Yesterday afternoon, avenue Montaigne

6 September 2012 / No Comments

I love french luxury brands, even if only to look at. However, once in a while, I go for a walk on avenue Montaigne to have a look at what the Haute Couture designers have come up with recently. I take the afternoon, mostly on a weekday, to stroll down the vitrine lined avenue. I maybe dress up a little too, so when I walk into a boutique I actually look like I might buy something. In my past life in London, I used to BUY, earning the right kind of money for that sort of thing (except it was Bond Street I used to walk down and shop in). That is now a thing of the past, having chosen a different, different life.

To go shop in Paris, is effortless. It’s inspiring. It’s also really easy. That’s the great thing about living here. I am so used to London and other really big cities where you have to leave home/office at least an hour ahead before you get to your destination. Paris isn’t like that: it’s small and COMPACT. I hop onto the metro, my faithful number 9, normally have to change once (often at Republique) and nearly by teleportation, I have already arrived.

Plus I secretly love the smell of the burnt rubber in the Paris metro, smell provoked by the breaks and tires of the trains. But that sounds a little off, like loving the smell of glue (remember Cleopatra glue when you were a kid?) and of dry cleaners, just when you walk in. Anyway, I digress.

On avenue Montaigne, near the Champs Elysee, is one of my favorite names: Dior. This boutique is timeless, it’s chic, it’s a name that Parisian women can actually identify with despite the price tags: the clothes are streamline, classy, smart, the materials fluid but resistant (my grandmother still has outfits from there that I still steal off of her), the waistlines are pulled in just so.

I went for a walk there yesterday afternoon and decided I just had to share the boutique with you. You enter the boutique and you are in another dreamlike world, a little like going back into 40s Paris, where wearing silk trousers and shirts, tailored blazers and smart hats was a normal. A thing of the past that I like to perpetuate a little.

Because being a woman is the luxury of experimenting with style, with different trends and being a star for the afternoon, while walking down the vitrines of iconic Parisian couture houses xxxx