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Paris' 20 Best Vintage Clothing Shops

Text + images by Meg Gagnard

Our vintage clothing post has long been one of our readers' favourites. We decided it needed an update, so we called on urban explorer Meg Gagnard of De Quelle planète es-tu? to update the guide, and give a bit more information about each place. Thanks, Meg! – Anne

n. f. FRIPERIE: Vêtements, meubles qui, ayant servi, sont plus ou moins usés. Ce n'est que de la friperie. Marchand de friperie. 

A friperie is a French word for a place that sells second-hand clothing: whether that be high end vintage name brands or basic 5 euro button downs. A lot of the shops play with this word to make it unique for their particular boutique.

Paris is the city of many things, and when it comes to vintage clothing or second hand shops, Paris has got a lot to offer (don’t forget about the flea markets!). Below is a list organized by district, of 20 second-hand shops in Paris. There are many, many more for different styles, decades and budgets that couldn’t fit into a list of a number as small as 20, but please share your favorites in the comments!

Paris Design Week 2011

 

Text: Anne Ditmeyer, Prêt à Voyager

This September 12-18 the first ever Paris Design Week comes to town. With over 100 locations open to the public, six routes have been created featuring a different neighborhood each day: Austerlitz, Bastille/Republique, Champs-Elysées/Etoile, Les Halles/Le Marais, Madeleine/Opera and Saint Germain. Inspired by what's happening in other major cities, the event is designed have the same spirit as Maison Objet (the trade only show, held September 9-13 at Paris Nord Villepoint), but in an urban context, geared both towards trade events, as well as involving the general public. Throughout the neighborhoods showrooms, art galleries, institutions and restaurants will open their doors to inspiration. The ultimate goal: to attract 8,000 international designers and creative businesses and help put everyone in touch within a creative environment. 

A few of our favorite picks in each neighborhood:

Austerlitz: Check out the brand new Cité de la Mode et du Design, working to promote and commericialize the works of designers, editors and creative brands. At NOW! LE OFF be sure to check out the fantastical scenes by Frédérique Morel34, quai d'Austerlitz, 75013

Bastille: Don't miss the recently remodeled glass-domed Sentou showroom intended to welcome professionals, architects and international distributors of Sentou, which will house an exhibition during Paris Design Week. Sentou's 3rd location is located at 14, rue Moreau, 75012

A Fashion Revolution, Paris Style

Text: Kay Roberts
Image: Wesley/Keystone/Getty Images

This recreation of Yves Saint Laurent’s first ready-to-wear collection in his new boutique Rive Gauche in 1966 features just 70 pieces from the late 60’s & early 70’s. A time when high fashion at last became aware of the youth market. After all, by the time Rive Gauche opened in Paris in September 1966, Mary Quant had been running Bazaar in the Kings Road for 10 years, and Biba in Kensington had already started a mail order fashion magazine.

Having missed the retrospective at the Petit Palais, this chance to see the designs close up and in an intimate setting was a must-see. In the first room there is a touching film of Saint Laurent, looking much younger than his 30 years dressed in his white working jacket, setting out his ideas for prêt-a-porter and reflecting how the clientele changed with the possibility of buying his designs at a more affordable price.

The Return Of Christian Lacroix

Text: Anna Bromwich
Image: Musée du quai Branly

If you were wondering what Christian Lacroix  was doing after his haute couture company went into administration in 2009, a new exhibition opening at the Quai Branly this month provides a clue. After making his eccentric, colour clashing mark on the history of fashion, being memorialised by Ab Fab and infusing our TGV journeys with a purple and orange décor, Lacroix has taken on the job of artistic director to the exhibition 'L’Orient des femmes (vu par Christian Lacroix)'.

L’Orient des Femmes is a selection of 150 garments from the Near Middle East hand-picked by Lacroix from the Quai Branly’s collections and collated from research undertaken by Hana Chidiac. Aside from a 13th century dress that kick-starts the exhibition, the costumes date from the end of the 19th century to today and are exclusively women’s clothing, thus exploring notions of femininity throughout this period from northern Syria to the Sinai desert.

There is an intellectual and a tactile side to this exhibition. On one hand Lacroix reveals to us the first steps of his creative process, normally hidden from the public eye and deduced from the final product. The extensive historical research that produces the layers of cultural references evident in his design is exposed, under the guiding hand of Chidiac, as we rifle through the documentation of the history of silk and indigo or grasp the context in which these dresses were worn from miniature paintings.

20 Questions

Daniella Busarello is a Brazilian architect and designer.

Photo: Ana Clara Garmendia

1. What initially inspired you to move here or visit?   Nowadays I believe that it happened in my childhood. When I was 3 years old my aunt moved to France, and her letters (not emails) describing a world full of tradition, landscapes, tastes, art and history entered my soul.

2. Earliest Paris memory?                 

La Cour Carré du Musèe du Louvre, poetically white on the 8 December 2010.

3. Best neighbourhood you've ever lived in?
I've always lived in the 7eme, côté 6eme, boulevard Saint Germain. It’s a dream that came true. For now I won’t be changing it!

4. What's the best meal you've eaten in Paris?
Ris de veau at Le Comptoir de l’Odeon. Just to be at Senderens is a “meal” for the eyes. Any ice cream from Martine Lambert, the best crepe in the world at L'Avant Comptoir, a lunch at Louvre Ripaille, and a happening dinner at L’Asperge.

5. Sexiest moment you've had in Paris?
Everyday, the time to make up with red lipstick.

Hermès Takes A Left Bank Leap

Text and Images: Aran Cravey

No few times have I strolled passed the Hermès store on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and dreamt of living in the luxurious, fairy tale worlds of style displayed in their dazzling windows. Just as Holly gazed longingly into the 5th Avenue windows of Tiffany’s, imagining a world where nothing bad could possibly happen, I too had envisioned life à l’Hermès as an island of chic serenity. While the lavish vignettes from behind the glass teased with the promise of refined divinity, though, the commercial chaos of its interior never quite fulfilled my fantasy of quiet sophistication.                                        

 So when I heard that a second grand outpost would be opening on (gasp!) the Left Bank, my hopes were revived!                      

After over one hundred and seventy years, Hermès is finally making the leap across the Seine, in addition to taking a bold step towards a more modern approach to their iconic style. The airy, new tri-level store on rue de Sèvres in the 6th arrondissement was originally created to house the swimming pool for the Hotel Lutetia during its grand dame era of the 1930’s. 

Louis Vuitton At Musée Carnavalet

Text: Emily Sands-Bonin
Image: Jacques-Henri Lartigue / Ministry of Culture – France / AAJHL

The curators of 'Voyage en Capitale: Louis Vuitton & Paris', which runs until February next year at the Musée Carnavalet, could not have chosen a more illustrious Parisian setting. Nestled in the chic Marais district, the Musée is comprised of the ancien Hôtel Carnavalet, where Madame de Sévigné penned her letters (later quoted to Marcel Proust by his literary grandmother), and the ancien Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau. Once the seat of the ill-fated Michel-Étienne Le Peletier, a noble with revolutionary pretensions (an early bobo), who voted enthusiastically for the execution of Louis XVI in 1793. His fatal stabbing by a royalist sympathizer, as he sat peacefully at a café, earned him eternal glory, as well as his depiction in a pieta-like drawing by Jacques-Louis David.

Hosting 'Voyage en Capitale' is a golden opportunity for the Carnavalet, which, like most museums, is probably sorely in need of a blockbuster exhibition. As indeed it is for Louis Vuitton, for whom association with one of the most stately and venerable of the smaller Parisian museums, with the holiday season in full swing, can only be a good thing. For Vuitton the exhibition represents a further chance to lump the history of the company, which began with the opening of Louis Vuitton’s first boutique in 1854, in with the history of Paris and France.

Yves Saint Laurent at the Petit Palais

Text: Mabli Jones

Next week, the Musée des Beaux Arts at the Petit Palais opens its first ever exhibition dedicated to haute couture; it is fitting then, that it should be a retrospective of the work of a man who embodied the ideal of fashion designer as artist like no other, France’s beloved adopted son and last great couturier: Yves Saint Laurent.

Charting his lifetime’s work through a selection of over 300 original creations, from his beginnings at Dior, through the height of his experimentalism during the 70s, to his later refined exoticism; the exhibition celebrates the astounding range and beauty of his accomplishment, both technical and artistic.

Ways to Say Black by Swarovski

Text: Mabli Jones

The little black dress or the LBD: fashion’s favourite cliché. It’s the go-with-everything, easy route to chic...where would we be without it?

Ever since Coco Chanel first freed women from the stuffy, constricting clothes of her era, it became an instant classic and has been tirelessly re-invented by every designer since, in every decade and season, creating a long heritage of iconic versions: Chanel’s simple shifts, Audrey Hepburn breakfasting at Tiffany’s in Givenchy, Alaïa’s electrifying cling in the 80s, to more recently, Balmain’s coveted rock'n'roll glamour. The little black dress, if you will, is fashion’s canvas.

This concept is expressed perfectly in Crystallized Swarovski Elements exhibition ‘Ways To Say Black’.  Swarovski’s latest in a long line of exciting collaborations with the fashion world has given 22 of the current most innovative design talents, both established and emerging, the chance to reinvent the LBD in their own signature styles using Swarovski crystals. The showpieces which have been previewed so far demonstrate the range of possibilities the LBD provides, from Lanvin’s delicate grace, 3.1 Philip Lim’s pretty futuristic version, to Givenchy’s directional use of embellishment. The stunning results of the project will be published in a book and displayed in a touring exhibition, starting this Thursday at the Hotel Pozzo di Borgo in the 7th arrondissement, and culminating in the final auction in New York, with proceeds going to the American Cancer Society and La Ligue contre le Cancer.

Paris Vintage Shopping

text by ARTIFICE.

Vintage Couture trend started on the red carpet in Hollywood where it was broadcast worldwide: Julia Roberts collected her best actress Oscar wearing Vintage Valentino, and put Couture Vintage on the fashion map. Of course, vintage collectors have always known about the beauty and workmanship of these couture pieces, but the mass market fashion audience was not totally aware of what industry insiders have always known: Vintage, is not just a style, or a piece, its an approach to dressing that has found its place in the fashion spectrum and can work for everyone’s wardrobe budget.

How do you work that Vintage Vibe into your own wardrobe? We like the idea of mixing up vintage pieces to create fashionable looks that are personal and unique. With a chic vintage fur or a little beaded top over your favorite skinny jeans, you can stretch your fashion budget; I enjoy the sheer fun of having something that no one else has making my personal style original. How can you put a price on that?