THE French are trying to do to their advertising what they once did for existentialism: give it international cachet.

Jud Smith, for example, is a Marblehead sailor who doesn't have the international cachet of a Conner.

Lake Louise is 34 miles from Banff but, with more than 100 trails and extensive off-piste, has the biggest international cachet.

The Embassy Suites, which doesn't have Marriott's international cachet, is embarking on a huge direct mail program to foreign reporters.

Four of them opened the same night last September, considerably raising the street's international cachet.

Mr. Allbritton, who secured a controlling stake in Riggs in 1981, coveted the bank's international cachet and made regular business trips abroad, including to Chile.

There are companies not associated with particular choreographers, like the Munich Ballet, but they have never attained international cachet.

But "Killy's World," as the tourist bureau translates it, has not exactly won international cachet: the name Val d'Isere persists.

And French pop music, heavily influenced by groups from its former colonies, has attracted a new international cachet in this age of African fashionability.

The hope is to create an international cachet and, along with it, a T-shirt market like that of the Hard Rock Cafe.