The Paris Blog: Paris, France Expat Tips & Resources » Style & Shopping

The Paris Blog’s New Etsy Shop

Laurie — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:43:45 +0000

Wear your francophilia on your sleeve! French-themed accessories are part of the debut collection of rehabilitated vintage evening bags on the Etsy shop for TheParisBlog. Click here to see the entire collection. Each item is $29.

Flea Market Finds

Ann Mah — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:37:39 +0000

As a child, I remember spending hours and hours waiting while my parents shopped for antique furniture. They used to bribe me with Famous Five novels, but those books had no chance of lasting long enough for my speedy eyes and their lengthy negotiations. As I sat in dark corners illicitly popping bubble wrap, I had no idea why they found a boring old, ugly wooden table so interesting.

Fast forward 30 years. Now that I have an apartment of my own, I can finally say this: Mom, Dad, I get it.

All I want to do is spend time in flea markets. Marche aux puces, brocante, vide grénier — call them what you will, they all offer the same thing: other people’s junk. And I’m obsessed with it.

So far, my scourings have yielded a set of Thonet café chairs, various digestif glasses, a gilt-framed mirror, and an Art Deco lamp. Oh, and these dishes. A mismatched set of dessert, dinner and soup plates. I plan to add to them until I have a full service of dishware in different patterns.

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Knit Wits

Colleens Paris — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:06:08 +0000

Grab your knitting needles, embroidery threads, patchwork and hoops. The Paris Needlework Fair (l’Aiguille en Fête) takes place in February (February 9 and 12, 2012). The fair is not restricted to age or gender. The men are knitting along side the women and there is even a sporting event: Speed Knitting! The annual Paris needlework fair began in 2004, and continues to grow and attract talent from around the world. Susan O’Connor is flying in from Australia giving special classes in English. Her classes (January 31, February 1, 2 and 3) are being held at the famous Au Ver à Soie. The cornflower pinball and scissor sheath class is being held on Wednesday February 1 and the stumpwork class is on Friday, February 3.

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Meet Avril Gau

I Heart Paris — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:43:16 +0000

Having worked for Chanel, Robert Clergerie and Loewe, shoes and accessories designer Avril Gau went on to set up her own eponymous brand in 2002. At the end of 2010, she opened her first boutique in Paris’ chic St Germain – a charming and cosy two-floor shop stocking her collection of bags, shoes and wallets alongside jewellery by Alex Monroe and cologne by Acqua di Genova. The collections feature butter-soft leathers in mostly sober colours – black, burgundy, bark-brown, moss-green, navy-blue – with a quintessentially Parisian attention to detail – a leather bow here, a gold fastening there. What’s more, unlike many of her luxury fashion brand contemporaries, Gau has the bags made in France and the shoes made in Italy or Portugal: there’s no Made in China here. Prices are very reasonable, especially considering the high quality materials, design and craftsmanship, with shoes starting at around €200, bags at €190 and wallets at €45 – you’re essentially getting high end products at high street prices. And with the January sales around the corner, there will be even bigger bargains to be had.

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Winter Roses

Eye Prefer Paris — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:30:16 +0000

Au Nom de la Rose specializes in everything roses. When I pass by the shop, there are always the most vividly colored bouquets and arrangements spilling on to the street. They make smart arrangements in mini- watering cans and do an adorable one with either a single, double, or triple rose configuration in a tiny tin pail. I always buy them as gifts for dinner parties, so the hostess/host doesn’t have to fuss finding a vase to fill with water. When you purchase something, they ask you if it’s for a gift, and if it is they will put in in a shopping bag, and fill the top with rose petals and staple a single rose to the side of it.

Not only do they have a spectacular selection of roses, they also offer a product line of other rose products, including jam, lollipops, chocolates with crystalized roses, perfume, candles, room spray, and rose-flavored syrup.

87 rue Saint Antoine, 75004

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Frogblog Finds Clogs

Laurie — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:24:12 +0000

Pamela from Frogblog discovered a welcome jolt of color in the gray city of Paris recently, when out with a French friend:

We stop short, drawn like magpies to a shop window bursting with bright cheery girliness in the form of funky, colorful leather clogs, bags and other goodies. I’m so starved for color in Paris, displays like this one make my dopamine or endorphins or serotonin or all of the above spike big time.

So of course we go in. Parisians tend to turn up their noses at clogs, BTW. Their loss. But Claire is not one of those Parisians. I’ve never stopped wearing clogs since the 70s, and Claire and I are from the same generation, so we enjoyed sharing the blast-from-the-past moment. She likes dainty florals à la Liberty of London, while I like loud 70s kitsch and the retro-collagey thing, all of which, as you see, they do.
The objects themselves were delightful, but the story gets even better. You see, they’re handmade by real, live French craftsmen! The shop, which only opened in Paris three months ago, is run by the soft-spoken young Benjamin Renoux, who is learning the leather/cobbler trade from his father. They have two other shops, in Honfleur and Saint-Malo (both big tourist destinations). Lucky for you, Cuir du Voyageur also sells its delicious products through its website.

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The Lemmings of Winter

Rue Rude — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:50:48 +0000

A lot of what foreigners think of as Parisian stylishness looks a great deal like conformism. When I first moved here, I thought the other mothers at my children’s school were wearing a uniform. They weren’t, not exactly; but they did all have the same coat. All the children also wore the same coat. If anything was different about it, it stayed the same color: navy blue or black.

Last winter, all the students in my bourgeois neighborhood were wearing this doudoune, from the French company Moncler [pronounced mon clair]. It costs only three or four hundred euros…

This year, Moncler is selling the jackets at a deep discount. Why? Because this winter, the thing to have in Paris, which is having a remarkably warm winter by the way, is a Canada Goose, created, according to the company’s website, for postwar bush pilots in the Arctic. But in black, of course.

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January Sales Begin This Week

Le Best of Paris — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:17:24 +0000

Paris only has two officially sanctioned sales during the year — in January just after the Christmas break and in July just before the August holiday. The 2012 sale season begins Janaury 11 and runs through February 14. Stores are open, exceptionally, on Sundays. While it seems impossible, French law only allows sales during this time period; otherwise a boutique must get permission from the government (!). The theory behind this is that it protects the mom-and-pop shops from heavy discounting by the major giants, like Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. In reality, it preserves state-sanctioned price parity among all retailers.

Some great venues for shopping include Rue de Passy (Passy Plaza) in the 16th arrondissement, Rue Saint Dominique and Rue du Bac in the 7th, Rue Saint Paul in the Marais, and Rue Saint Honore in the 8th. Chanel, Dior and Vuitton don’t participate in this sale because—well, they don’t have to. But some great boutique stores like Jacadi, Bonpoint, and Tartine et Chocolate offer some excellent values for children clothes. Other major stores, such as H & M, Le Bon Marche and less well-known boutiques provide good values.

Paris’s First Banana Republic Shop

I Heart Paris — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:09:59 +0000

Banana Republic, the American fashion brand for classics at affordable prices, opened its first French store on Paris’ iconic Champs Elysees this week. Founded in California in 1978 by two avid travelers who brought back safari gear from the four corners of the world, the brand, now owned by Gap, continues in its globetrotting by now exporting its mass-produced, on-trend clothing to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Neighbor to other fellow international mega-brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Marks & Spencer, both of which recently opened Parisian flagships on the Champs Elysees, Banana Republic made a splash with its 1500-square-meter space, with a Hamptons-esque look spread over two floors. The shop carries men’s and women’s collections including Weekend (casual separates) and Monogram (evening wear), plus shoes, costume jewelry, bags, and belts.

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A Major Marais Flea Market

Secrets of Paris — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:55:02 +0000

There’s something about the crisp fall weather in Paris that makes it particularly pleasant for browsing the city’s flea markets. One of the bigger upcoming brocantes takes place November 25-27 in the painfully hip North Marais district, along the Rue Spuller, Rue Perrée, Rue Debelleyme, Rue Caffarelli, Rue de Bretagne and Rue de Picardie. There will be about 500 stands selling a mix of junk, antiques, and crafts. The courtyard of the Mairie du 3ème will be specially dedicated to children’s toys. You can find listings for other brocantes and flea markets around Paris at the websites vide-greniers.org and www.brocabrac.fr.

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