Dwell and Boboisation

Anna Sui's Bobo Barbie
Hot on the heels of ARTE TV's Bobo (Bourgeois Bohemian) programme last night is Dwell magazine has just published an article about Belleville, an area that has been colonised depuis longtemps by the Bobos, mostly those from good families who migrated East in search of space and authenticity (which is rapidly dying away because this had such an effect on property prices).

"Change, too, starts small. Some describe it as gentrification, others as the inevitable rhythm and flow of local economies. Belleville, in Northeast Paris, is fertile ground for these transformations—it has a hefty stock of turn-of-century industrial buildings, as well as gross monstrosities of public housing blocks erected in the 1970s. This neglected outcrop of the capital has long been home to itinerant workers, first from across France in the late 19th century, and now from all over the world—North Africans (both Muslim and Jewish), sub-Saharan Africans, Chinese, and South Asians.

The burgeoning neighborhood’s latest stream of migrants come from the land of bourgeois bohemia. Today Belleville is full of bobo artists, admen aspiring to artiness, young craftsmen inhabiting the former workshops of old craftsmen, and people who simply appreciate the neighborhood’s cultural kaleidoscope. Beyond the Chinese dim sum palaces and down a twisted street, past housing projects and through the courtyard doors of a cracked and ragged building housing machinists, you’ll find the studio of designers, and brothers, Erwan (31) and Ronan Bouroullec (36). Their tender ages belie their vast experience—they have designed furnishings for Vitra, Cappellini, Ligne Roset, Magis, Kartell, and Galerie Kreo, and environments such as the A-Poc store for Issey Miyake."

Erwan says; "Gentrifying isn’t happening here. Calling people “bobos” is just another way of talking about those well-dressed people I’ve been describing, people who may go to the theater but still love this neighborhood. There’s this incredible mix in our neighborhood, from top to bottom. I mean, you still have the rue du Faubourg du Temple. The street is like an entire bazaar. It’s incredibly matter-of-fact, but violently so—a perfect example of that Parisian mix, where space is free of any kind of structured order. As a designer, it’s interesting to be confronted by this profusion of objects that cost nothing, that are absolutely not design, that are either pure utilitarianism or pure kitsch. There’s nothing else: no halfway, no subtlety."