2012 Mardi Gras Float: Liberté, Égalité, Debauchery.  Saint Louis, MO

Ten years after I designed and built the lead float for the famous Soulard Mardi Gras parade our company Switch decided to enter a float. The theme was famous trios, so I played with the rallying cry of the French Revolution: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! Switch’s tagline is “liberate your brand” so revolution and liberty were right up our alley. Égalité spoke to the equal participation in getting the float produced. If you wanted to ride, you needed to help. I swapped out fraternité for  debauchery, it was Mardi Gras after all! Why the French Revolution? Soulard is a historic French neighborhood settled by a French surveyor who fled the revolution in the 1790’s. Did I know that before we decided to build the float? No, but I like the coincidence! We built a Bastille castle, a canon that fired t-shirts into in the crowd, a farmer's cart that was used to take the aristocrats to our prized prop, the guillotine.