Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [89]
IN THE TWELFTH
Trend spotters say the Bastille is over as the mecca of haute hip, but their divinations cut no mustard at the Marché d’Aligre. Tucked away just a bit east of Carlos Ott’s behemoth opera house, the market has been the hub of a skilled artisans’ quarter for centuries. Newcomers may be more of-the-moment, but as far as the stallholders are concerned, last year’s pashmina passion will provide next year’s stock for the secondhand clothes dealers—and everybody will have to go on eating.
In a city of legendary markets, the Marché d’Aligre is unique in that it includes a street market, a covered market, and an open-air flea market (open six days a week). Named for the wife of Étienne d’Aligre, a worthy seventeenth-century chancellor, the market once rivaled the old Les Halles.
Today this is one of the city’s most integrated neighborhoods. And the next new thing—be it in blown glass, strié velvet, or neon tubing—will likely emerge from the workshops in the small passages that honeycomb the area. A handful of the cabinetmaking trades that were the backbone of the area remain, but many of the workshops are now ateliers for a new breed of supercharged creators. By day they hunker down at work; at night they play. The modern street section of the market, strung along the rue d’Aligre, is reputed to offer the city’s best values. Which, to an extent, explains the diversity of the crowd: graceful Malian women haggle with Tunisians over plantains, comme il faut students from the nearby law school stock up on apples and vintage frocks, and gay couples fill their shopping carts. Some of the merchants are specialists, like the fellow who deals only in garlic, shallots, and onions, or the mother and daughter who have for decades pyramided the north corner of the place with lettuce and herbs.
The covered market, the Marché Beauvau, might as well be in la France profonde. Here, a suckling pig turns on a butcher’s spit, and the scent of spices and fragrant oils floats out from the stall known as Sur les Quais. Outside, on the eastern edge of the square, secondhand dealers spread life’s castoffs. The merchandise looks little different from that on offer in a 1911 Atget photo of the area, save for the fact that a brutalist concrete apartment-building-cum-ground-floor-supermarket has replaced the triperie and greengrocer. And there are treasures to be unearthed. Occasionally there is a trove of flirty thirties bias-cut dresses in silk crêpe. Snapped up, they may soon clothe a lithe form sambaing at one of the area’s many hot nightspots. At noon, market habitués often heap their bags in a corner at a nearby wine bar or head for the hypercool Le Square Trousseau. This centenarian bistro hasn’t allowed its head to be turned by its new, big-name clientele. That may be Jean-Paul Gaultier tucking into petit salé (salt pork with lentils) over there, but that’s only reasonable: his Faubourg Saint-Antoine store, installed in a former furniture showroom, is just around the corner.
IN THE SIXTH
The rue du Cherche-Midi, on the western edge of the sixth arrondissement, is not laid-back. Here, rail-thin blondes swing leather-clad hips out of tiny Mercedes Smart cars and bolt into Eres to scoop up bikinis. More conservative types saunter from boutique to boutique, weighing the merits of saddle-stitched handbags from Il Bisonte against the frivolity of fur-trimmed microfiber sacs from Ginkgo. Down the street, every passerby lusts after the Andrée Putman armchairs at Hugues Chevalier, and there are nouveau-rustic wrought-iron lamps and door furniture at La Maison de Brune, not to mention every manner of stylish footgear at the ultrahip Lundi Bleu.
Following the route of a Roman road that once led from Lutèce to Vaugirard, the rue du Cherche-Midi today serves as a new kind of link. It bridges two styles,