heres what I wrote a month ago, copy-paste from superfuture:
department stores were a bit boring, I was done with
lafayette and
printemps in 15 minutes. printemps had martin margiela, dries van noten, dior and others. lafayette had those plus comme des garcons, rykiel homme and alikes. the cdg stuff was quite boring, and I just dont get the new junya watanabe line. ok so the track jacket style blazers are ok, but the shirts are fucking horrible, they might as well be from american eagle or something! colorful polos with big numbers, come on..
le bon marche was my favorite department store, not a huge mens wear section but they had acne, krisvanassche (the only place in paris..?), ymc, surface2air, margiela, miu miu, apc and so on.
colette is as overrated as it gets. I had heard so but I still wanted to check it out. what pisses me off most in addition to the 50 tourists packed there is that they're supposedly the dealer for a hundred brands but in fact they have about 20 pieces of clothing on their racks if you dont count the lame t-shirt racks. so in reality they dont have a majority of brands they "carry" and out of the brands they do have, the selection is extremely limited. so what they had was very random pieces from jill sander and similar brands, 2 sweaters from neighborhood and a couple of visvim models in a single color. for example no raf simmons which I was hoping to find, to my knowledge they're one of the only dealers in paris.
maria luisa had some interesting stuff depending on what you like, some cool ann demeulemeester jackets for example. other brands included veronique branquinho, undercoverism, margiela, alexander mcqueen, rick owens etc. quite a limited selection of clothing and shoes but worth checking out I think if you like the style.
l'eclaireur was very interesting, they have several stores in paris of which I checked out 3. the one on
rue herold is the first one I think (?) and the most awkward one at the same. almost impossible to find, its behind a unmarked door on the small street. once you get buzzed in you'll see a dark halway and amazing looking studio style space with surprisingly much stuff. the staff is great but the clothing was a bit over the top for me, a very random selection from brands like carol christian poell, cdiem, undercoverism, marséll shoes and some others. I felt like it might've been quite overpriced on some stuff. I preferred the store on
champs elysees more, they had a better selection of rick owens for example, and stuff from ann demeulemeester, dior, cp company and some others. seemed a bit more down to earth to me. also a bit hard to find as its inside a shopping arcade. the third one, on rue boissy d'anglais was womens wear only and very different in style. I'm sure the others are worth checking out too if you're into the stuff.
the
rick owens store was closed to my surprise, apparently for just the day I was there though. I called them the day after and they were open, but I didnt have time to go anymore.. I never found
comme des garcons on etienne marcell nor
onwards, which I guess could be closed then. I checked out some brands' stores like costume national, dior and yohji yamamoto which were allright. also went to the
Dries Van Noten store on quai malaquais but to my surprise it was womens were only =P
oh and
palais de tokyo was a pretty cool place! the location itself was very cool, the exhibition had some modern art which was allright and the bookstore there was great. we also grabbed some food at the restaurant which was surprisingly good. definately worth going to, its a great place to spend the evening since its open so late (midnight, I think).
other threads:
Places to hit in Parisstuff to do in Parissf cityguide
