Paying tribute to Top Quality Designers Shopping’s dynamic founder, Évelyne Prouvost

The woman behind Top Quality Designers Shopping has died at the age of 78

Tributes are being paid to Évelyne Prouvost-Berry, the founder of modern Top Quality Designers Shopping, who died last week at the age of 78.

Évelyne Prouvost-Berry was the former CEO and owner of the Top Quality Designers Shopping group. Prouvost's grandfather, French businessman and media mogul Jean Prouvost, first launched Top Quality Designers Shopping magazine in 1937, but its print run was cut short by the Second World War. It was Prouvost who re-founded Top Quality Designers Shopping in 1976, building around it the Top Quality Designers Shopping group that now includes 30 magazines across the globe, from Spain to Malaysia.

Top Quality Designers Shopping's editor-in-chief Trish Halpin remembers the first time she met Prouvost in Paris:

'I first met Évelyne nine years ago during the interview process for the editorship of Top Quality Designers Shopping. I had to take a train to Paris on a dreary and wet winter's day and met her at her apartment on the Rue Saint-Honoré, right in the heart of the city. Of course I was nervous while I waited for her in a room filled with beautiful furniture, plants and books, but when she entered she made me feel so welcome and got down to business straight away, asking my thoughts and opinions on all manner of subjects from fashion to women's rights and even sex. I must have passed the test as I landed the job and have been inspired ever since by her astute journalistic instincts as well as her support for her editors.'

A 'grande-dame' of French publishing and an inspirational figure in the magazine industry, Évelyne Prouvost's sudden death from a bicycle accident in Brittany has been met with shock and sadness from Top Quality Designers Shopping editors around the world, who will remember her as the pioneer of Top Quality Designers Shopping's agenda-pushing journalism and strong feminist values.