It’s never quite as big a day as the Miss France result, but Auline Grac, Miss Provence, is the new Miss Prestige National in France for 2013, held at the Lido in Paris last night.
The rival pageant was set up by the former Miss France boss, la dame au chapeau, Geneviève de Fontenay, two years ago, and has been mired in controversy since.
Grac, 21, lives in Aix-en-Provence, and is 1·79 m (5 ft 10½ in) tall and is a first-year osteopathy student at the Université de Limoges. She was born in Marseille.
The seven finalists in Miss Prestige National were voted by telephone, before the winner was elected by a jury chaired by journalist Henry-Jean Servat. Yvan Levaï and Jean-Claude Jitrois also served on the jury.
Thirty regional finalists modelled costumes, evening gowns and one-piece swimsuits. Instead of a television network, the ceremony was broadcast on Dailymotion.
After Endemol sued de Fontenay under a non-compete clause, she had insisted she was not the organizer of the pageant, but merely a ‘guest of honour’
Originally titled Miss Nationale, de Fontenay found herself in the middle of a trade mark claim in 2011, when another party claimed that they had registered the name first. The pageant was hurriedly retitled.