WHEN I LIVED in Paris as a student, I rarely set food in the Palais Royal. “Too formal, too quiet,” I sniffed, preferring instead the impromptu gatherings of guitar-playing young people in the little park next to Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre in the Latin Quarter. Returning to Paris over the years, however, I have come to prefer the Palais Royal, and it has earned an unequivocal favorite place in my heart.
I love equally the gardens and the arcades, especially the enormous glass lamps that hang from them, as well as the site-specific outdoor work created by Daniel Buren—black and white striped columns, of varying heights, are arranged in rows in front of a fountain filled with large silver spheres that reflect the surroundings. Les Deux plateaux, more often referred to as “Colonnes de Buren” (Buren’s Columns), met with some resistance when it was mounted, but I think it’s wonderful—the juxtaposition really works, and it’s a great place for picture-taking. In 2007, Buren threatened to dismantle the whole project, claiming that the city had allowed it to deteriorate, but happily, a complete restoration effort began in 2009.
If you did nothing else than stroll the arcades and visit the retail shops within, that would be satisfying enough. The collection of shops in the Palais Royal is superb, utterly unique; there is positively no danger of buying something here that anyone back home will have. I, too, am a big fan of Mary Beyer (32–33 Galerie de Montpensier / marybeyer.com), and in addition to the other shops mentioned here I also recommend stepping into Dugrenot, a very beautiful antiquaire-décorateur founded in 1856 (21–22 Galerie de Montpensier).
BARBARA WILDE, introduced previously, is founder of L’Atelier Vert and writes a Paris Postcard blog, where this piece originally appeared.
FOR ABOUT A month now, I’ve been reading the complete novels of Colette, in French. At around seventeen hundred finely printed pages, this is quite an undertaking. But unlike some folks who groan or simply shy away from so many pages, I have the opposite reaction. If I find I like the author’s writing, I feel a shiver of anticipation that I still have seventeen hundred pages’ worth of discovery ahead of me. Plus, I feel a warm rush of being provided for, akin to what you might feel if you were socked in by a blizzard with a well-stocked larder and the firewood piled high and dry. A feeling of coziness and closeness—because nothing is going to come between me and that author for several weeks.
As part of my Colette obsession, I’ve recently spent a couple of afternoons drifting around the Palais Royal. Colette—born Sidonie Gabrielle Colette—lived in a number of houses during her life, as many as fifteen by some counts, almost all of them relatively humble dwellings chosen by the author for the beauty of their settings or gardens. When a journalist pointed out to her how many times she had moved, she replied that if she could only have an apartment in the Palais Royal, she would never move again. When a fan of hers read this article, he gave up his apartment in the Palais Royal to Colette, who stayed there until her death.
For me, Colette has always been an almost mystical figure of French literature. And now that I’m reading her in French, my fascination has only grown. So on my recent visits to the Palais Royal, I imagined Colette leaning out her window—as she so often describes in her novels—and observing the quiet ambience that is so particular to the gardens and arcades of the Palais Royal. And I imagine seeing the vast courtyard that is the garden of the Palais Royal through her great, wise gray eyes.
But it’s only relatively recently in its long history that the Palais Royal became tranquil. It was conceived tranquilly enough, between the years 1634 and 1639 by then minister Cardinal Richelieu, who wanted a residence near the Louvre where he could easily—by simply crossing his vast garden—minister to the royal family. The cardinal also had a pronounced taste for theater, and an entire wing of the palace was dedicated to theatrical productions. Louis IV, whose father inherited the palace from the cardinal, opened this theater to the public. It was in this theater that Molière acted all his plays and, in a sense, where he died, subsequent to losing consciousness while playing, ironically, Le Malade imaginaire. Today, the Théâtre du Palais Royal continues the tradition.
Subsequently, the palace was inhabited by various branches of the royal family and was the scene of many famously decadent parties. It was Philippe Égalité, the grandson of Philippe II of Orléans (regent after the death of Louis XIV), who gave the Palais Royal the atmosphere it still retains today. He lined the arcades with elite shops, which enraged the inhabitants of the palace, who no longer had a direct view of the gardens. He also, from 1786 to 1790, built the theater that became today’s Théâtre du Palais Royal.
Then began a long period of upheavals and even violence, during which the Palais Royal witnessed three revolutions and was even partially burned. Poor Philippe Égalité was beheaded in the Palais Royal, and its elegant quarters became a mixture of gambling dens and brothels. It was then seized by the state and for a time harbored the tribunal of commerce and the stock exchange. When King Louis XVIII was restored to power, he gave the Palais Royal to his cousin, Louis-Philippe, the duke of Orléans, who was also the eldest son of Philippe Égalité. The work he did on the palace gave it the façade we know today. In 1830, he became Louis-Philippe I, king of the French—a supposedly more democratic king, as distinguished from the former kings of France—and promptly moved to the Tuileries. Eighteen years later, the revolution of February 1848 sacked the Palais Royal and partly burned it. Finally, in 1854 Napoléon III claimed the Palais Royal and installed his uncle Jérôme in residence. After his death, Jérôme’s son, Prince Napoléon (known as “Plon-Plon”) lived in the palace with his wife, the princess Clothilde. That practically brings us up to the present day!
In 1986, Mitterrand’s minister of culture hired Daniel Buren to create a three-thousand-square-meter sculpture of black and white columns in the courtyard of honor of the Palais Royal (at the south end of the gardens). The superposition of this highly contemporary work on such a traditional backdrop still generates controversy today. I don’t mind it, actually, and children love playing among the columns.
So why have I bored you with this history lesson? Because I feel it is essential, as you walk under the arcades lining the gardens, to have a sense of the turbulent history of the place. And because it’s probably the one place in Paris where you can get a sense of what that quintessential Paris experience—shopping—was like a couple of hundred years ago.
So let’s stroll under these arcades, beginning with the entrance at the southwest end of the gardens.
One of the first shops you’ll find is Au Duc de Chartres, which carries antique heraldry, medals, and coins. A very appropriate shop for the Palais Royal, don’t you think? Just because its contents don’t interest me very much doesn’t mean this shop isn’t heaven for fanatics of such things. I, for one, still enjoy peering through its windows and imagining the sort of people who are passionate about medals from bygone wars!
Perhaps instead of heraldry, you are fascinated by amber—that ancient tree sap metamorphosed into shimmeringly transparent golden yellow stone that sometimes contains insects or other fragments of past life trapped millennia ago in the sticky. La Maison de l’Ambre is a shop devoted exclusively to amber jewelry, with many pieces at affordable prices. So don’t hesitate—walk right in!
Not long after La Maison de l’Ambre, you’ll find the first of several shops on both sides of the garden belonging to Didier Ludot, Paris’s number one purveyor of vintage designer clothing, shoes, bags, and other accessories. This isn’t just any old secondhand store—believe me! If you’re looking for a Chanel suit from the thirties or forties, this is your store. Or visit Ludot’s shop, on the other side of the garden, dedicated uniquely to the “little black dress.” You’ll see examples of the genre from every decade.
All of the Palais Royal shops have a secretive air about them. First, they’re inside a garden that is almost completely sealed off from the bustling Paris outside. Second, they’re under the arcades, with big windows just made for peering through. But perhaps one shop carries this confidential theme a bit far: a sign in the curtained window just says “Très confidentiel” and lists a phone number. I haven’t called it.
Just beyond it is a charming shop called L’Escalier d’Argent—the Silver Staircase. Now, just the name of this shop is enough to enchant me. The Silver Staircase offers small antiques and curios, as well as vests for men—very unusual, colorful vests, I might add. Now this is my idea of the perfect Palais Royal shop.
I also passed a shop specializing in antique pipes, both restoration and sales. Now, of course I don’t smoke, but I can’t help but appreciate that such an unusual shop exists.
The north end of the Palais Royal rectangle contains some jewels, the best known of which is Le Grand Véfour (apparently there used to be a Petit Véfour as well). Who can resist a restaurant that goes back to the late 1700s? Where Colette and Jean Cocteau rubbed elbows, where Sartre smoked and held forth, and before them, Bonaparte and Joséphine? The restaurant has one of the most beautiful interiors of any restaurant in Paris, resplendent with Belle Époque mosaics and frescoes. However many stars Chef Guy Martin may or may not have, according to the whims of the Seigneurs Michelin at the moment, the restaurant is worth an evening simply to soak in the ambience.
Continue along the northern boundary of the garden and you’ll come to a narrow passage leading to the street outside, where you’ll find two of my favorite three shops of the Palais Royal. First, there’s a boutique dedicated to music boxes—nothing but music boxes [at Anna Joliet’s]. I had a couple of music boxes as a child, and just catching the delicate strains of their music as someone enters the shop is enough to transport me back to my fascination with them.
Across from Anna Joliet’s music boxes is a store called simply the Boutique du Palais Royal—and which is nothing less than the toy store of your—or at least my—dreams. Not one electronic or battery-operated toy mars the array of French-made children’s playthings. Surely this is where Santa Claus does his shopping! The back of the store is crammed with beautiful dolls—I found just the baby doll to assuage my granddaughter Charlotte at the arrival of her new sibling, for example. (I’m just waiting to find out whether it’s going to be a brother or a sister so I can buy the appropriate doll!) But while I’m waiting for that momentous news, I saw no reason not to send Charlotte some of the other fabulous toys from this store, particularly some of the wondrously imaginative wooden playthings (again, made in France). I bought her two sets of wooden magnets, one of which consists of different flower parts—many-colored petals, stamens, leaves—so she can compose her own French garden.
Turn the corner to descend the east arcade of the Palais Royal, and you’ll come across at least two glove shops. I particularly love these shops because they hark back to a time when gloves were worn for elegance—and sex appeal. They were an intrinsic part of feminine mystique, and removing those beautiful, clinging gloves was more sensuous than any strip tease. The first of these shops is the Maison Mary Beyer. Here you’ll find gloves that are literally haute couture. For instance, check out the fingerless glove, its wrist cloaked in plumes—clearly, we’re talking gloves as pure fantasy here. And sorry, guys, this shop has only ladies’ gloves. (Although the fantasies are all yours.)
A bit farther along the arcade is the shop of the French glove manufacturer Fabre. While you can find Fabre gloves in the big Paris department stores, you’ll never find the full selection of this, their flagship boutique. Fabre makes gloves that are a bit more practical than Mary Beyer’s, but still very sexy and oh so French. No woolly mittens here, but sleek, supple leathers, each model with its own quixotic touch of French fantasy. The design diversity of Fabre gloves is such a relief from the shopping mall–ified sameness of “designer” labels, whose gloves—like their eyeglasses—are probably all made by the same manufacturer in some Asian country. In contrast, each pair of Fabre gloves seems to beckon to you, whispering, “Go on … express yourself!”
Now—drumroll.… I’ve saved the best for last. Like most gardener/cooks, I have a very sensitive nose and I love fragrances. That said, I find it nearly impossible to find a perfume that pleases me. The synthetic ingredients of today’s perfumes are far too aggressive and cloying for me, and my reaction to department store perfume counters is to gag and run away. But in the Palais Royal is the perfume shop of Serge Lutens. Shiseido, which bought the line, has had the wisdom not to interfere with it. These are perfumes as you would have been able to buy more than two hundred years ago—or almost. Rich, subtle blends of natural fragrances, with an accent on the vegetal. Names like Bois de Violette, Chêne—oak, my favorite, evocative of leaves and moss—and Mandarine-Mandarin. These are fragrances that even I love to wear. Most are sold in a single formulation—a glass-stoppered flacon priced at 110 euros each.
A couple of modern designer lines—Stella McCartney is one of them—have trampled on the tradition of the Palais Royal’s intimate shops by buying up several of them and converting them into one large space. But with those exceptions, the shops of the Palais Royal are a sort of living museum of the past. They evoke an era when “artisan” wasn’t a catchy marketing term but simply the norm, an era when refinement, elegance, subtlety, and even idiosyncrasy were the predominant values of commerce.
Then, after you’ve made your round of the shops, take a stroll out into the garden itself, sit down on a sunny bench, and look up at the blank windows of the apartments lining the garden. Try to imagine the lives past and present within them. Think what it would have been like to inhabit the gardened landscapes so carefully traced and ever present in the novels of Colette. And let your mind take wing on this quote from the period of her life when she lived in the Palais Royal and no longer had a garden of her own: “Vous n’avez pas de jardin? Moi non plus. Aimons celui que nous inventons.”—You don’t have a garden? Me either. So let’s love the one we imagine.
Paris/New York
“Between the world wars, no two cities engaged in a more fertile conversation than Paris, de facto capital of the nineteenth century, and New York, its twentieth-century rival.” So states Susan Henshaw Jones, president and director of the Museum of the City of New York, which in 2008–2009 organized a terrific exhibit, Paris/New York: Design, Fashion, Culture 1925–1940. An accompanying book by the same name and edited by Donald Albrecht (Monacelli, 2008) is a worthy guide to this fascinating relationship between the two cities. It’s filled with gorgeous color and black-and-white photographs, drawings, and reproductions of artworks; these include some wonderful period photos of Art Deco masterpieces in New York’s Bonwit Teller department store and in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and (my favorite) one of Nelson Rockefeller’s apartment, complete with a fireplace mural by Fernand Léger. The Paris Exposition of 1925 and the New York World’s Fair of 1939 were enormously influential in linking the two cities.
Though the United States didn’t participate in the 1925 Paris Exposition, thousands of American tourists visited the fair during its six-month run. Additionally, then secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover named an official commission to inform him “of ideas that would be valuable to American manufacturers,” sending three commissioners and more than eighty delegates to represent American arts and architecture in Paris. The 1939 World’s Fair, whose theme was “The World of Tomorrow,” featured various pavilions and exhibitions celebrating America’s industrial and corporate might. France, in contrast, sent its great ocean liner Normandie to New York—referred to in the book as “France afloat”—and its pavilion featured a first-class restaurant on the top floor that “brought haute cuisine to New York and would prove to be the training ground for the city’s renowned post–World War II French restaurateurs.” When Paris was invaded by the Nazis not one year later, the close links between Paris and New York were severed. “The relationship between America and France, New York and Paris, had already shifted into a new phase as Paris’s role in world political and cultural affairs diminished and New York’s expanded.”