French teenagers are embracing free love and organising their own large-scale parties at which drink and drugs flow freely, the dancefloor is for kissing, and the garden is an overflow boudoir for when things get extra-steamy.
But here's the strange part: the partygoers aren't just indulging in regular, hormonally-charged hedonism. They're paying homage to a group of fictional British teens.
"Le Skins parties" are organised by French fans of Skins, the Channel 4 series about misbehaving adolescents. First shown in the UK in 2007, its representation of sixth-form students' wild parties quickly became popular across the channel.
Photographer Claudine Doury glimpsed inside a Skins party in a Parisian suburb earlier this year, and these pictures are her record of that night. Entry cost 20 euros, 10 if you brought a bottle, and there were plenty of drugs on the menu, too. But the parties are also scrupulously organised; a security guard is hired to keep an eye on anyone who's overdone it and to keep away undesirables.
"This young guy's parents had gone away, and he invited three or four hundred people on Facebook to a party in his house," says Doury. "They were all between 16 and 18 – the oldest was 20."
Doury describes scenes of sexual abandon. Delighted young men ask a girl if they can kiss her, and she usually says yes. If things progress, they head to the garden, where bodies sprawl across the grass.
But surely drinking, drug-taking and snogging are teenage party staples? So what's unusual about a Skins party? And why do French teens need British TV to show them how to misbehave?
"To be so free is special," insists Doury. "The most incredible thing was people being sexual in front of everybody – you didn't see too much though, because the security guard would ask them to go out into the garden. It's completely free: 'no limits, no limits', they're always saying.
"The freedom is inspired by the TV show. The foreignness of the series is very fashionable and attractive to French teenagers."
Shame on you Ed.
