Nice Things Are Nice

This weekend, I learned how great fancy things are. On Friday, I went for a long(ish) walk; here’s the map:

So you can see that I stayed relatively close to the river, all on the right bank of the Seine, walking through the 16^th, 8^th, 2^nd, and 1^st arrondissements. I thought that I didn’t know anything about the 8^th arrondissement, until I walked down Ave. Montaigne (which I didn't know until I googled it later), which is apparently just off of the Champs Elysees. Of course, I had no clue of this at the time, and once I realized it I remembered what someone told my orientation group: “Don’t go down the streets next to the Champs Elysees, they are very fancy and will look at you like you are dirty and will lock their doors and close their blinds when they see you because you are not one of them.” Ave. Montaigne is lined with Prada and Chloe and Versace flagship stores, and almost no one was around but the few people I encountered were ALL wearing heels and ALL wearing huge sunglasses, so they were probably famous and made me feel like I needed to leave immediately. BUT this isn’t the point of the story.

Later that day I went down rue Saint-Honore (on purpose this time), another famous shopping street, to go into Colette, which is a famous store (I don’t even know how it’s famous. You just always see Colette Paris in magazines and blogs and things. They have super hip clients and parties, I don’t know). Anyway, it’s this famous store that was totally packed with people who were definitely NOT buying any of the fancy computerized watches or kitschy Japanese toys that don’t do anything, just ogling each pair of sunglasses, which are displayed like art in plexi-glass cases. So are the bracelets — everything is perfectly spaced and every background is perfectly, clinically white. Upstairs was BEAUTIFUL, with all kinds of mannequins in these lovely printed dresses (which were by a designer I’ve never heard of: Mary Katrantzou?) and lovely/expensive resort collections, like the Celine one with all the floral print. I was looking at a printed leather vest (nothing has price tags also, it was that kind of store) but then what I thought was a mannequin moved (it was a man in a giant black coat, I don’t know what my periphery was thinking) and it really scared me and I kind of screamed a little bit, and I was embarrassed so I left.

Then the next day I was in the Marais, looking for what ended up being a really awesome bookstore all about fashion photography (they had every edition of Vogue ever), and my friend saw this crazy, contemporary art laden store down a private street. The store, L’Eclairieur, was the inverse of Colette: it was like being in a grotto covered in bizarre sculpture, dark and cool, but also packed with the same ultra-expensive clothing. Here, is the point to the story: I was so scared to touch anything because there was NOTHING IN THE STORE FOR LESS THAN 1000 EUROS. But then my friend Rachel was like, “Who cares,” so I reached for the nearest dress and it was Givenchy and Givenchy designed the dresses in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I realized I had never touched one before and there really was nothing like it. It was black and so precisely designed, the fabric so gorgeously draped. So then I kept touching the clothes, like a Balenciaga leather jacket that probably cost what my rent is the whole time I'm in Paris, and it was wonderful. I didn’t get kicked out of the store.