Architect Zaha Hadid‘s mobile art container has been donated by Chanel to the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Having travelled the world, the pavilion is currently showcasing an exhibition of Zaha Hadid’s work within its walls, and then will be used by the Institut du Monde Arabe to house contemporary art from Arab countries. As the [...]
“The Art of the Automobile,” at the Museum of Decorative Arts, is one art blockbuster that won’t travel beyond Paris. What is its draw? The “art” is 17 rare, iconic cars on loan from designer (and car collector) Ralph Lauren. Taken together, they offer a history of auto luxury via prestigious names such as Bentley, [...]
Le Fanfaron is one of the favorite Parisian bars of my girl crush du jour, Lou Doillon (daughter of Jane Birkin). In a very caché backstreet off Ledru Rollin (near Bastille), my girlfriend and I found what seemed to be a bit of a local secret. Situated on a narrow residential street, Le Fanfaron is [...]
We all love to laugh at celebrity vanity projects, but Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP website is irreproachable. So I trust her recommendations for a trip to Paris–it’s not all four-star restaurants and stolls down the Champs-Elysees. Her first trip to the City of Light was with her father: On the plane back to London he asked [...]
What a soap opera! Napoleon and the Rebel, a bio on the emperor’s younger, more handsome, more cultivated, and arguably smarter brother Lucien, is is juicy love story full of inside scoop on the Bonaparte clan, which fought amongst itself while Napoleon took Europe, one country at a time, in the early 19th century. Though [...]
Nureyev’s tomb, in the Russian Cemetery near Paris is draped in a kilim rug. The rug, in red, different shades of blue, and gold, is made of tiny mosaic tiles. Designed by Italian costume and set designer Ezio Frigerio, it looks so real that you can’t resist the urge to want to take hold of it [...]
Francis Kurkdjian is a famous nose. Between creating Jean-Paul Gaultier’s Le Male, in 1995, and Kenzo’s Eau de Fleur de Magnolia, in 2009, the 42-year-old Frenchman invented dozens of fragrances for houses as varied as Dior, Armani, Guerlain and, um, Bebe. Despite that impressive resume, he was no shoe-in when the perfume company BPI issued [...]
I have always marveled that celebrities who were big in in the early 1980s–when I started visiting France–are still important today. Depardieu, Arielle Dombasle, and of course Catherine Deneuve. There are fewer superstars, but once they hit the summit, they are not knocked off their perch by others, the way they are in America. So [...]
Like many Woody Allen fans, I didn’t much care for Midnight in Paris. It had less emotional depth than Allen’s last European valentine, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and while I could watch that film’s leading man, Javier Bardem, for hours on end, I run out of patience with Owen Wilson. Still, I ate up Midnight‘s ample [...]
As the saying goes, “Behind every great man stands a woman, rolling her eyes.” In the case of the Modernist architect Le Corbusier, that woman was probably Charlotte Perriand, his colleague and co-creator in the 1930s. Only she was probably too good-natured and well-mannered to roll her eyes. Perhaps from time to time she permitted [...]
