Travel Blog: A shopping bag in every Parisian hand

By John Lendman

Paris’ old money still strong

The January temperature was at a brisk 20 degrees, which is quite cold for Parisians, they would say. I was standing in front of a Dolce and Gabbana on Avenue Montaigne—surrounded by the largest collection of high-end boutiques in Paris—holding my reporter’s notebook and a recorder. I was determined to talk to wealthy Parisians about their shopping habits during the recession, but I felt like a deaf-mute with a press pass.

After smiling politely at mink and Hermes Birkin bag-clad Parisians holding shopping bags from Cartier, Dior and Lanvin, I realized nobody smiled back—they looked at me like I was crazy.

“Um… Excusez-moi, parlez-vous anglais s’il vous plait?” I’d say, which basically means, “Hey I don’t know French, do you happen to know English, I’m kind of desperate.”

The well-to-do elite of Paris shopped on what seemed like a much larger adaptation of Oak Street in Chicago or Madison Avenue in New York City. Many stores were in cruise-wear mode, showing swim-suits and sunglasses.

The lavish display windows showed no sign of “soldes” or sales like the rest of Paris during its biannual government-sanctioned retail sale period. Nobody seemed phased by economic turmoil on these cat-walk-like avenues, their confident strides and loud high-heel clacking could attest to that.

Paris’ Soldes, You couldn’t find anything not on sale

The long strip of shops on the Avenue Champs-Elysees by the Arc de Triomphe on the other hand—which is as commercial as Michigan Avenue in Chicago or Fifth Avenue in New York City—was swapped with “soldes” and “soldissimes” signs and bargain shoppers. The Galeries Lafayette, which is like a seven-story Macy’s, had even more insistent “soldes,” some displaying as low as 60 or 70 percent.

It was like the United States’ tax-free weekends in August. Throughout Paris, the streets filled with a lively consumer-driven vigor. On the dawn of French recession, for the Parisian middle-class at least, “soldes” couldn’t come at a better time.