You’ve heard of the proverbial woman with a past. Well, these jewelry pieces have a past. A jewelry designer in L.A. made the cuff bracelets from vintage French sequins and beads (among other materials). The person she bought the elements from told her the provenance was decades-old stage costumes from France. I love imagining what [...]

Today, as usual, the market was full of foreign tourists gawking at the lovely food and product displays. As the vendeuse was cutting the stems and wrapping up the flowers (she gave me some foliage for free), I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall, impatient American man, identifable by his khaki pants and [...]

Good news for penny-pinching vintage ad lovers: I’ve stumbled upon a treasure trove of French ads from all decades of the 20th century. From fashion prints to old Vogue and La Vie Parisienne covers to auto and lingerie ads, HPrints has everything your vintage-loving heart desires. You can find old campaigns for luxury brands like Givenchy, Balenciaga, [...]

The Northern Marais continues to affirm its status as Paris’ hippest neighbourhood with the arrival of The Broken Arm , a brand new concept store combining a bright cafe with a cutting edge boutique stocking a carefully curated selection of fashion, accessories and books. Founded by Anaïs Lafarge, Guillaume Steinmetz and Romain Juste – who are [...]

If you want to understand Paris fashion—from couture to street style—head over to the Museum of Decorative Arts. Every new exhibition claims to be a Paris must-see but their “Fashioning Fashion” is unique. Here, in one hundred outfits, you can see how history’s best-dressed Europeans actually looked. Amazingly, every piece is also in perfect condition. The show [...]

The famous flea market that visitors mean when they want to go to the Puces is the Puces de Saint-Ouen, just north of the Porte de Clignancourt and therefore not technically in Paris at all but in suburban Saint-Ouen. Right now is a great time to go to the Puces [flea markets] because a lot of Parisians [...]

I had recently read about a fashion exhibit at the Lace Museum in Calais. I checked the train schedule and Calais was an hour and forty minutes from Paris and the fares were reasonable. We arrived about 11:30 and walked through the quiet, working class city to get to the museum. Most people know Calais for its ferries [...]

If you live in Paris and are looking to sell a bunch of stuff but don’t want to have to bother with opening an eBay account yourself, you can instead try the services of EncherExpert, an eBay consignment company that – for 10-30% percent of the sale – will take your items, photograph them, write up [...]

The engagement ring Napoléon Bonaparte gave Joséphine de Beauharnais in 1796 will soon be on the finger of some lucky lady. The ring, being called here in Paris the toi et moi ring, with reminders of the toi et moi ring Dodi Al Fayed bought Princess Diana but never gave her because death intervened, has been [...]

I have long admired Thierry Vendome’s exquisite jewelry in his boutique down the street from me. I didn’t realize his father was also a renowned jewelry designer until some friends of mine told me about an exhibition of both of their work. Le Chant du Mineral at the Galerie Martel-Greiner is a superb showcase of [...]