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Top local journalists who know the city inside-out offer residents and visitors vital information about every facet of Paris life.In-depth stories take a critical look at issues such as urban planning, transportation, business and cultural trends.First-hand features on personalities, politics, food and fashion provide original insights into Paris life-styles.Select listings of restaurants, theaters, music and art shows, plus English-speaking community events, make Paris Magazine the true insider’s guide to Paris.
Top local journalists who know the city inside-out offer residents and visitors vital information about every facet of Paris life.
In-depth stories take a critical look at issues such
as urban planning, transportation, business and
cultural trends.
First-hand features on personalities, politics, food and fashion provide original insights into Paris
life-styles.
Select listings of restaurants, theaters, music and art shows, plus English-speaking community events, make Paris Magazine the true insider’s guide to Paris.
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The Best Paris Restaurants of 2009
A look back at the pick of last year's top tables reveals some interesting trends
by Alexander Lobrano
Though reading too much runic meaning into restaurant menus is never a good idea, a look at the bills of fare in the best new Paris restaurants of 2009 reveals some intriguing and rather unexpected changes in the capital's gastronomic landscape.
Happily picking my way through a saucer of perfectly poached bulots (sea snails) with a stickpin at the copper-clad stone-faced bar of La Cave Beauvau the other night, it occurred to me that the French capital's signature at the beginning of the 21st century probably won't be any of those foaming and smoking high-tech molecular dishes that have been getting so much attention lately. Instead, it seems Parisians of all ages have an urgent new appreciation of the profoundly French hospitality and food to be found at wonderful old-fashioned bistros like this one.
This doesn't mean that Paris is going completely gastro retro, though. Some of 2009's other best new tables Yam'Tcha and KGB, for example show off another important local trend, which is new cooking styles born of smart and delicious encounters between French bistro cooking and a foreign kitchen, in this case, Mandarin Chinese and Thai, respectively. But since scarcity is the inevitable mother of luxury, it doesn't surprise me that a place like La Cave Beauvau, a cozy, friendly 1950s vintage hole-in-the-wall just across the street from Chez Sarko, or the Elysées Palace, should have become so popular since it was taken over by Stéphane Delleré, one of the best bistro-keepers in France (he previously ran both the legendary Le Gavroche in the 2nd arrondissement and more recently Le Duc de Richelieu in the 12th arrondissement before striking out on his own once again).
"I see it every day," says Delleré during a chat over a sublime glass of Cornas. "People are starved for food with a soul. Im not going to pretend that La Cave Beauvau is gunning for a Michelin star, in fact this isn't important to me, but what I aim to do is satisfy the very deep hunger that the people who come here have for France, for its wine, its cheese, its meat, the best of its cooking, which is often simple." I ask Delleré for an example, and he picks up a big bone-handled knife and slices me a thick piece of his homemade terrine de campagne. He plates it with several cornichons, a smear of butter, and a hunk of good bread, and sets it on the bar. "Goûte (Taste)," he says. I do, and the coarse, earthy, piggy loaf sends me tumbling backwards to the first time I'd ever experienced such primal gastronomic pleasure, which was as an adolescent visiting Paris.
When we crave bistro food, what we're yearning for is cooking that takes time, cooking that's consoling, maternal, caring and instinctive honest wholesome food from a kitchen where the only reason anyone would glance at the clock is to make sure nothing is overdone. As Guillaume Delage, the chef at Jadis, in my opinion the best new Paris address of 2009, knows, the grande batterie of French cooking is stuffed with wisdom. The great chefs of the 19th and 20th centuries might not always have been able to explain the exact science of what they were doing in the kitchen, but they surely understood its gastronomic necessity. So any ambitious young chef ignores the past at his or her peril, which Delage admits with a telling quote at the bottom of his menu from the once renowned but now little-known 19th century French chef Edouard Nignon: "The chef who knows and understands the past well, who is inspired by it, will in turn become an innovator."
The lighthouse of Paris still attracts culinary talent not only from all over France but the world beyond, a good example being Chicago-born chef Daniel Rose. His restaurant Spring, which relocates to the rue de Bailleul in the 1st arrondissement in March, is sure to be one of 2010's major openings. In the meantime, I love what he's done with the former premises of the restaurant in the 9th arrondissement. Now named La Table 28, it's a friendly, cozy place with a big gas-fired rotisserie on which Rose or one of his collaborators cooks superb roast chicken and suckling pig, with other foods like duck and lobster in the wings. "I wanted to create a place that was part of the neighborhood, a place where the locals could come to eat often and well," says Rose, whose carefully sourced produce includes Coucou de Rennes chicken, a rare breed from Brittany.
If Rose and Delleré privilege a certain Gallic authenticity in terms of both their produce and their cooking, chef William Ledeuil's very popular new KGB, a standout opening in 2009 and the annex restaurant to his excellent Saint Germain des Prés table Ze Kitchen Galerie, has succeeded by suavely appealing to a contemporary Parisian desire to explore the food of other cultures and countries. "What I'm doing isn't fusion I don't like that word, because it implies a blurring of identities," says Ledeuil. "Instead, I like enlivening traditional French recipes with produce and tastes from foreign kitchens." Delicious examples of Ledeuils global cuisine include capeletti (little pasta caps) with a fried quail's egg, shavings of Mimolette cheese, green-olive tapenade and an Asian pesto sauce, and slow-cooked pork ribs with grilled potatoes in a hoisin-shoyu marinade.
In a similar vein, talented young chef Adeline Grattard and her husband Chi Wah Chan have a hit on their hands with Yam'Tcha, a warming spot with exposed stone walls in an old street in Les Halles. Grattard previously cooked with Yannick Alleno at Le Meurice and Pascal Barbot at L'Astrance before spending two years in Hong Kong, which explains the elegant gastronomic rencontre between Gaul and Asia that she proposes through a regularly changing tasting menu. Highlights of a recent meal included a superb watercress soup with shaved chestnuts, razor clams with crosnes (Japanese artichokes), and veal breast with fermented black beans and girolles.
Other notable new Paris tables reveal the extent to which the city's chefs are realizing that a new part of their work is to entice food-loving locals to eat lower on the food chain. "What Ducasse asked me to do was to get Parisians to eat fish they'd never eaten before," chef Jacques Maximin told me when I asked him about his marching orders as the new chef at Rech, a venerable seafood brasserie in the 17th arrondissement. "This is for reasons that are economic, gastronomic and ecological. The fish Parisians have long preferred sole, cod, turbot, sea bass are threatened by overfishing, so we need to eat everything that fishermen land, not just these so-called luxury fish," says Maximin, who has added mullet, conger eel, mackerel and a variety of still abundant fish once perceived as "poor" to his menu.
In a similar vein, most chefs at the best new restaurants to open in Paris in 2009 are ardently interested in serving local, seasonal produce, an imperative which explains why so many great new tables have short menus that change daily. "It's more work, but it means better eating," says Gregory Marchand, chef at Frenchie, a terrific new bistro in a quiet cobbled street in the 2nd arrondissement's Sentier neighborhood. Marchand's menus change constantly, which allows him to scout out "the freshest local seasonal produce." At L'Epigramme, a new cuisine du marché bistro on the Left Bank that is another of 2009's best addresses, chef Aymeric Kraml also delights with a chalkboard menu that changes daily.
During 2009, even the gilded precincts of Parisian haute cuisine began to respond to the locavore movement that has taken cities like London and San Francisco by storm, most notably three-star chef Yannick Alleno's brilliant "Terroir Parisien" menu at Le Meurice, the restaurant of the Hotel Meurice. "A century ago, produce from the Ile de France fed Paris, which is why so many canonical recipes of the French kitchen reference Parisian suburbs Crécy always meant carrots, Montmorency, cherries, etc. Because of the way the Paris region was so heavily urbanized during the seventies and eighties, the local culture maraîchères has almost completely died out," Alleno explains. "But there are still a few small producers around, so Im sourcing as locally as I possibly can in the hope of not only keeping them in business but encouraging others to start up." On the menu for 2010? The possibility of serving la poule de Houdon, a succulent race of almost extinct chickens produced in the Yvelines town of the same name.
Two other highlights of Paris dining in 2009 were the ongoing move to authenticity in terms of the city's foreign restaurants (the wonderful Caffè dei Cioppi could easily be found in a side street in Rome or Florence instead of a passage in the 11th arrondissement), and the acceleration of local awareness of sustainability issues, which is why it now comes as a shock to see red tuna on the menu of a place like the rather bogusly resurrected Jamin (an eighties flashback bistro, by the way, and nothing to do with the glory days of Joël Robuchon).
In terms of what may be on the menu in 2010, Im hoping for a revival of French regional cooking in Paris bistros, and maybe even the birth of a few new regional restaurants like Chez Maître Paul, the long-running Franc-Comtois table on the Left Bank. I also predict a new local popularity for Indian food, since that country is attracting growing numbers of French travelers who return home with a taste for its food, and the continuing proliferation of gourmet brand names (butter by Jean-Yves Bordier, vegetables by Joël Thiébault, etc.). A welcome rebooting of the Parisian brasserie may be on the horizon, too, if Lyonnais chef Nicolas LeBec's project at the Opera Garnier ever gets off the ground (FYI, his new Rue LeBec in Lyon, a sprawling new-style brasserie in an old salt warehouse, is terrific).
2010 will doubtless also see an accelerating and welcome French response to American-style fast food in a variety of formats, from Paris chef Yves Camdeborde's wonderful new hors d'oeuvres bar L'Avant Comptoir to Paul Bocuse's new chain of French-style burger restaurants. I'm also looking forward to talented chef Jean-François Piège's second restaurant (his first being a recent bling-bling makeover of the brasserie Thoumieux), in the hopes of rediscovering this chef's wonderful culinary wit, and to brilliant meals prepared by cooks I haven't yet heard of, since more than ever, Paris is where the world's most ambitious young chefs want to hang out their first shingles.
Why its so Hard to Find a Cab in Paris
...and What is Being Done About it
by Jeffrey T. Iverson
With a vast subway network, tramways, bus lanes and, yes, Vélibs, Paris has earned a global reputation as one of the world's easiest cities to get around in. But tell that to Michel and Nicole, who had Friday night tickets to a comedy at the Théâtre de la Michodière. When Michel got back late from work to their rue d'Alésia home, they realized that public transport would not get them there in time. After a frustrating 15 minutes on the phone with radio cab companies who could only tell them that no taxis were available, they raced down to the nearest cab stand only to find six other people waiting impatiently in the evening drizzle. The few taxis that drove by were all full, and the play started without them. The exasperating experience left them asking a question that has plagued Parisians for decades où sont les taxis?
Over the last two years, a series of aborted reform attempts and traffic-paralyzing strikes have brought to light a blight on Paris' supposedly stellar mobility record a chronic shortage of available taxis. With 16,623 cabs as of last January, Paris has only slightly more taxis than it had in 1937, when the fleet numbered some 14,000. Parisians have started venting long-harbored frustrations on online forums and news websites. "It's incredible to see how much Paris is lacking in taxis!" bemoaned François on Lepoint.fr. "Mission impossible after 1 am 45-minute waits at the train station," agreed Eric. The Economist weekly (gloatingly) juxtaposed London's world-famous taxi service with Paris', criticizing Sarkozy and a string of French governments who "have caved in to the militant taxi lobby, and have not dared to increase the number of licenses."
To glimpse the complexity of the problem, you need to leave the city for Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. On a recent morning, baggage-laden travelers arriving from around the world were wandering out into the chilly morning air at the exit of Terminal 2A. Bleary-eyed and anxious to grab a cab as quickly as possible, they craned their heads to spot the taxi stand amid the hustle. "Taxi for Paris?" a sharply-dressed man asked an American tourist, who nodded and followed him across the street to a line of unmarked cars with drivers waiting at the wheels.
Watching the transaction from the sidewalk was Djillali Ouanfouf, an off-duty Parisian taxi driver. "Now hes going to tell him itll cost 120€," he said. Sure enough, the American suddenly stopped and, shaking his head in frustration, started back toward the terminal, passing another dapper gentleman leading a group of Spaniards who had just been solicited coming out of baggage claim.
Ouanfoufs anger was palpable. "Here you have shuttles, cars, limousines, none of them with the right to be soliciting passengers," he fumed. "Yet here they are doing just that from morning to night with total impunity." A disoriented-looking woman standing nearby commented on the scene. "It's confusing, you walk out and there are tons of people and cars, but you can't tell whos a taxi and who isn't," said Sylvie Boustie, an Alberta wine importer who had flown in from Canada for a trade show. "To see this at Paris airport is shameful, it gives you a poor image of the city."
Unfortunately, those travelers who eventually come upon the real taxi stand slightly further away may find that meeting a true Paris cabby does not improve that image. Travelers in a 2009 poll by Hotel.com, leader in online hotel reservation, ranked Paris taxis the least friendly in the world. Perhaps a sour mood is inevitable, though, given that most drivers will already have lingered two or three hours five kilometers away at the "base arrière taxis," Roissy's largest taxi parking lot, where up to 1,000 taxis await their turn. Baptized 'Guantanamo' by it's users for the fenced enclosure, electronic badge-controlled entry point, and less than luxurious amenities (four Turkish toilets shared by all), its the source of recurrent grievances by the profession who nonetheless keep coming back.
As Ouanfouf explains, with a large number of Paris drivers living in the Seine-Saint-Denis and Val d'Oise suburbs, many prefer to start their morning at nearby Roissy with hopes of one big fare back to Paris, rather than risk losing two hours in rush hour driving empty into the capital. "Either you lose time in traffic, or you lose it waiting at Charles de Gaulle," he says.
According to a report by Marc Lebret of Paris' Council for Sustainable Economic Development, "Of the 6,000-9,000 available taxis at any given hour of the day, 2,000-3,000 will be stuck at the airports for anywhere from one to four hours." On an average day during morning rush hour, when hundreds of taxis are wallowing in traffic between the airports and Paris, back in the capital an estimated 20-45 percent of clients' requests go unsatisfied, according to a study by G7, France's leading taxi company. Another study by Paris taxi cooperative GESCOP placed the number closer to 70 percent. No surprise then that an eight-city survey by CNRS economist Richard Darbéra found that one in four Parisians demand more taxis for their city twice as many as residents of London. The bottom line, as Darbéra says, is that compared with other European capitals "by all standards, it is Paris that far and away has the fewest taxis."
The shortage in Paris has created stiff competition to join the ranks of license-holding 'artisans', who account for around two-thirds of the profession. After passing written, medical and road exams, as well as criminal background checks, a candidate must either buy a license from a retiring driver costing anywhere from 140,000€ to 200,000€ or add his name to the thousands already on the Préfecture de Police's 17-year waiting list for a free license. Under this system, more than 4,400 taxi drivers spend much of their career renting a license owned by taxi companies to bring in 1,100€ to 2,125€ a month, with a minority working as salaried drivers (earning 1,100€ to 1,600€ a month). Artisans' monthly net revenues vary between 1,500€ and 3,000€, according to the National Federation of Artisan Taxis (FNAT), but that's while paying off a typical seven-year license loan. Once debt free, artisans' monthly net earnings can exceed 4500€.
As Darbéra recounts in his 2009 book, Où vont les taxis? (Where are the taxis going?), this chronic penury is the result of a long history of government capitulation before a profession with an unmatched ability to paralyze a city. In 1958, a newly-elected President Charles de Gaulle, eager to jumpstart France's economy, assembled experts to identify "the obstacles to expansion." Finding their way onto the shortlist were Paris taxis, the economists calling for thousands of new licenses. After two days of debilitating taxi strikes, the reform was buried, and for the next 30 years, while London's black cabs tripled in number, less than 2,000 new licenses were created in Paris.
To make matters worse, when new competitors started emerging in the 1970s in the form of voitures de petites remises or Private Hire Vehicles (PHVs) taxis reserved by phone but restricted from street business taxi unions flexed their muscles again. The government responded with a series of laws and directives Darbéra describes as "a systematic policy of extinction to the benefit of the taxis' monopoly," which saw PHVs dwindle to around 100 today. Meanwhile in London, PHVs eventually became today's 42,000 minicabs, complementing the city's 24,000 black cabs. Likewise in New York, today 50,000 liveries serve the phone reservation market, with 14,000 yellow cabs working the city's streets and taxi stands.
It was thus is keeping with French tradition that in 2008, another newly-elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, anxious to boost France's economy, commissioned a report on the "inhibitors to growth" that sure enough identified taxis as a major stumbling block. The 2008 Attali commission recommended measures intended to eventually raise Paris taxi numbers as high as 60,000, such as providing free licenses to the Préfecture's entire waiting list, and reopening a market for potentially thousands of new PHVs. Once again, though, after two days of debilitating taxi strikes, the Attali recommendations were abandoned.
But this time, before the dust had even settled, Sarkozy was again insisting that "no one will change my belief that there is a problem of taxi supply," and called the profession to new negotiations based on another taxi study the Chassigneux report. The resulting protocol agreement, reached in May 2008, has since resulted in the first real growth in taxi numbers in recent times. With already more than 723 new licenses granted, several measures are intended to increase the Paris taxi fleet to 20,000. The City of Paris has eagerly prepared the ground for new users, renovating taxi stands and creating a new number 01 45 30 30 30 that allows users to circumvent busy call centers and ring their nearest taxi stand directly.
Not to say the reform was swallowed wholesale by the profession. In December 2009, taxis answering a call by the Union for the Defense of Paris Taxis Drivers (SDCTP) blocked traffic to Paris airports to protest plans to allot a percentage of new licenses to taxi rental companies. In the eyes of Ouanfouf, secretary general of SDCTP, the system in which taxi drivers rent their license from taxi companies at fees from 3300€ to 4500€ a month, sometimes obliging them to work far beyond the legal 11-hour day, is akin to "modern slavery," he says. "The government sets your prices, your work hours, but they leave the renters to set any fees they like," he protests. The movement succeeded, and the new licenses were instead reserved exclusively for salaried and rental taxi drivers on the Prefecture's waiting list. But the rental companies achieved a net gain nonetheless, in the form of hundreds of authorizations to double up drivers on existing licenses, making a single license useable for day and nighttime shifts not exactly the progress SDCTP hoped for.
Contrary to FNAT, which favors more conservative growth of the sector based on a complicated economic index, SDCTP largely favors further increases in new licenses for salaried and rental drivers. It also regrets that of the 3,600 new taxis planned to reach the 20,000 target in 2012, only 2,000 constitute actual taxi licenses. An extension of the legal workday from 10 to 11 hours accounts for the 'creation' of 500 taxis; improved regulation of the Roissy base arrière accounts for 200; and the creation of a rush hour lane reserved for taxis and buses on the A1 highway between Roissy and Paris is supposed to create 600 additional taxis as well one measure widely applauded by the profession, having long argued that improving the city's congested traffic was the real key to alleviating any perceived taxi shortage.
Now, though, we may never know whether that argument holds water. After barely a 10-month trial period, the rush hour A1 lane which actually included only five kilometers of a much longer lane originally envisioned closed in February for 18 months or more during the renovation of A1's Landy tunnel. The news angers drivers like Faycol Montassar, who insists taxis wouldn't linger at Guantanamo if they could shoot back to Paris in 30 minutes. "I don't get up in the morning to go and play cards at Roissy," he says. "If they give us the means to come back to Paris and serve the clients, we will."
In the long term, Darbéra fears that even if all the current reforms were successful, the chronic taxi shortage Parisians have long endured wouldn't be fully alleviated. In his eyes, only the creation of a market for Personal Hire Vehicles the measure proposed by Attali in 2008 would allow for the development of a diverse, reasonably-priced taxi service capable of satisfying Parisians' needs.
Darbéra's survey reveals that while taxis are predominantly used by the richest 20% of the population in both London and Paris, in London the poorest 20% of the population use taxis as often as the richest in Paris 13 trips per year per capita with taxi service distributed over a far wider portion of the population in London than in Paris. This is thanks to a highly competitive industry climate, in which minicabs offer lower fares on average than the regulated black cab fares. The absence of such offerings in Paris may explain why 23 percent of Parisians report they never use a taxi more than in any other city surveyed.
But a law quietly passed this summer may hint that the government is gearing up to change that. In July the city's 300-some moto-taxis, at the behest of the drivers themselves, were given a regulatory context bringing them as close as anything else in France to the traditional PHV. Henceforth, clients of moto-taxi companies like Citybird, the market leader with a 29-bike fleet, are guaranteed their driver has a clean criminal record, an expert motorcycle driver's license, and a vehicle meeting safety standards. For Citybird's president, Cyril Masson, the legislation is a sign of change to come. "We are one of the responses the government and the Préfecture are starting to apply in response to the lack of taxis," he says. "I think the next step is they are going to begin opening the market for competition by [four-wheel] PHVs."
Hélène Manceron, communication director for FNAT, shares Masson's suspicions, but fears what it would mean for the profession. "We have a government with liberal leanings that's allowing people to create fleets of vehicles, but who's going to control this?" she says. "Five years from now this will have destabilized the taxi industry."
Perhaps. But at least in the eyes of Ouanfouf, things really couldn't get much worse. "Honestly, I've traveled in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany and England, I think the Paris taxi driver is at the bottom in terms of status, work conditions and methods and this has direct repercussions on the quality of the service," he says. "We have a lot of work to do."
Vintage Fashion
by Tina Isaac
What's old is new again: When Julia Roberts made her comeback appearance at the Screen Actor's Guild awards in Los Angeles last January, she wore a short black vintage Yves Saint Laurent dress. It was an object lesson in the essence of style. On a red carpet otherwise teeming with borrowed extravagance, Roberts returned to the public eye wearing not only her own dress, but a piece that conveys an innate understanding of fashion.
At a time when consumers want to connect with the authenticity of what they purchase, vintage seems a logical place to start. On a trip through Paris for the recent haute couture shows, Cameron Silver, the owner of the LA store Decades Inc, a resource for countless boldfaced names, observed that vintage is growing in popularity, both across the age spectrum and in response to global interest. "The financial crisis has made the affluent shopper more open to purchasing vintage as an investment," he said. Vintage doyenne Françoise Auguet, the owner of Ragtime on the Left Bank, agrees. While vintage clothes are often less expensive, as well as one-of-a-kind, new clients rarely drop by for that reason alone. "New clients are drawn to vintage because they know what's out there and they are tired of spending so much on something that won't last," she says. "With vintage, it's already stood the test of time, so you know it will never go out of fashion."
As the birthplace and capital for illustrious labels past and present from Poiret and Vionnet in the first half of the 20th century to Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix in the latter half - Paris offers some of the best vintage shopping in the world. While opinions differ on exactly when clothes become vintage (less than a decade qualifies in some shops, while Auguet, for one, considers that nothing is vintage if it's under 30 years old), the trick, say shop owners, is to think of the clothes as you would a wine there are good years and lesser ones, and just because it's old doesn't mean it's "vintage". The rest is a matter of taste. And luck.
Ragtime
Françoise Auguet is arguably Paris' vintage doyenne, as she has been in the business for over 35 years. A special consultant to the Drouot auction house, she was the first to organize high-end sales of unique pieces and acted as curator for the record-breaking 2005 sale of a group of Poiret dresses. Everything in her Left Bank shop is in mint condition, a magnet for designers and stylists from around the world who come here to confer with Auguet on textures, cuts and prints. Auguet prides herself on having a little of everything, from no-label sixties shifts (160€) to Belle Epoque lace blouses (very popular in summer), fifties-era long evening dresses (300€ and up), gossamer drop-waisted numbers from the 1930s to a 1954 embroidered beige linen suit by Dior Couture (1,500€ and up). Auguet notes that while there is always a clientele for thirties pieces, the younger ones are quick to snap up distinctive pieces from the sixties and seventies.
23 rue de l'Echaudé 75006
01 56 24 00 36
Open Monday to Saturday, 2:30 pm 7:30 pm
La Jolie Garde Robe
Costume designers and fashion insiders rub elbows with a well-heeled clientele in this bright little shop, where Marie Rouches offers a sharply-edited if pricey array of vintage clothes and accessories from all eras, with a distinct eighties slant. If the leather couture space suits by Thierry Mugler or the leather/chainmail minidress by Paco Rabanne seem better suited to a film set or a fashion shoot, there are plenty of colorful and wearable pieces here for those in search of something a bit whimsical and out of the ordinary think velvet-bibbed green paisley print peasant dress or red velvet bolero by YSL (350€).
15 rue Commines 75003
01 42 72 13 90
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 1 pm 7:30 pm; mornings by appointment.
Thanx God I'm a VIP
Before Sylvie Chateigner got into vintage, she had already made a name for herself as a queen of Parisian nightlife. "Vintage is like music only the good stuff survives over time," she says, and although her website still features mixes, its comprehensiveness makes it a useful tool for design studios. Her shop is a must for those in search of finds by Yves Saint Laurent skirts from the late seventies/early eighties are her briskest sellers (90€-130€) Balenciaga, Chanel and Hermès. Chateigner admits to a preference for no-label pieces from the sixties made by local couturières. "They echo what was out there at the time, but they are truly unique," she says. A younger clientele gravitates to the racks downstairs, where they can score funky blouses and accessories at rock bottom prices (from 5€). And because Chateigner hails from Brittany, she devotes a corner to regional items such as marinières (sailor striped shirts) and timeless wool peacoats.
12 rue de Lancry 75010
01 42 03 02 09
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 2 pm 8 pm; basement only open on weekends.
La Belle Epoque
La Belle Epoque's days are officially numbered. A pioneer in the neighborhood over a decade ago, long before the Upper Marais morphed from working-class neighborhood into a gallery-hopper's and shopper's paradise, owner Monsieur Philippe is packing up his treasures and heading to Provence (and online) as of May 1st. A passionate, lifelong collector of hats and major labels from 1900 through the seventies, such as Poiret, Vionnet, Fath, Dior and particularly Yves Saint Laurent, he has a loyal following among international clients and fashion editors alike. Gregarious and agreeably opinionated, M. Philippe handpicks items from his personal collection each season and prepares a selection for those who share his enthusiasm for great design at unbelievably reasonable prices: Silk scarves start at 5€, suede jackets at 50€, a 1900-vintage silk top hat costs 80€, a black couture ensemble by Balmain is 150€ and black Pierre Cardin mini-dress, 200€. A hot pink, nip-waisted Dior Couture spring dress, circa 1955, will set you back 650€.
10 rue de Poitou 75003
06 80 77 71 32
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 1:30 pm 6:30 pm; mornings by appointment only.
www.philippelabelleepoque.com
Chezel
Vintage is a family affair at Chezel, where mother-and-daughter team Dalila Azzouz and Rim Trabelsi sell affordable clothes from the late 20th century through the early 2000's essentially to a clientele that is young, hip and slim (many of them are students at the nearby lycée). Labels such as YSL Rive Gauche, Burberry, Marni, Marc Jacobs and Lanvin are mixed in with attractive, no-name cashmere sweaters (60€), perfectos (in leopard, 210€) or an impressive tableful of leather handbags (from 20€). Just don't get too excited about the Gucci suitcase in the window it's the store mascot and emphatically not for sale.
The Trabelsi brothers are also in on the act. Next door, Homes For is run by Amadi, who caters to both men and women and hews to a more Japanese aesthetic. Here, you can score elusive pieces by Comme des Garçons and Yohji, but also seventies-era Diane Von Furstenberg, a vermillion Chanel jacket from the eighties. or nineties-era Alaïa; a chocolate leather trench tempts at 100€ and a jacket from Olivier Theyskens' final collection for Rochas checks in at about 200€.
In January another brother, Riad Trabelsi, unveiled the family's newest addition, Since. The most avant-garde of the three, this shop gathers eighties-era finds by Thierry Mugler - a deep purple velvet dress with scarf detail (700€) - or an Alaïa denim perfecto with corset lacing (380€) which, given fashion's current infatuation with that decade, look incredibly of the moment. A designer by trade, Riad gamely tweaks certain pieces to make them relevant for today by shortening a hem or slimming the batwing sleeves on a Chanel swing coat, for example, while keeping the clothes' spirit intact.
Chezel and Homes For
59 rue Condorcet 75009
01 53 16 47 31 and 01 53 16 45 32
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 2 pm 7:30 pm (hours variable)
Since
30 rue St Roch 75001
01 49 27 93 11
Open Monday to Saturday, 11:30 am 8 pm
Didier Ludot Vintage Haute Couture
A towering, dapper fixture on the fashion circuit, haute vintage guru Didier Ludot has amassed a collection of couture clothes and accessories that easily qualify as (re)investment dressing. Because he is also known for championing young talent (i.e. future vintage), Ludot's window dressing has become a fashion week event in its own right for his clever mix of recent and rare pieces. "For me, when something's interesting and you can't find it anymore, it's vintage," he says. Inside his adjacent boutiques in the Galerie Montpensier at the Palais Royal, Ludot stocks exceptional clothes and accessories from Chanel, Dior, Lanvin, Vionnet, Balenciaga and Fath, among others. Graphic prints by Lanvin circa 1970 start at 300€; a day dress by Patou or Courrèges around 600€, about half the price of an evening dress. But Ludot has adapted to the times, and occasionally culls from his collection an armful of little black dresses to sell at lighter prices (from 200€).
A foremost authority on the history of the "little black dress" (he has authored a book on it), Ludot is also a designer in his own right. Latter-day Audrey Hepburns head to his boutique La Petite Robe Noire, in the Galerie de Valois, for his line of classic LBDs (800€ - 1,200€) as well as his latest, accessibly-priced capsule collection, DL Palais Royal (from 450€ to 700€).
20-24 galerie de Montpensier, Palais Royal 75001
01 42 96 06 56
Open Monday to Saturday, 10:30 am 7 pm
La Petite Robe Noire
125 galerie de Valois, Palais Royal 75001
01 40 15 01 04
Open Monday to Saturday, 11 am 7pm
Is Paris Nightlife Dead?
Not for those in the know
A new and different clubbing scene has sprung up for the city's party lovers
by Heather Stimmler-Hall
Since the rentrée in September, several press articles have proclaimed the death of Parisian nightlife. Journalists from Le Monde, Le Parisien, and even The New York Times paint a grim picture of a city where bars and nightclubs are being pushed out of business by intolerant residents who complain about the noise, and bullying city officials who close them down for the smallest infractions. If you're not a regular on the nocturnal circuit, you just might get the impression that the city is a ghost town after midnight, and that the party has moved to other European capitals.
But don't be so quick to bury Paris nightlife. The reign of a handful of mythical discotheques packed to the rafters until dawn every night was already fading at the turn of the millennium, and since then the scene has evolved, adapted, and recreated itself into something completely different. But it certainly hasn't died.
"Parisians love to complain, exaggerate and argue how much better things were 'before'," says nightlife promoter Jérémie Feinblatt of Die Nacht (www.die-nacht.fr), an online calendar French despite the cheeky German name of unique nightlife events. "Many argue nightlife lacks in quantity, especially during the week when only a handful of clubs are open after 2 am. But then again, few cities can claim to have the party going 24/7."
Feinblatt contends that the strength of Parisian nightlife isn't in the "superclub" scene of sweaty throngs dancing to booming techno music, but in its more intimate clubs and bars. "Paris nightlife excels in its creativity. In the past few months, parties have taken place in museums, swimming pools, ice skating rinks, warehouses and former train stations." Beyond the drinks and the music, these soirées often have something extra: period costume themes, burlesque performances, art shows, or vintage film screenings.
"Paris nightlife is like Paris dining," says Florian Sailer of the summer Bagatelle parties and the newly-opened Blitz Tequila Bar (40 avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, 8th), which features a kitsch Black Forest theme with servers in real lederhosen. "You don't just go anywhere and expect excellent cuisine. You have to be a connoisseur, do your research, ask around, and stay on top of the latest openings." Many trendy Parisian soirées, such as the famous Club Sandwich, darling of the fashion world, (www.clubsandwich.com), take place in a different venue every week. Word of mouth is still very important, but sites like Facebook are where most Parisian night owls find the details of the latest parties. The internet also makes the more obscure events accessible to those without personal connections or time to research.
Dance parties and clubs are only a small part of the Parisian scene. The popularity of speakeasy-style cocktail bars continues to grow throughout Paris, with the opening in October of the Prescription Cocktail Club in Saint Germain des Prés (23 rue Mazarine, 6th). These stylish bars with their elegant retro décor, comfortable seating and flattering lighting, are open early enough for the after-work crowds, but late enough for those looking for a clubbing alternative.
Not that they have it any easier than the nightclubs. One of the owners, Romée de Goriainoff, admits that its almost impossible to get the authorization to stay open past 2 am. "Communities tend to complain about everything from noise to odors to people gathering where they live." But he says that many bars close simply because of bad management. "It's a business, and like every business it requires the people behind it to manage it carefully." All three of De Goriainoffs bars, including the Curio Parlor (16 rue des Bernadins, 5th) and the Experimental Cocktail Club (37 rue Saint Sauveur, 2nd), are packed on any night of the week, and vigilant doormen make sure the smokers on the sidewalk don't disturb the neighbors.
A group of nightlife professionals have formed Quand la nuit meurt en silence ("When the night dies in silence," www.quandlanuitmeurtenesilence.com) to draw attention to the cultural and economic importance of the Parisian nightlife scene, and to lobby for more balanced legislation so that residents and nightlife venues can coexist peacefully. As of the end of January they had almost 15,000 signatures on their petition and had scheduled talks with City Hall.
In the meantime, there's no imminent danger of finding yourself without anything to do after dark in Paris. Some of the biggest clubs are still going strong, including Le Cab' (2 place du Palais Royal, 1st), the VIP Room (188 bis, rue de Rivoli, 1st), Le Showcase (under Pont Alexandre III, 8th), and Le Queen (102 avenue des Champs-Elysées, 8th). Le Point Ephémère (Quai de Valmy, 10th), La Bellevilloise (21 rue Boyer, 20th), Le Rex (5 bld Poissonière, 2nd), the Social Club (142 rue Montmartre, 2nd), and Le Neo (23 rue de Ponthieu, 8th) also remain popular late-night clubbing venues. Some old favorites have recently reopened, such as L'Arc (formerly L'Etoile, 12 rue de Presbourg, 16th), Le Scopitone (formerly Le Paris-Paris, 5 avenue de l'Opéra, 1st), La Flèche d'Or (102 rue de Bagnolet, 20th), Le Divan du Monde (75 rue des Martyrs, 18th) and La Machine du Moulin Rouge (formerly Le Loco, 82 bld de Clichy, 18th). And this doesn't include the many jazz clubs, hotel bars, and historic venues such as Maxims (3 rue Royale, 8th), which still hosts several soirées a month.
For those who want to know everything that's going on without leaving their desk, all you have to do is join two or three mailing lists and your inbox will be filled each week with more invitations than you could possibly accept.
Some of the best sites are Vodka Coca (www.vodkacoca.com), Die Nacht (www.die-nacht.fr), Ullmann Cabarock (www.myspace.com/ullmanncabarock), and Trisélectif (www.triselectif.net). For reviews of the hottest cocktail bars, visit the blog
52 Martinis (www.52martinis.blogspot.com). Of course if you are looking for more mainstream information in English, the City Halls new website promotes Paris nightlife at www.parisnightlife.fr.
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