Souvenirs Of Paris

I spend very little time on this blog looking backwards – I try my best in fact to push things forward or to at least be of the moment. With an event as special as Paris Fashion Week however, I hope you won’t mind if we take a moment to look back. Besides, there were loads of photos from late in the game that I never got a chance to post – so now I’m going to do that too. So let’s see…where were we? Oh yes – on Saturday afternoon the weather was nice and I went and shot the scene at the Chloe show in the Tuileries. (See my previous post for my Chloe photos.) After Chloe, I really wanted to rent one of Paris’ new Velib public bicycles and go for a spin around the city – but found that to do so you must have either a European credit card with a chip or an American Express card, neither of which I had. (I’d seen swarms of people riding the bikes around all week and think that a program like this is not only practical but chic and fun as well.) Bikeless, I hoofed it the short distance from the Tuileries to Colette to check out their killer selection of magazines, books, high-tech gadgets, and everything else. The store was super-crowded with Saturday afternoon shoppers so I took a break from the battle and had a bottle of St-Georges mineral water from Corsica at the famous Water Bar in the basement. The massive Colette store doggy was splayed out in the middle of the floor and my water waiter told me that he likes to come hang out down there to get away from all the shoppers – to which I responded, “yeah him and me both!” After about an hour and a half at Colette (hey, I had to look at everything), I took the Metro over to another of my favorite Parisian shops, Kiliwatch. If you’ve been, you’ll know that Kiliwatch is mostly about denim and vintage – in fact, their selection of denim, vintage, magazines, and books is among the best anywhere. This is my favorite shop in Paris and I’ve never visited without buying at least one thing – on this day, it was a pair of indigo blue Cheap Mondays that I’ve not yet seen in the US. (After all, the entire point of shopping in a foreign country is to buy things that your friends back home will not have.) I closed Kiliwatch down and then went back to my hotel to drop my bags off. I was thinking of heading over to the Colette party – which was in the same ‘hood as my hotel – but Chi Chi texted and said she was at Hotel Amour and why didn’t I stop by there first? I headed to Amour and joined her table – she was sitting with Andre, Olivier Zahm, Kanye West, George Ksubi and a few others – which is where we stayed most of the night. Around 2am we headed over to Paris Paris for the Kitsune party which had a massive crowd outside as well as inside but which didn’t include many of our friends. It was a cool Parisian Saturday night crowd but not really a fashion industry crowd. Still, I loved the DJ sets from Kitsune’s Gildas and Masaya and Jerry Bouthier of BoomBox fame.
On Sundays in Paris, most shops and many restaurants are closed due to labor laws so often people head out to weekend markets, parks, rummage sales and things like that. I followed suit and headed out for a weekend yard sale on the back patio of Hotel Amour. Colette, Ed Banger Records, thecobrasnake, the Heartschallenger kids, and CK One – Mademoiselle Cory Kennedy – were all chillin’ and grillin’ on a Sunday afternoon. Well, actually they weren’t grillin’ but they were shillin’ – selling some cool crap like hard-to-find t-shirts and vinyl records and stickers and candy and stuff. I picked up a Cory Kennedy for Ksubi t-shirt at a discount – because everyone knows you never pay full price at a yard sale. I shot some photos there before heading over to the Lanvin show at the Eiffel Tower tent around 5pm. On Sunday night, it was back to Le Paris Paris for my favorite party of the week – the “New York New York” party thrown by the Tribeca Grand Hotel and Opening Ceremony. This party had just the right amount of people – almost all of whom were very attractive and up for a good time. (Pretty but not pretentious is my definition of a great crowd.) The music was totally fun too – Spencer Product banged the new Kills single and Geordon MisShape mashed-up Dragonette and Britney. Later on, Ben Cho took over the decks and you would have sworn you were at Morrissey night at Sway – they even flew in Chloe Sevigny and propped her up on the dance floor to complete the Sway-like realness. There was a fake-ass VIP room but really this whole party was a VIP room – Erin Fetherston, MK Olsen, Derek Blasberg, Jessica Stam, Gemma Ward, Uffie, Henry Holland, George Ksubi, Mark Cobra, Cory K., Kanye West, and Lou Doillon with Milla Jovovich (both wearing chic tophats), were mingling and dancing all night. There’s something about Andre’s clubs – he’s an owner of both Le Baron and Paris Paris – that manages to capture a bit of legendary nightlife magic, a bit of that elusive Studio 54 vibe. You find yourself standing in the kitchen/stockroom of Paris Paris (the real VIP room – FYI) while the current cover star of French Playboy (Doillon) introduces you to a British DJ who is standing next to a famous model who is smoking while chatting with an art world star who is trying to introduce you to a skateboarder who photographs other skaters. Pretty but not pretentious – that’s Paris Fashion Week. – xoxo Eddie
(click the “more” button below to see lots more photos…)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 8:28 am and is filed under Paris, parties and events, street cred. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

• PreviousWe’ll Always Have Paris…
• NextThere’s No Place Like Home