How to Shop Smartly for Fashion in Paris
Going to Paris for a purchasing spree wishes now not positioned your family budget down for the following two years. It definitely calls for a touch making plans and being permitted in on little-known shops imparting good deal basement deals.
Paris is a purchasing mosaic
Those of you who visited Paris already understand that from a shopper’s perspective, the city is divided into vast sections where stores of the same alternate tend to congregate. A mosaic of many colors, tastes, and price levels.
Take Saint-Germain-des-Prés, for instance. The highest a part of the famed location, situated closest to Boulevard St Germain, is domestic to designer apparel stores, sidewalk cafés and eating places. Dive in, and your footsteps will lead you to Rue de Seine wherein the art galleries have drawn collectively.
From Saint-Germain, walk up the Rue de Rennes, closer to the Montparnasse location. You’ll be crossing the Rue Du Four in which even more high-priced clothiers line up the facades. But continue directly to the Saint Sulpice metro station, around which many clothing stores offer inexpensive clothes and accessories.
Sales season in Paris
In some other place of the metropolis, now not too some distance from the old Opera house, the Boulevard Haussmann has become the home of the department stores over a century ago. The Printemps shop was built there in 1865, observed intently by using the Galeries Lafayette, in 1893. Department shops are not unlike Ali Baba’s treasure cave: garments, footwear, earrings, watches, accessories, perfumes unfold on a five-tale excessive, significant ground area.
Their choice is superb, however, you have to go to Paris during the course of the professional sale seasons to discover authentic deals there. And there are only two income seasons in France: wintry weather, and summer season. Their respective starting dates in a given 12 months are set by way of administrative decree, and they each closing 6 weeks. In Paris, the winter sale season normally starts inside the 2nd week of January. The summer income season starts offevolved towards giving up-June.
Designer depot bargains
For the off-season, bargains look some place else. The gem stones are regularly to be found in small shops in God-forsaken streets, or in hard-to-discover first-floor apartments. This is, in particular, the case of clothier depots.
Though it has ended up an emblem call in North America, a fashion designer depot is in truth a form of trade. People such as you and me convey in clothes we don’t need to wear anymore and get a bit money from the shop proprietor who will resell our garments for a little more money to other human beings.
I can pay attention to your blasé comments: “Tcha! Consignment shops! Thrift shops!…” Well, in Paris, fashion designer depots aren’t precisely your ordinary Salvation Army-kind shops. Not at all.
Though no longer all equal earlier than God, Parisian fashion designer depots are frequently owned and controlled with the aid of ladies with a history in the fashion enterprise. Women with flair and a sharp eye for what to put on and how. Women who can conveniently inform you why you’ll appearance better on this dress than in that one.
In ‘fashion designer depot”, there is the magic word ‘clothier’. Parisian designer depots provide dressmaker and couture clothes at deep, deep, deep discounts. And thoughts you, garments in the quasi-ideal situation. Clothes are worn only as soon as. Well, maybe two times.
If you come back to them together with your regular hoodies, or your remaining season tennis footwear, or your mall-shopped polo shirt for that count, do not expect to be welcomed. Expect rejection with a disapproving stare rather.
So, where do they conceal?
Then once more, no longer all clothier depots have been created same, and in which you pass purchasing for practically-perfect-in-each-way fashion designer garments is the genuine measure of your inside knowledge of the city.
I would really like to propose you three ‘petites addresses’ [the French for ‘best-kept-secret places’] I selected among a host of others.
For the ones of you, women, who just like the traditional look, ‘Priscilla’ is the shop for you. Priscilla is a woman who owns the area. She reveres such signature names as Yves Saint Laurent, Max Mara, Kenzo, Christian Dior, and Sonya Rykiel. Her prices range from EUR60 for a skirt, to EUR75 for a jacket, to EUR130 for a female’s healthy. Priscilla advises you to rummage around, and come to her region with open thoughts. The shop is placed at four rue Mouton- Duvernet, within the 14 the district. The nearest metro station is Mouton-Duvernet. Its beginning hours are among 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm on Monday, and among 11:00 am and seven:00 pm from Tuesday to Saturday with a one-hour spoil at 1:30 pm.
My next deal with, ‘Le Jupon Rouge’, is situated at nine rue de Rochechouart inside the 9th district. The owner, Tania, describes right here designer depot as “colorful, ethnic however now not the hippie, and simply not classical in style”. Tania gives an expansion of up and coming French designers including Bali Barret (a fencing-style vest for EUR45, cashmere mixture cardigans for EUR45 to EUR100) and Vanessa Bruno (wool jackets, EUR90). She additionally contains extra set up signatures along with Agnès B (her signature black jacket is offered at EUR50) and vintage Ungaro blouses for EUR45. Ladies seeking out footwear can fall for pairs of Stephane Kelian low-reduce Cuban boots (EUR100), Repetto ballerina shoes (EUR40), or antique low-heel horseriding boots (EUR40-70). Tania opens her doorways from Tuesday to Saturday, from 10:30 am to 7:30 pm with a one-hour lunch spoil at 1:30 pm.
In a completely exceptional fashion, Griff-Troc is the designer depot you need to lose yourself in when you need to head elegant-elegant-elegant. The proprietor, Beatrice, selected to specialize in perennial, traditional fundamentals in an ideal circumstance. Chic has a heftier rate tag, of the route, but on the upside, Griff-Troc offers brand names for 15-30% of boutique prices. On the shelves on the time I wrote this article, Beatrice had a Chanel in shape for EUR1000 (vs. EUR5000 at Chanel’s), a emblem-new Chloe bag for EUR800 (in preference to EUR1200), numerous remarkable night attire priced between EUR1200 and EUR1500 (Chloe, Dior, D&G, Valentino), and Hermès silk scarfs on offer for handiest EUR150. She keeps a complete choice of bags, jewels, and fragrances. Chic conventional by no means dies, who cares about whether your Chanel in shape is this season’s or now not? The busy boutique is placed inside the posh phase of the 17 the district, at 119 Boulevard Malesherbes. The nearest metro stations are Villiers and Monceau. Its establishing hours are between 10:30 am and 7:00 pm, from Monday to Saturday.