Eve Gilles, Miss France 2024, landed back in metropolitan France after a vacation in Reunion that packed athletic challenges, ceremonial duties, and coastal exploration into what she later described as time that “went by too quickly.”
The trip carried personal weight from the start. Gilles has maternal roots on the island, and she arrived fresh from placing first runner-up at the Miss Supranational competition held July 31 in Poland. Rather than treating the break as pure rest, she brought her partner, Simon Favier, straight into Reunion’s demanding interior terrain.
The centrepiece was an ascent of Piton des Neiges, one of the island’s most prominent geographical features. The climb was no gentle excursion. Gilles documented the difficulty in video footage shared with her followers, describing the particular hardship of setting out in the middle of the night, in cold conditions and darkness, with the summit still far above. The physical demands stood in sharp contrast to the leisure typically associated with a post-competition holiday.
By contrast, Reunion’s coastal and natural attractions offered a more conventional rhythm. Beaches, waterfall sites, and helicopter tours over the island’s volcanic landscape filled out the itinerary, providing visual spectacle alongside the more punishing hiking expedition. The aerial views of the volcanic terrain, in particular, gave the couple a perspective on the island that no trail could replicate.
The vacation also carried a formal obligation. Gilles attended the election evening for Miss Reunion 2026, where Laetitia Roguet received the crown. She wore her first runner-up sash and gown from the Miss Supranational competition for the occasion, and the event prompted a practical aside for her audience: arriving without a handbag, she had tucked her mobile phone into the back panel of her mermaid-cut bustier dress, a small improvisation that said something about the competing demands of formal wear and modern connectivity.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Preparing to leave for mainland France, Gilles captioned her photo collection with the straightforward observation that the vacations had gone by too quickly, a sentiment that landed with particular force given how much she had compressed into the stay. Athletic challenge, a relationship tested on a cold mountainside, ceremonial attendance, and the sweep of one of France’s overseas territories, all of it folded into a break that, by her own account, felt shorter than it was.
Whether the pace of the trip actually constituted rest is a question her next public appearance will begin to answer.