecdote: Still from our Japan trip. The first time I went there, surely one of the biggest dreams of a lot of skiers... thanks to the intelligence of my partners, I made my first turns in Japanese snow with my ski boots on the wrong feet. A great souvenir that will stay painful... THANK YOU WHAT’S YOUR NAME.

Name: Julien Mazard
Age: 34
Description: Muscular
Does: Photographer / Director / Snowboarder on weekends

Currently Living: Hossegor (France)
Hobbies: Snowboard, Surf, Photography and Bowling
Likes: Clement and Loïc
Hates: Clement and Loïc
Fav Trick: Rodeo 540 ( but it was when I was younger )
Anecdote: One day, a WHAT'S YOUR NAME episode will be on time!

This is not the first time that we've covered "What’s Your Name" on Downdays. Maybe you'll remember this light-hearted crew that's always impressing with their creativity and humour. Since their creation, the crew quickly gained in popularity, with their big break coming in 2016. But what’s behind this team? They're three southern boys with a strong accent, a group of friends that became a family... a boy band that will keep you moving and grooving, all night long.

What is "What’s Your Name"?

It’s the meeting of three homies who wanted to create something cool. We try to do something serious without taking ourselves seriously. We started in 2013 with three episodes, and we immediately saw that there was a keen interest in our project. So we kept it up, and now we're in our sixth season. The idea was to do something new, fresh, funny and creative. We wanted something fun, more open to the public and not like everybody else was doing at the time. And most importantly... we wanted to PUT FORWARD THE PYRENEES. Because it’s a beautiful place, with splendid mountains and also great skiers.

Can you summarize it in three words?

Good content, performance and fun.

Where did your name came from?

It came really quick. We didn’t have problems finding the name of the crew. At the beginning we tried to tell a story. So the first episode was about where we came from and why we wanted to make some videos. In our second episode, we explained why we are called "What’s Your Name." "What’s your name?" was the first question people were going to ask. "Quel est ton nom" wasn’t cool so we put it in English... and that’s way better.

And it's just the three of you?

Yes and no. We wanted to include our girls... but we don't have any... so we brought our boys. It’s a group of friends: there are those who ski, those who help us with shooting, those who came to our parties, those who just share our content. As you can see, we have a lot of friends. Now, What’s Your Name became like a family... of friends. But there are some other riders who come along from time to time. There's Hugo Can, Vincent Maharavo, Vincent Gramond, Clément Martinez, Berenger Cassu, Xabi Barreneche, Léo Fourcade, Aymeric Ibarz... whenever we can include our homies in our project, we do it. The idea is to enjoy the moment, like our trip in Japan.

Where do you want to go next?

There are a lot of places where we want to go now... Canada, British Columbia... there are a lot of places that we want to ski. We went to Japan thanks to our partnership with the agency Ski Japan, which invited us back for a second year. This helped us to do this trip, because going to Japan and skiing there is very expensive. So yes, we want to travel more, but it all depends on the cost.

What makes you more special than the others?

We think that's because of those three words above. We don’t say that other crews don’t have them, but we try to have a good mix of fun, performance and good content. We wanted something with quality, with fun scenarios and bringing something new every time. And doing all this stuff in the Pyrenees, because at the time there wasn't much going on there. At the beginning we really wanted to play with our image of Pyrenean guys, because people think of you like a farmer, a hick or a clown... it was self-mockery. So we worked on this at the beginning of our web series. In France, the Pyrenees are like the third world for skiing, so we wanted to show people what we were capable of.

You said scenarios... What kind of stories do you like to tell?

For the first season there was continuity and a story throughout the winter. But what we like now, and that’s in a way the advantage that we have, is creating and covering different subjects without any link between each video. We have different formats—we did a story for a season, then we switched and did short videos... we try to evolve in our project. The content is always evolving. Now, what works a lot isn’t the posts, but more the stories on Instagram... so there is a gap between the time we started and now. We are forced to evolve with the format.

And this year you're making your first steps as YouTubers?

Well, you can clearly see that now people are always on YouTube... Facebook doesn’t work as well as it did years ago. So we tried to do our best and got started on YouTube. The thing is that today, what works is something that's short, where the public can enter your universe and get to know you. They need more than the basic ski clip with music and tricks. YouTube is the ideal platform for this. The idea is to bring something new to YouTube and vlogs, always with our three keywords: humor, performance and good images. And it's not always about skiing. We saw that a skier can be more than this guy always training and riding fresh snow. Outside of the ski world he does a lot of things.

What kind of stuff do you do outside of skiing?

Clement is going to join the French badminton team, Loïc works as a maid for a non-paid job and Ju tries to go to the gym. And we support the Olympic of Marseille (a French football/soccer team). More seriously, Ju works as photographer and director, and loves to snowboard and surf. Loïc loves every kind of sport: bicycling, trail, jumping rope, Tinder... Clem likes to surf too. The only one who doesn’t surf is Loïc: "I saw the fear in Ju’s eyes. I will always remember this. They told me to PADDLE PADDLE PADDLE. I was like, 'It’s too big,' and he just said, 'Don’t worry'... And the wave just took me. I went out after this one. Never again." We are preparing Loïc for our surf trip to Bali.

What motivates you?

SEX SEX SEX. No, but what's good in life is sharing moments with our homies—a little bit of music, good food and going to parties. In the Pyrenees we have all of this. The riders' cliche.

Why leave the park for fresh snow?

We wanted to go back to the spirit of skiing: the powder. Everyone is getting older and wants to evolve with the ride. It’s a bit the natural path, less park and more freeride. This is not something that we decided, it just came naturally. And we love backcountry!

Today, what is your video that you like the most?

I think is one of our first videos: "Les Pyrénéens en Amérique." After seeing all our content, we think it's one of the most successful. For us this is the reference. But we don’t know if today this video would work as well as it did when it came out.

What’s next?

Maybe something more global... developing the project in other sports. Going on other trips, meeting new people. And maybe, why not, doing camps with young people. We think we will go out of the ski universe to refresh the concept. This is our sixth year, and it would be great if we go outside of our comfort zone.

Any last words?

Gaaaaaay.