Wild & The Moon: How This Vegan Café Is Changing Fashion's Diet
Saint-Honoré location in Paris
I enter the Saint-Honoré location ready for some matcha and my rendezvous-vous with Emma Sawko, the founder of this beautiful place. A place I come to everyday during my stays in Paris. “Eat Wise, It’s Gangster”, a shirt reads, hanging in the refrigerator amongst the pre-made avocado toast bites, raw juice shots, and other vegan treats kept cool for consumption. It’s the motto set by the coolest vegan spot in town.
“Eat Wise'“ t-shirt amongst the vegan delights
Matcha inspired muffin (Photo: Cassell Ferere)
In Paris, there is a lot of fashion to see as much as there is food to eat. All kinds of cuisine from all over the world are around every quaint corner located in the City of Lights. If you’re hungry, treat yourself to some bistro-style grub, or sushi if you’re feeling to eat light. Maybe you are vegan, and you don’t think there are enough options. One café style restaurant - restaurant-style cafe - has been answering the call since 2017.
‘Wild’ store sign on corner in Saint-Honoré location (Photo: Cassell Ferere)
Located in some of the most inconspicuous corners and streets in Paris, Wild & The Moon caters to those looking for vegan meal options, with a conscious message. Without any plastic, bottles and utensils are made from sugar cane and other plants. Ingredients are all vegan, locally sourced, and gluten-free with no HPP (high-hydrostatic pressure - processed foods). Offering only what they have fresh for the day, a unique take on how the hospitality industry can become ethical and sustainable while providing “good food.”
Emma Sawko in Wild & the Moon location in downtown Paris
Wild & The Moon was founded first in 2016, in Dubai, by Emma Sawko, an entrepreneur born in New York and raised in Paris. Emma grew up eating meals made by her mom who was “superconscious with the relation between food and health – wasn’t vegan, but mostly plant-based. I remember, when I came home from school, there were only greens and grains in the fridge. We had [a bit of] eggs, and fish, and meat when she knew where it was coming from. The difference is the food she was cooking was [really-really] good, so I was super happy coming home from school.”
Emma sits in reflection at a ‘Wild’ location in a downtown Paris
Decor in each location is unique to the space
Emma has always loved fashion and design - distinctively wearing one earing on her right side – co-founding her first concept store in Dubai. Awarded the best furniture by Harper’s Bazaar, opening in 2012, she named it Comptoir 102, a furniture store selling lifestyle accessories and bohemian fashion styles; “cool and casual” as Emma describes one of her favorite brands Isabel Marant. She experimented with offering vegan delicacies at the Comptoir 102 boutique to a considerable western diet community at the time. She simply found that there were no food offerings to her taste or anyone seeking healthier options.
Hot cafés and creamy-warm bowls
Having an appealing aesthetic, and creating delicious vegan food for a cause, Wild & The Moon is the essence of an ethical lifestyle Emma is devoted to. This is possibly the reason why some of fashion's most creative minds are attracted to her recipes of food that are not only healthy but good for you and the environment. A reflection of a stable diet.
Sarah Andelman casually getting photographed casually getting eats (Photo: Cassell Ferere)
What Wild’ serves are a variety of all organic, locally sourced, vegan meals delivered in the eco-friendliest way possible. Wandering in can afford you a fresh take on dejeuner, as well as people-watching, as you may see anyone from actor Owen Wilson, to creatives like Sarah Andelman and Virgil Abloh. A place to potentially share a countertop or small table with a model having breaking between runways or a popular Instagram influencer getting a matcha latte instead of that hero street style shot.
Pressed juices
If you’re vegan or not, the food here is soulful. Hot bowls, handmade sandwiches, cold-pressed juices, and the infamous ginger “Bam” shot can have you thinking twice about your daily diet. The food here varies from location to location. It’s far from any ordinary café or restaurant.
Soul food
The decor is themed throughout
The plant-based brand is fully thought about in that it is designed to the core. The Logo is cubist inspired. Many of the stores in Paris are hidden in plain sight; remembering BAPE stores before the world of hypebeast. Décor is rustic, decorated with ever-encroaching ferns and other plant-life. Wood tables feel just right to the nature of the ambiance. Contemporary music and songs you never heard of – all of it so good. An organic feeling is mutual here.
Chris Lavish sits near camouflaged in a green faux fur (Photo: Cassell Ferere)
Interest in the concept got some of those patrons involved with the brand. A frequent visitor to the café, Virgil Abloh first commissioned Wild & The Moon to cater an Off White pop-up at the famed Le Bon Marché department store in Paris. Receiving a call on Christmas from an associate on the project, Emma was on vacation with family when she was put in a position to collaborate and develop products with Abloh for the duration of the pop-up.
‘Wild’ x Off-White “Survival Kit” pop-up presentation
“Blue Magic” and “Better Than Botox” cold-pressed juices took rank, briefly, as hyped healthy energy drinks during 2019 Men’s Paris Fashion Week, earlier this year. They went on as a hot topic gaining the attention of the fashion world and Wild and the Moon was now providing healthier, delicious vegan options for the fashion world to bite into the idea.
‘Wild’ x Off-White pressed juice
Receiving a lot of press, 5 more locations opened within the next year. Brands like ByRedo have offered Wild and the Moon juices (“Respect Your Elder”); Stella McCartney tapped Wild & The Moon for catering at all her shows and events. Sarah Andelman, founder and design-mind behind Colette, sought the signature cold-pressed juices that Virgil had slapped the Off-White name on not long before, to offer up a Sacai inspired flavor named “Take Me Higher” for the F/W Women’s Fashion Week season.
‘Wild’ x ByRedo pressed juice
‘Wild’ x Sacai pressed juice
The Tokyo based brand featured a collaboration with art director Fabien Baron for their Paris Men’s Spring-Summer and Women’s Pre-Spring shows. Sacai featured a shirt made from a blend of cotton and Brewed Protein™, a newly developed, sustainable, high-quality material. I can’t help but wonder if the movement for sustainable fashion is being influenced by our healthier diets and ethical inclinations.
Black Lemonade to change the game
Cynthia, model, sits idol while being photographed in a ‘Wild’ location in Paris (Photo: Cassell Ferere)
Wild & The Moon is changing the food palette for many who find themselves to be on the trendier side of life. It is also making healthy eating and ethical practices more desirable amongst the locals in Paris. The city that inspired the fashion world can now claim to inspire the culinary world on how to keep cool under-fire for ethical habits and sustainable practices.
Sarah ordering some café (Photo: Cassell Ferere)
With 6 locations in Paris, the first opening in Le Marais. 3 brick and mortars in Dubai, and one recently opening in Abu Dhabi. She has hopes for Wild & The Moon North America, preferably Montreal, New York, and L.A., but only with the right kind of partners.
Food for the body and soul
Non-sugary treats
Paris is forever a trendy city. But, in respect to that, Paris has led the curve. A city that knows what it wants and has a certain orbit about how they acquire it. Food has had a place here as much as fashion. Evident in how Wild & The Moon has transcended what it means to collaborate with fashion, in a way that has more implications for birthing a conscious society, one that is still trendy like fashion, but as good as moms cooking after all the years.
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