Is haute couture for the birds? Absolutely, says fashion follower Corinne LaBalme, who joined the flock at Paris Fashion Week to report on the Spring/Summer 2013 collections. With stylists pushing the envelope, haute couture has always functioned as the canary in the fashion mineshaft.
Our favorite fetish photographer Va-nu-pieds, aka The Barefoot Photographer, went out for some last-minute Christmas shopping in Paris but they wouldn’t let him into the store without shoes. Never mind. He went window shopping instead. [...]
The formerly workaday neighborhood of the northern Marais has been increasingly gentrified over the past 15 years, but something that hasn’t changed is the discreet presence of one of France’s few remaining creators of luxury silverware, tableware and decorative accessory: Lapparra.
Now here’s an inviting little shop on rue du Cherche Midi, I thought as I walked by one afternoon. Not that I had any particular interest in bags, purses, vanity cases, table linens, cushion covers, [...]
The Marquise de Païva was one of the remarkable courtesans whose history is inseparable from that of the expanding wealth of mid-19th century Paris. The tale of her life (1819-1884) and of the men she frequented speaks [...]
Sandwiched in eastern France between Champagne and Alsace, the Lorraine region doesn’t have the international or even national distinction of its neighbors. Champagne naturally calls to mind vineyards and bubbly wine, while Alsace has forged [...]
My favorite little shop in Paris, one of the last living vestiges of the historical belly of Paris that was the Les Halles Quarter, closed at the end of July 2009. It had been a long time coming–rather, going. It isn’t easy making a living selling…
I first met Leyla Ahi at a white picnic beside the Eiffel Tower one summer night, where she flitted about like an ivory moth, stopping long enough to pour me a glass of Champagne and, [...]
I was headed to the Hôtel de Beauvais, one of the grand mansions in the Marais, former home of Catherine de Beauvais, thinking that I’d complement my series of articles about Versailles with mention of the woman who [...]
