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If you've ever felt smothered by your smartphone, if iPhone push notifications are doing your head in, or if the blinking red light on your BlackBerry makes you want to cut a bitch, you're not alone. Lanvin—yes, that Lanvin—CEO Thierry Andretta is with you. To that end, he's declared Wednesdays totally email-free in his office.
"Generally, I think we have become too accessible. We all lose too much time reading and writing emails and they prevent you from thinking clearly," Andretta told Reuters at the FT Luxury Summit in Switzerland. "Also, when you read emails when you are traveling you are not there, you are elsewhere which is a shame. It prevents you from really tuning into your surroundings and sinking in the atmosphere which is something I want to do more."
Andretta says he's tried email-evangelizing his colleagues at Lanvin, but hasn't had much luck. "I think they are not really interested but it might be also because they get fewer emails than me," he said. "Before taking the plane to New York from Paris, I would read and answer most of my emails and by the time I got off the plane, there were another 250 waitin for me. It is just too much."
· Lanvin chief declares email-free Wednesday [Reuters]