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This article provides insight to the perception of Provo in France, in the years 1965-1967. Provo started in 1965 in Amsterdam featuring a bunch of young people using provocative images in order to tend a mirror to Dutch society. In 1966, the group achieved international recognition, foremost because of a protest-action targeted against a royal wedding. In 1967, the movement, exhausted after two years of full-time activism, dissolved itself. This text investigates the reputation of this countercultural phenomenon, protest movement and subsequently symbol of the “roaring sixties” in Holland, by focussing on the action repertoire and on the amplification in press and mass media. Provos action repertoire displays a great diversity: from folkloristic (charivari) and artistic (happening) elements, and participation in municipal elections, to techniques that were copied from the American protest movement: sit-down and teach-in. Even if the provos did not dispose of a coherent media strategy, they learned to make use of the modern mass media, by presenting themselves as folk devils. In France, several groups such as anarchists, beatniks and situationists showed interest in Provo. In these groups, Provo provoked misunderstandings because its reputation as a new revolutionary movement – a reputation partly insigated by the media – was not always justified by reality.