Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [44]
The major private stations are the Franco-German TF1, M6 and Canal+. TF1 focuses on entertainment – télé-réalité (reality TV) is a big deal here – and sport; with about one-third of all French viewers, it is the most popular station in France. M6 lures a youngish audience with its menu of drama, music and news programmes. Canal+ is a mostly subscription-only channel that shows lots of films, both foreign and French – which isn’t surprising, as it’s the chief sponsor of the French cinema industry.
Return to beginning of chapter
FASHION
‘Fashion is a way of life,’ Yves St Laurent once pronounced, and most Parisians would agree. They live, breathe and consume fashion. After all, to their reckoning, fashion is French – like gastronomy – and the competition from Milan, Tokyo or New York simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
But what few Parisians know (or want to admit) is that an Englishman created Parisian haute couture (literally ‘high sewing’) as it exists today. Known as ‘the Napoleon of costumers’, Charles Frederick Worth (1825–95) arrived in Paris at the age of 20 and revolutionised fashion by banishing the crinoline (stiffened petticoat), lifting hemlines up to the oh-so-shocking ankle length and presenting his creations on live models. The House of Worth stayed in the family for four generations until the 1950s.
Indeed, the British are still key players on the Paris fashion scene today, notably in the form of erstwhile enfant terrible and now chief designer for Dior, John Galliano. In 2007, some six decades after house founder Christian Dior (1905–57) revolutionised the postwar fashion scene with his New Look, Galliano, dressed as a matador, hosted a star-studded event (at the Château de Versailles, no less) with top models parading such outfits as a flamenco-inspired, heavily embroidered gown that took some 10 stitchers up to 900 hours to create. Marie-Antoinette would have certainly approved.
Galliano is hardly the only eccentric couturier in Paris; Jean-Paul Gaultier draws his influence from the punk movement, dresses men in skirts and is famous for fitting Madonna into her signature conical bra. But you probably won’t encounter women clad in Gaultier (or even Galliano) rubbing shoulders in the metro. Paris style remains quintessentially classic, with Parisian women preferring to play it safe (and sometimes slightly sexy) in monotones. It could be said that today’s parisiennes are the legitimate daughters of the great Coco Chanel, celebrated creator of the ‘little black dress’.
Indeed, nostalgia for Chanel as well as Givenchy, Féraud and other designers from the heyday of Paris fashion in the 1950s have contributed to the big demand for vintage clothing. Twice a year the big auction house Hôtel Drouot hosts haute-couture auctions.
But it’s not all about yesterday and looking backward. There are, in fact, several contemporary ‘Paris styles’ that often relate to certain geographical areas and social classes. The funky streetwear style, heavily inspired by London, can be associated with the trendy shops around rue Étienne Marcel in the Louvre & Les Halles neighbourhood and the Marais. Meanwhile your more upper-crust ‘BCBG’ (bon chic bon genre) girl shops at Le Bon Marché Click here, Max Mara (Map; 01 47 20 61 13; 31 av Montaigne, 8e; Georges V) or Chanel and rarely ventures outside her preferred districts: the 7e, 8e and 16e. The chic Left Bank intello (intellectual) struts her agnès b Click here and APC Click here though if she’s a bit down on her luck she may discreetly buy used designer clothes at Chercheminippes, an upmarket secondhand boutique in the 6e.
The eastern districts of Oberkampf, Bastille, the area of the 10e around Canal St-Martin and the Batignolles section of Clichy in the 17e tend to be the stomping ground of the Bobo (bourgeois bohemian), whose take on style is doused