Fashion Week Fringe: How Two French Creatives Are Rewriting Golf's Cultural Code
Paris Golf Gallery – the brainchild of French branding entrepreneurs Pierre Greilsamer and Malo Bourdet – is rapidly bridging the gap between golf's stale past and its energetic future.
Picture the scene.
You’re in La Boulie, in Versailles just outside Paris. One of France's most prestigious golf clubs, where you’re never far away from reminders of Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros winning the French Open and tradition runs deep in the soil of every fairway.
In June 2024, this bastion of French golf heritage witnessed something unusual, maybe even unprecedented: dozens of young people from diverse backgrounds — among them NBA stars, entrepreneurs and lifestyle creators wearing bold modern leisurewear — arriving for a round.
The initial curiosity from the locals and longtime members was palpable.
Then came the moment that changed everything: these newcomers weren't just enthusiastic beginners.
“Many of them were playing off scratch,” recalls Malo Bourdet, co-founder of Paris Golf Gallery. “And the locals realized, ‘Oh, God! You know how to play golf!’”
Of course they could play. They can play better than most.
That day at La Boulie became a bridge between golf's traditional — some would say stale — past, and the dynamic future that’s being rapidly ushered in all over the world.
And it perfectly captured what Bourdet and his business partner Pierre Greilsamer, the two creatives behind French branding agency Wrks, are achieving through Paris Golf Gallery.
Paris Golf Gallery, a week-long festival of golf brands, takes place for the third time in 12 months in Paris this week. And having grown from housing six brands in its first edition in 2024 to 25 in the latest edition, it is fast becoming a platform for golf’s energetic young makers, creators, movers and shakers, that’s dynamically pulling the game into the future — while trying not to punch down too hard on its past.
The Unlikely Evangelists Behind Paris Golf Gallery
The story begins in the world of action sports.
Bourdet and Greilsamer have known each other for 15 years, both working in action sports marketing before founding Wrks Agency a decade ago.
Their company operates across three verticals:
brand experience (retail design, creating destinations)
brand image (rebranding, creative campaigns)
and campaign activation (the painstaking logistics of rolling out concepts across hundreds of stores)
Their roster of satisfied clients reads almost like a who's who of lifestyle brands — Wrangler, Dickies, Vans, Brooks Running — and their modus operandi is to help established companies transform their image and step into different, more elevated markets by accessing the cultural zeitgeist.
As Bourdet explains,
“It’s our job to inject energy, to energize the spectrum we are working with.”
Golf, though? That wasn't initially on the radar.
As with so many things, the Covid-19 pandemic changed everything.
Greilsamer's relationship with golf traces back to his grandfather, a former professional skier who was forced to slow down due to heart problems in his mid-50s.
Greilsamer recalls:
“He was like, 'No, Doc — please don't tell me I will have to start playing golf.”
Six months later, his grandfather was a golf convert. He built holes in his backyard and then founded the first golf course in their hometown.
Despite this early exposure, though, golf remained a little peripheral for Greilsamer, until the summer 2020.
“During the lockdown everything was forbidden. Even surfing!” he remembers. “But somehow golf was allowed.”
A creative retreat with the Wrks team near a golf course led to a revelation.
“We were in the middle of a beautiful landscape with nobody in front of us, nobody behind us, chasing white balls with friends. Everything felt more quiet and peaceful.”
Performance vs. Vibe
As creatives devoted to the power of brand, what truly opened their eyes was witnessing the cultural shift being led by outfits like Malbon Golf.
Growing rapidly since 2017, Stephen and Erica Malbon's Los Angeles-based brand combines tradition with innovation and aims to infuse golf with creative energy from fashion, art, and music.
Its mission?
“Make the green the common ground”
Watching Malbon and others progress, a lightbulb went off for Greilsamer.
He says:
"To me for a long time, and I think to the average golfer too, when you think about golf, the first thing you hear when people speak about golf, is about performance. So much about golf is technical performance.
But there’s a different side to golf, and that’s a side that is appealing to so many people now.
That side is about lifestyle and vibe, much more than just performance."
This — the feeling — reminded him of action sports.
“If you do skateboarding, if you go snowboarding, you want to land the trick.
The feeling you get when you land the trick, it's almost exactly the same feeling you get when you hit a great golf shot.
And this is the feeling you want to replicate all the time.”
The likes of Malbon and Bogey Boys — the brand started by world-famous music icon Macklemore — started to bring golf’s lifestyle vibe to more and more people.
For the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time in its history, golf is cool.
This shift is cultural and it’s generational.
As Bourdet says,
“For so many people, golf has always been this sport for old white dudes.
But that’s going through a generational change now.
The younger generation is like, 'I’m at home here. I don’t need you to invite me in, and I’m not going to feel ashamed to walk somewhere.’”
The Industry's Creative Vacuum
This led the Wrks guys to a startling realization about golf's commercial landscape. The game itself could be a beautiful experience — but how were its brands presenting themselves to the world?
So much of that was stuck in time.
“If you go to classic golf shops selling hardware clubs, it's basically going into a sports store that is stuck in the 1990s,” Greilsamer explains.
“Each brand has just a logo, but it's the same format for almost every brand. Nobody was trying to inject new messages. Nobody's creating new experiences.”
A reach-out to Srixon to create branded golf balls for Wrks led to the evolution of a relationship, and an opportunity to work with the Srixon marketing team, who bought into Wrks’ broader vision and energy.
The challenge, as Wrks discovered, wasn't really the brands themselves. It was that nobody had challenged them to think differently in years, or ever.
As Greilsamer says, “The market has been the same thing for two decades. All the major brands haven't been challenged by anything.”
During their pitch to Srixon, Wrks created a brutally honest slide they called “Market Reality”.
They showed standard golf retail displays alongside innovative retail display examples from Japan and Korea.
“A lot of golf displays look like a display for condoms or toothpaste,” says Bourdet. “It's so … nothing, you know.”
Compared with the progressive retail branding on show in Japan and Korea, the contrast with Western Europe and North America is stark, says Greilsamer.
“On this side of the world so many retail spaces are the same way they were 20 years ago, but Japan is 10 years in advance in the future.
When you think about it, everybody who plays golf, they do other stuff too — they buy phones, they buy cars, they go to restaurants.
When they choose, they like when it's nice and fresh and design is cool. I don't understand why golf brands just say, 'Oh, we just sell golf clubs, so we don't care.'“
Birth of a Movement
The golf exposure, plus the devotion to brand, led to the birth of Paris Golf Gallery.
It started through a serendipitous moment during Paris Fashion Week, when a Japanese golf brand, Captain's Helm Golf, reached out for help showcasing their collection.
Bourdet says,
“We were witnessing new, emerging, progressive golf brands trying to speak to a younger audience, to show that golf can be cool. There were a handful of brands showcasing at Paris Fashion Week, but they were all separate, isolated in different spots.
We thought, ‘What about gathering all of them under one roof to tell this story about this new golf lifestyle category?’”
The first Paris Golf Gallery showroom in June 2024 featured six brands.
“It was a bet for Pierre and myself,” Bourdet admits. “We rented a showroom and contacted brands to see if they wanted to be part of it.”
The response exceeded expectations. The second edition in January 2025 featured 10 brands. This coming week, 25 golf lifestyle brands will converge on a 600-square-meter space in Cadillac’s flagship showroom at Opera in the city.
Building a New Category
It’s probably fair to say that Paris Golf Gallery defies easy categorization.
As Greilsamer explains:
“It's not a trade show. It's not a pop-up store. It's not an art gallery, but it's everything at the same time.
It’s a platform. A community platform for a new golf category.
Those brands can live in a pro shop at the golf course. They can live in a sports store next to Puma or Nike.
But they can also live next to Jacquemus or Ami. We are building something that didn't have a name four or five years ago.”
The June 2025 edition will feature multiple experiences: a trade show for buyers viewing spring/summer 2026 collections, a pop-up store open to the public, putting zones and golf simulators which will stage driving contests throughout the week and a pop-up cafe sponsored by the Stanley 1913 cups brand, who are strategically increasing their footprint in the golf market.
Apart from its leisurewear and “vibes” appeal, what makes Paris Golf Gallery unique is its global scope and exclusivity, as well as the way it is beginning to facilitate unexpected connections and collaborations.
Bourdet says:
“We have brands coming here from all over the world — from South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, as well as from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden and, of course, France.
And we’re noticing that the platform is really helping them connect and grow. This month we will witness new collaborations between brands that were born within the gallery a year ago!”
Driving Greilsamer and Bourdet forward is not a calculated mission to change golf.
Instead, at its heart, it’s an authentic passion for what excites them, and that passion and energy is attracting like-minded people.
They're partnering with organizations like Swang, the California brand on a mission to reframe the golf experience as:
“Community for those who were never invited — but always belonged.”
Run by Modi, former art director of a major rap label, Swang organizes driving range sessions for people from music and creative scenes. As Modi recently posted on Instagram: “We're changing the way the world looks at this sport.”
Another example is Gwop Meet, which brings together like-minded brands and individuals and wants to elevate golf on and off the course across diverse demographics. [Gwop Meet describes itself as “part golf trunk show, and part pop-up.”]
These communities — all based on the conviction that golf is fun when you strip away the intimidation and just focus on the feeling — are springing up organically, far apart geographically but sharing an unmistakable DNA and an energy that promises to stick around.
The Business Evolution
The Paris Golf Gallery business model is evolving thoughtfully, with a long-term view.
“It's a side project for Wrks,” Bourdet clarifies.
“We don’t do it for immediate return — it’s been flat every season so far. The idea is to maximize the budget we have to elevate the experience for everyone who comes.
“It's a signature for Wrks, a way for us to promote the agency. If any big player tomorrow wants our service, they know we have that background."
As for the future, the plan is for Paris Golf Gallery to be physically live during each Paris Fashion Weeks, in January and June each year, but a key development for 2025 is the upcoming launch of e-commerce site at parisgolfgallery.com, which is slated to go live soon after the June 2025 showcase.
After that?
Who knows, but they plan to stick around.
The platform will continue to evolve — a trade show with an e-commerce, and an e-commerce brand with a regular showroom during Paris Fashion Week — while Wrks Agency is positioning itself as the go-to partner for golf brands ready to embrace cultural transformation.
Their dream projects? “Design new clubhouses, new golf stores, anything linked with golf,” says Bourdet.
For anyone paying close attention to the youthful brands on the periphery of the golf industry, one thing is increasingly clear.
Golf's future won’t be about sticking to tradition at all costs.
Instead, golf’s future could be almost unrecognisable from its past, with more and more people inviting themselves in, regardless of old social status symbols or their place in the invisible hierarchy.
Whether they're chasing scratch, or just the feeling of a perfectly-struck shot, golf’s next generation is here, and here to stay.
Paris Golf Gallery runs June 23-27, 2025, at the Cadillac showroom in Opera, Paris. For more information: visit Paris Golf Gallery on Instagram, or add your email to the mailing list at parisgolfgallery.com.