Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [190]
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