This interview is excerpted from my book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), described the New York Times as “a celebration of the culture, history and oddball treasures of the market”.

A duo in life and work, Valérie Bouvier and Antoine Nouvet have been at the helm of Remix Gallery at the Marché Paul-Bert since 2015, among the first dealers at the Puces to champion 1980s design and contribute to its wider reappraisal. Their stand reflects a shared sensibility shaped by that decade’s visual culture – bold, inventive and irreverent – alongside a deep knowledge of its key figures, in France and beyond, from Philippe Starck and Andrée Putman to Alessandro Mendini. Regularly reconfigured, their display evolves with each visit, guided as much by instinct as by research, and rooted in a practice of chiner they describe, above all, as a game. Their story mirrors a broader shift at the Puces, where twentieth-century design has come to the fore, in line with evolving tastes, gradually overtaking period furniture and decorative arts, once the lifeblood of the market. Their activity extends beyond the Puces, with Remix regularly curating themed exhibitions in central Paris and participating in major design fairs such as the PAD.

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🖤 Fresh from the Tate in London, the Musée d’Art Moderne presents a retrospective of the heroic Lee Miller, tracing her journey from sought-after 1920s model in NYC to pioneering photographer. A central figure in the Parisian avant-garde, she collaborated with her lover Man Ray and appeared for example in Jean Cocteau’s surrealist opus Le Sang d’un poète (1930), while apprenticing at French Vogue, and opening her own photo studio. Spanning her full career – taking in fashion shoots, society portraits, surrealist experimentation and war reportage – the exhibition demonstrates her fearless, experimental vision. Opens Fri!

🍜 The ultimate residency at Mokoloco is currently underway before the tiny 11th arrondissement counter undergoes an exciting – and still secret – transformation. Owners Moko Hirayama and Omar Koreitem of Mokonuts will unveil a new concept there in May. Don’t miss your last chance to experience Mokoloco in its current form, where Korean chef Minsoo Kim (ex-Septime) is serving a seasonal sharing menu that blends the bold flavors of Korea with the elegance of French cuisine, until 25 April.

🍸 Out tomorrow! Cravan: Cocktails and More: Recipes from Paris (Rizzoli) a new book by Franck Audoux, Paris Maker and founder of Cravan, Paris’s most inspired bar americain. An abecedary of cocktail culture, the book features recipes for drinks and bar food alongside conversations, reflections and offbeat images, tracing the cultural influences that nourish Cravan – starting with its namesake, the surrealist Arthur Cravan, poet, boxer and provocateur.

🐖 Yves Camdeborde’s much-loved, standing-room-only wine bar/ small plates concept L’Avant-Comptoir expands to the Right Bank, now in the hands of his nephew Julien Camdeborde: Avant-Comptoir du Grouin (8 rue de Belzunce), in Thierry Breton’s former haunt near Gare du Nord, and Avant-Comptoir des Halles (49 rue Montmartre). A new generation, but the formula remains the same – raucous, convivial and unapologetically delicious – celebrating the French terroir with lots of bold nose-to-tail dishes and quality wines from independent growers. Open daily from noon to 11 pm.

🌿 Next weekend, a new festival Le Printemps des Manufactures, organized by the Mobilier National, celebrates France’s living craft heritage nationwide. Seven historic workshops – from Aubusson and Beauvais tapestries to Alençon lace – open their doors for demos, hands-on ateliers and encounters with artisans. Just outside Paris, the exceptional Manufacture nationale de Sèvres welcomes visitors to explore the secrets of porcelain-making, meet designers in residence and see centuries-old techniques reimagined today. (Sat 11 April, free entry)

Thanks for reading :)

Kate

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Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

A design dealer with an artist’s eye, François-Xavier Courrèges approaches his stand at the Marché Paul-Bert as both curator and scenographer, composing a series of evolving “mini exhibitions” in which objects are brought into deliberate dialogue. Since opening in 2022, he has developed a distinctive language shaped by an early passion for design and a background in contemporary art. His selection, spanning the 1980s to the 2000s, moves fluidly between eras and disciplines: the expressive forms of Gaetano Pesce set against the rigour of Maarten Van Severen, alongside lighting by Gino Sarfatti or André Cazenave and occasional artist ephemera. He presents only a handful of pieces at a time — rare, sometimes unusual, often sculptural works — seeking to establish correspondences between them and to create coherent, immersive worlds.

This interview is excerpted from The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), a book that draws back the curtain on this rare place through encounters with a handful of the dealers at its heart.

Read more

🔶 Now open at the Grand Palais, Matisse, 1941–1954 brings together over 300 works from the artist’s final years, a period of extraordinary reinvention. In his 70s and 80s, Matisse developed his now-iconic cut-outs, transforming painted paper into a bold new language of pure colour and form, without ever abandoning painting, which here reaches new levels of intensity. Conceived as an immersion into his studio, the exhibition unfolds room by room, showcasing the thrilling energy and inventiveness of his late work. Don’t miss!

🎬 The great Michel Gondry revives his cult 2002 clip for Kylie Minogue’s hit Come Into My World for the latest Chanel 25 handbag campaign. Originally filmed in a realistic looking corner of Boulogne-Billancourt, the clip saw Kylie strolling the streets, doubling and quadrupling in a hypnotic and fun choreography – now with Margot Robbie in the starring role, though with a cameo from Kylie herself, the ersatz streetscape lacks authentic Paris grit, don’t you think?

🐅 Fresh from its season at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets is now on view at the Musée de l’Orangerie. The self-taught artist, collected by Picasso and other avant-garde figures, only gained full recognition long after his death. This exhibition brings together around 50 of his dreamlike, symbolic and deeply strange paintings, showing a world both real and enchanted, primal and poetic – a celebration of the human imagination.

🎒New at the Puces, one of the founders of indie label Études Studio Jose Lamali has left the brand to open this vintage clothes stand Lamali inside Marché Dauphine (Stand 203). Part conceptual project, part nostalgia trip, these are garments as Art Brut: vintage Eastpak backpacks or denim jackets customized with band names or other teen obsessions, and channeling Lamali’s own adolescence as a skater in the late 90s. The stand is staged like a suburban house, containing all the boredom and restless energy of youth.

✏️ For Paris Drawing Week, Galerie Dina Vierny presents If You’ll Believe in Me, I’ll Believe in You, an exhibition of works on paper by the rising Catalan painter Marcel·la Barceló. Installed in Vierny’s private apartment behind the Musée Maillol, the show inhabits an intimate space once home to the trailblazing gallerist, resistance fighter, and last muse to Aristide Maillol, perfectly suited to Barceló’s otherworldly works. Founded in 1947, Galerie Dina Vierny’s original Perret-designed space on Rue Jacob remains intact, and today is run by her energetic grandsons Pierre and Alexandre Lorquin, who are opening the gallery to contemporary artists. (Visits by appointment only until 4 April.)

Thanks for reading :)

Kate

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Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

Our very own Renaissance man, Ramdane Touhami, started out at the Puces de Saint-Ouen back in 1992, coming up every weekend from his native Montauban to sell his own collection of T-shirts at the Marché Malik, naturally drawn to the hustle and energy of the market and resonating with its contradictions – straddling as it does rich and poor, old and new, real and fake, French heritage and cosmopolitan melting pot. From those humble beginnings, Ramdane has built an extraordinary career, with one of his most recent achievements being the sale of Officine Universelle Buly, which he created with his wife Victoire de Taillac, to LVMH. Today, via his creative agency Art Recherche Industrie, “branding is elevated to the level of total art” for clients including Gucci, Zara and Christofle. Touhami has inspired a young generation of entrepreneurs to prioritize craft over efficiency, authenticity over trends and cultural specificity over global uniformity. Restless, ambitious, endlessly curious, he moves effortlessly across fashion, design, publishing and retail, always combining craft, politics and beauty. When he’s in Paris, you can be sure he’ll be back at the Puces, hunting for whatever feeds his current obsession.

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🥢 A new chapter for chef Adeline Grattard, who closed her Michelin-starred Yam’Tcha on Rue Saint-Honoré at the end of last year to open the more relaxed Yam’Tcha Bistrot (in her former Café Lai’Tcha space on Rue du Jour) – open since last week! The French-Chinese fusion menu ranges from steamed bao and dumplings to gourmet snacks like prawn toast (€16) or beef consommé with foie gras (€24), and on to more indulgent mains including sweetbreads with Shaoxing sauce (€48) or Bouillabaisse Yam’Tcha (€42), and with her iconic dessert of sorrel soup with orgeat sorbet. (Call to book: 01 40 26 05 05) Also note, the Yam’Tcha boutique remains open at 4 rue Sauval for fine Chinese teas and Cantonese snacks to eat in or take away.

📸 Magnum inaugurates its new Paris Gallery and Bookshop this week at 2 Impasse Delaunay. Opening Sat, the inaugural exhibition, Martin Parr: In Plain View, pays tribute to the longtime Magnum member (1952–2025), and chimes with the major survey currently on view at the Jeu de Paume. “His humour, his clarity and his vision shaped many discussions across the agency and within the wider photographic world” says Magnum co-president Lorenzo Meloni. Visitors can also preview and collect Parr’s contribution to the latest Magnum Square Print Sale, taking place this week. While on Thu, the gallery hosts a launch and signing with photographer Harry Gruyaert and film director Cédric Klapisch, celebrating Gruyaert’s latest photobook, New York.

🏢 Inaugurated at the Rencontres d’Arles last year, the @PRINT.xp project – a collaboration between chef Alexis Bijaoui, Cracki Records and Bureau Classico – lands in Paris, taking over the multi-storey former Ménilmontant telephone exchange until 7 June. It’s a playful, improvised mix of music and food, with some art and design thrown in for good measure, across six floors. The 5th-floor restaurant and terrace, led by Alexis Bijaoui with guest chefs like Antoine Villard (Dandelion) and Ella Aflalo, serves inventive seasonal menus, including a Sunday roast!; Marthe Brejon is making her sourdough pizza on the 3^rd floor in the Print’zzeria; the 4th-floor Break Room club pulses with DJ sets and party energy; plus there’s a café and bookshop, and workshops, exhibitions and installations are scattered throughout the building. Free entry!

🛍️ The Barcelona-born experimental fashion label Paloma Wool returns to Paris with a new pop-up at 51 Rue de Turenne, open through the end of the year. Part of a global tour, the space lets visitors try on pieces from the Autumn/Winter 2026 collection – anchored by the guiding narrative: “A woman with a lingering girlhood traveling the world alone, carrying a small fantastical mischievous element inside her bag” – and explore the project, which revolves around the spaces and ideas that form around the act of dressing.

🚲 And finally, Paris has a new mayor! Emmanuel Grégoire (Socialist Party) was elected last night in the second round of the municipal elections, securing a decisive victory for the united Left with over 50% of the vote. He succeeds Anne Hidalgo, who handed over the keys to the city after two terms – welcoming him at City Hall as he arrived by Vélib. With the Hôtel de Ville settled for now, attention is already shifting to the next political horizon: all eyes are on the 2027 presidential race.

Thanks for reading

Kate :)

Share

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

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Maxime de Laurentis – son and grandson of antique dealers – has held a stand at the Marché Paul-Bert since 2000, specializing in avant-garde and minimalist fashion from the 1980s through the 2000s. A former Margiela assistant stylist, he approaches each piece with the eye of a storyteller rather than a collector, privileging character over pedigree, and he never sells the same piece twice – ensuring that every visit to his stand is a wholly unique discovery. During fashion week, his stand becomes a rendezvous for collectors and designers, including his friend Hamish Bowles. Through rituals such as sweeping, arranging and burning sage and palo santo, Maxime attends to each garment’s spiritual resonance, cleansing it of its past and preparing it to embrace a new story with its next owner.

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▶ After touring Europe, Nan Goldin’s retrospective devoted to her videos and slideshows This Will Not End Well arrives in Paris, opening Wed at the Grand Palais. Now 72, the legendary American artist admits she always wanted to be a filmmaker. My slideshows are films made up of stills – immersive sequences of photographs, sound and music drawn from more than 50 years documenting life among friends, lovers and family. Installed inside a series of pavilion-like structures designed by architect Hala Wardé, the exhibition unfolds as a kind of village of intimate cinemas, presenting six of Goldin’s major works. They include The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, her magnum opus, and The Other Side, a moving tribute to the trans community she photographed from the early 1970s onward. The journey culminates across the Seine at the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière with the return of Sisters, Saints, Sibyls, Goldin’s searing installation on family trauma and the legacy of suicide, first created for the space in 2004.

🍷 Fleur Godart, longtime champion of natural wine and her father’s free-range chickens, has transformed her earlier project Vins et Volailles into Fine Fleur, a buzzing café, canteen, grocery and wine bar in Saint-Ouen, just a short stroll from the Puces. The space reflects the vision of an inspiring personality – storyteller, advocate for sustainable farming, and champion of creativity and community in Paris – and sees you through the day: morning coffee, a relaxed lunch on the sunny terrace, an afternoon snack, or a glass of wine for the apéro.

🎀 Designer Johanna de Clisson launches George Ruban Libre this week, a new mono-product brand making a single, XXL wool ribbon – 2.5 meters long and handmade in France – that can be tied as a bow, cravat or ascot. Unisex, timeless, and endlessly transformable, it turns a single gesture into an instant signature.

👗 La mode du 18e siècle. Un héritage fantasmé has just opened at the Palais Galliera, exploring women’s fashion during the Age of Enlightenment and its lasting influence on contemporary style. Over 70 garments, accessories and works of art are on display, including Marie Antoinette’s fragile corset, alongside iconic pieces by Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Vivienne Westwood and Dries van Noten – showing how 18th-century silhouettes continue to inspire haute couture, kitsch and camp alike.

🌸 And finally, the cherry trees at the Jardin des Plantes are in bloom, heralding the arrival of spring next week. A handful of spectacular Prunus – from the iconic white Shirotae along the main Perspective to the deep pink Kanzan, delicate Alba Plena, and early-flowering Oregon plum – transform the garden with their spectacular blossom and perfume, reminding us, in the spirit of the Japanese tradition of hanami, to pause and savour life’s fleeting beauty.
PS There’s other cherry trees in Paris to admire: in the Tuileries, Trocadéro, Parc de Bagatelle, Père-Lachaise, parc Martin-Luther-King, Square René-Viviani, Jardin Tino-Rossi, and the Parc des Sceaux.

Thanks for reading :)

Kate

Share

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

Originally from London, Max — who has to have one of the best names at the Puces! — is one of the few foreigners to have established himself at the Marché Paul-Bert. An instinctive ensemblier with an eye for pieces that make an immediate statement, he mixes periods and styles with confidence, privileging character over pedigree. The four suits of a deck of cards tattooed on his right hand hint at the gambler’s instinct behind the trade: knowing when to trust your eye and play your luck. In parallel with his stand, he has developed a streamlined digital sales system, previewing new collections to his mailing list every two weeks before releasing them on his website — extending the rhythm of the market into the online world.

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💻 Savvy local influencer Ly.as generated serious buzz last fashion week with his ‘watch parties’ at La Caserne. He’s back this season with an expanded program, streaming select Paris Fashion Week shows live at the 2,000-seat Théâtre du Châtelet. Tonight, the season closes with a live screening of the Chanel Autumn–Winter show (6.30-9.30pm, show at 7.30 pm). Free entry – just turn up, and brace for the queue. Secret show and after-event included.

👠 Footwear designer Nina Christen, known for her work at Loewe, Bottega Veneta and Dior, just opened a first flagship for her own-name label on the coveted Rue de la Paix, spitting distance from Place Vendôme. In contrast to the environment’s rarified luxury, the space, designed with artist Azadeh Shladovsky, is stripped back to raw concrete in a radical layout that foregrounds Christen’s handmade shoes (1250€ for a pair of stretch pony mules), while leaving room for future fashion and accessories collections.

🪑 Currently on view at Mitterrand St-Honoré gallery, Centro Fly: Ettore Sottsass & Andy Warhol reactivates the spirit of Mobili Fly, a 1966 Milan exhibition in which Sottsass presented a series of radical furniture for Poltronova – geometric cabinets, wheeled tables and anthropomorphic “robot” storage units that treated furniture less as utility than as characters in space. Here they’re set alongside a handful of Andy Warhol portraits, including a pouting Rikky von Opel, and a magnificent red Liz – revisiting a mid-60s moment when Pop art and domestic objects began to operate as icons.

🧑🏿‍🎨 And in another look to the past, the Marian Goodman gallery introduces Paris to the work of Barkley L. Hendricks (1944–2017) in a first, posthumous, solo show in Europe. Best known for his vivid oil portraits of stylish Black Americans, the exhibition spans a lifetime of explorations, from intimate photographs and landscapes to his playful, geometry-driven basketball paintings, revealing an artist who never stopped experimenting and never followed trends.

🌸 And finally, just in time for spring, our friends at the potager-restaurant Le Doyenné, just south of Paris, are now open for dinner on Mondays. Their garden is the heart of the kitchen, and seasonal micro-harvests shape the menu, complemented by the finest French game, poultry, dairy and seafood, and paired with natural wines that share the same commitment to care and integrity. Bookings are now open for March, April and May.

Thanks for reading

Kate

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

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In the Marché Paul Bert, Laurence Vauclair’s stand unfolds like a carefully staged set: rattan armchairs spill onto the pavement, glazed barbotine and Majolica shimmers in the light, monumental Massier vases and Palissy plates are displayed in exuberant profusion. Alongside her husband Denis Rouquette, Laurence has built a flourishing business, moving effortlessly between the improvised poetry of the Puces and the more conventional elegance of her Parisian gallery in the Carré Saint-Germain district. A member of the CNES and the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, she became an official expert in 2002 and has played a pivotal role in bringing these once-overlooked treasures back into the light. Always on the move – welcoming clients, mentoring assistants, researching forgotten works, hosting parties – she combines encyclopaedic knowledge of Majolica and 19th-century ceramics with an infectious warmth and generosity that draws everyone into her world.

This edited interview is taken from The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), a book that draws back the curtain on this remarkable place through encounters with a handful of the dealers at its heart.

Read more

🎪 Currently on view at the storied Left Bank Galerie Dina Vierny, Le Théâtre des Apparences presents 20 works from the 20s and 30s by French naïve painter Camille Bombois (1883–1970), a former circus strongman and railway labourer who transformed scenes from his own humble, rocambolesque life into bold, vividly coloured tableaux, in a style reminiscent of Rousseau. His canvases of figures, nudes and everyday scenes unfold with a theatrical stillness in which each element seems to command the stage. Until 13 March.

🧢 Creators of clever, covetable merch for iconic Parisian addresses – from institutions including Brasserie Lipp and Au Pied de Cochon to newer favourites like Folderol or Dandelion – GiftShop has just opened a first bricks-and-mortar boutique just behind the Palais-Royal. Before its most recent incarnation as Francesco Russo’s (much-missed) Paris outpost, the spot apparently housed legendary restaurant Le Bœuf à la Mode (1792–1950). Today you can browse GiftShop’s ever-growing collections of keyrings, ashtrays, totes, tableware and more, that turn the city’s most beloved venues into stylish souvenirs.

✌🏽 Paris Fashion Week opens today!, previewing the Autumn-Winter 2026 womenswear collections, through 10 March. Highlights include a debut at Balmain for Atlein founder Antonin Tron, a farewell at Alaïa as Pieter Mulier heads to Versace, following Prada’s acquisition last December, and a wave of second collections at major houses, from Dior to Chanel, Balenciaga to Jean Paul Gaultier – often the moment when a designer’s vision begins to settle. Check the full schedule here and watch out for all number of openings, launches and parties around town.

🧵 Paris Maker Olivier Saillard presents Musée Vivant de la Mode at the new Fondation Cartier, his manifesto for a ‘living museum of fashion’ that preserves, above all, movement and the intimate history of clothes. Daily performances at 5 pm reactivate calico toiles, clothes racks and other overlooked accessories alongside the centre’s inaugural Exposition Générale, and three special (sold-out) shows punctuate the season, spotlighting muses Tilda Swinton and Paloma Picasso. A poetic, public retelling of two decades of a singular œuvre. Starts Sun.

🥖 And finally, this year’s edition of the Best Baguette in Paris was awarded last week to Sri Lankan born baker Sithamparappillai Jegatheepan of Le Fournil Didot (75014). The competition drew 143 competitors, judged across five criteria – appearance, taste, baking, crumb and airiness – with the winner receiving a medal, 4,000€, and the prestigious role of official supplier to the Élysée for a year. The runners-up, making up the top ten for 2026, are: B&S Nation (75012); L’Ecrin Gourmand (75012); Maison Daguet (75015); Maison Bergeron (75007); Boulangerie Guyot Ferreira (75005); Maison Leparq (75015); Boulangerie Moderne Rabineau (75005); Aux Délices de Glacière (75013); Au Paradis du Gourmand (75014). Remember that in Paris, 93% of residents live within a five-minute walk of a bakery!

Thanks for reading

Kate x

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

💥 Opening tomorrow, a collision of two historic Parisian retail cultures – the department store and the flea market – as the Marché Paul-Bert Serpette lands at Le Bon Marché for its new-season exhibition Tous à la Ferme. Curated by Gilbert Kann – art and design advisor and lifelong Puces devotee – the pop-up brings a handful of the market’s dealers into the department store, including friends such as Galerie Vauclair and Remix Gallery, with a selection of furniture, decorative arts and design around a pastoral spring theme. Vive les Puces!
Pick up my book The Paris Flea Market in the bookshop. 👀

⚜️ Stepping further back in time, Une journée au XVIIIe siècle, chronique d’un hôtel particulier has just opened at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, inviting you to immerse yourself in the life of a Parisian townhouse of the 1780s, a few years before the Revolution reshaped life in Paris. Recreated with over 550 objects – from furniture, wallpaper and silverware to fashion accessories, toys, and even household pets – the exhibition also highlights the clever inventions of the day: folding furniture, tables on wheels, and even an ingenious curved eye-bath, all reminders that the 18th century was as much about innovation as it was about elegance.

📚 In honor of Georges Perec’s 90th birthday this year, the Archives de Paris presents Archives d’une Enfance, exploring the writer’s lost childhood and picking up where his semi-autobiographical W, or the Memory of Childhood left off. Orphaned during the war, Perec spent much of his life investigating memory, absence and the fragments of his early years through his writing. The exhibition juxtaposes his texts with archival documents, tracing his journey from Belleville to the family’s exile and his attempts to recover all that was lost.

👔 Across the Atlantic, The Cut magazine just dropped a small Spring Fashion supplement The Parisian Man that investigates the legend of the stylish Frenchman via portraits of 40 Parisians, from all walks of life, generations, body types and sartorial persuasions, through the lens of the exceptional Paul Kooiker. No hair or makeup stylists, most simply wore what they showed up in. Here’s a handful of interview extracts from a couple of our friends and heroes:

Jean-Charles de Castelbajac: “My wardrobe is like my art collection.”

Ramdane Touhami: “First, I have a rule: no plastic, no polyester. I only wear things that come from nature.”

Paul B. Preciado: “Fashion, in the industrial sense, I find mortifying.”

Benoît Astier de Villatte: “My father, Pierre Carron, who was a painter and also my professor at the Beaux-Arts, passed on a great deal to me in terms of taste. He would rewear things, mending them, repairing the edges, or finding creative ways to make his clothes last.”

🍷 The always buzzing Septime La Cave, a kind of anti-chamber next to the no-reservations Clamato, run by the same team, serves gourmet nibbles to pair with its natural wine list – think olives, Bigorre pork terrine and Comté 24 mois. In a block party spirit, they’ve teamed up again with like-minded neighbours Louie Louie to bring pizza nights back to the wine bar, currently serving a Savoyarde-inspired creation topped with morbier, raw cream, baked potato, pickles, smoked fennel oil and dried beef, served in two rounds every evening from 7pm. Yum.

See you there!

Thanks for reading

Kate x

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

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[ 💥 LATEST RELEASE ]The Ofr. Paris Cookbook celebrates the joy, ritual and radical hospitality of the Parisian table. A new collaboration with my friends at 0fr. Éditions, the book gathers recipes and stories from a community of food-loving friends, capturing how meals bring people together, spark conversation and create connection.

We’ve invited 25 special guests – our friends, collaborators and heroes – to share a recipe, and reflect in a thoughtful Q&A on their relationship to food, cooking and life around the table. The book reveals the city in surprising ways – open, diverse, globally connected, and alive with possibility!

“Like Paris, this book is full of beauty, intensity, diversity, and passionately held opinions. I wanted to sit around a table and eat, drink, and spar with every single person in it. If only one of them would invite me to dinner! A cookbook – a portrait of a city, really – to savor.”
-Lauren Collins, New Yorker staff writer and author of ‘They Stole a City’ and ‘When in French’

“0fr. is a bookshop of the best kind where you know you will be introduced to so many beautiful and curious independent publications. From the perspective of a publisher, it is a dream to be surrounded by such curiosity, support and generosity of spirit. Conversation and introductions are at its heart, just like the best of tables to sit around in friends’ homes or beloved restaurants. This book embodies all these elements, with its delightful recipes and insights around them, and lovely drawings and images alongside. It’s always a special feeling to be invited to be part of something, and this little book gives the reader just that.”
-Frances Armstrong Jones, editor and publisher, Luncheon

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Designed and illustrated by Giovanna Caliari and with cover art by Ginny Sims.
29€ | 172 pages | English language | In stock at 0fr., and other good bookshops in France via Interart and on French Amazon | ISBN: 978-2-493957-13-9

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🐎 On the first day of Lunar New Year – ushering in the Year of the Fire Horse – let’s dive into Paris Vertigo, a hypnotic fully AI-generated film by Paris-based director Audrey Mascina for Longchamp. “AI did not replace creativity here. It amplified it”, says the team. Horses surge across rooftops and nature overtakes the city’s Haussmann façades, surely delighting mayor Anne Hidalgo. In real life, Chinese New Year festivities are in full swing across the city, from Belleville’s lantern festival this weekend to the great 13th-arrondissement parade on 1 March, when drums, dragons and dancing lions wind through the capital’s most vibrant Chinatown.

🌙 Horses aren’t just running across AI-generated rooftops this week – they are also a recurring motif in Leonora Carrington’s fantastical universe. Tomorrow the Musée du Luxembourg opens a rare solo show on the British-Mexican painter, writer and surrealist, and famously lover to Max Ernst. Across 126 works, the exhibition traces her journeys from Lancashire to Florence, Paris, the south of France, Spain and the Second World War, New York and Mexico, where she became a cult figure alongside Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo. Delicate, dreamlike and richly detailed, her paintings and drawings reveal hybrid creatures, metamorphosing landscapes and esoteric symbolism in a universe entirely her own.

🏓 Also opening in Paris tomorrow, the international smash hit Marty Supreme from director Josh Safdie, following last week’s Grand Rex premiere with star Timothée Chalamet in town to promote – effortlessly cool in a brown Sarah Burton for Givenchy suit, sleek sunglasses, or an ADON bomber jacket. Cinephiles should seek out the 70 mm screenings at the L’Arlequin in the Latin Quarter – the only copy in Europe – for a monumental, textured film experience. (Meanwhile, another standout US indie, Kelly Reichardt’s heist film The Mastermind, in competition at Cannes last year, also hit French screens last week.)

💘 Reopened on Valentine’s Day after more than a year of renovations, the Musée de la Vie Romantique invites visitors to step into the Romantic era through the world of Ary Scheffer, the Dutch-born painter who lived and worked here for nearly 30 years. The restored rooms showcase Scheffer’s circle – from Chopin to Delacroix – and a dedicated space honours George Sand while the inaugural exhibition highlights the skies of Paul Huet, Scheffer’s pre-impressionist contemporary, alongside 300 carefully rehung works. And Rose Bakery is back! serving tea and delicious cakes in the refreshed courtyard garden.

📸 And opening Friday, Guido Guidi. Col tempo, 1956–2024 at Le Bal, in collaboration with Rome’s MAXXI museum, part of the 70th-anniversary celebrations of the Paris–Rome sister-city partnership. Guidi, a key figure in European photography, traces ordinary landscapes and architectural icons with equal care, creating a poetic archive of place that values the banal and the monumental alike. an ongoing dialogue between seeing, time, and the photographic process, from his 1960s black-and-white experiments to his latest work.

See you there!

Thanks for reading :)

Kate x

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

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Upstairs in the covered Marché Dauphine, Françoise and Erwan de Fligué’s expansive stand is a space where history, fashion and style intersect. The racks are interspersed with antique mannequins carefully dressed in vintage garments, and each tag indicates the garment’s decade, transforming a browse through the racks into a masterclass in fashion history. Their edit largely stops at the arrival of ready-to-wear, and you can sense their disdain on the bargain rack, where later, or imperfect, pieces are sold at a discount. Every item at Falbalas is hand-selected, restored, and sold at accessible prices, so the hunt – for both collector and dealer – can continue. Erwan is a recognized vintage fashion historian, specialized in the period from 1850 to 1950, and frequently consults for museums and collectors. Always dressed in period costume themselves, they bring fashion history vividly to life.

This edited interview is taken from The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), a book that draws back the curtain on this remarkable place through encounters with a handful of the dealers at its heart.

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🦆 With the hunting season in France coming to a close at the end of the month, it’s your last chance for a while to taste the signature dish at Le Canard Sauvage, the bright, modern table quietly devoted to game and other robust flavours from young Brit chef Jack Bosco Baker (ex La Vierge) that’s got Paris buzzing. If you’re lucky you might even find some shot left in the wild duck! Elsewhere on the bold seasonal menu, perhaps carpaccio of scallops, bergamot and agretti, or veal tartare, colatura, horseradish and radicchio. The cocktails and aperitifs are top-notch too. 14 Boulevard de Strasbourg, 75010 Paris

📚 The Galerie du Jour presents As Far As You Can See, the first French retrospective devoted to the publications of the Dutch artist, designer and curator Erik Kessels, in collaboration with his Paris-based publisher RVB Books. Spanning nearly 30 years, the exhibition brings together around a 100 works in which Kessels revives found amateur photographs to uncover their narrative, anthropological and emotional charge, questioning how images circulate, repeat and endure. A selection of books by Kessels featured in the exhibition, including Incomplete Encyclopedia of Touch and MAN, recently published by RVB Books, are available to buy onsite, at the Librairie du Jour. And watch Erik Kessels discussing some of his favourite books here:

🖼️ Semiose gallery – which, btw, took over Agnès b’s former rue Quincampoix Galerie du Jour in 2020 – has just opened a second space next door at 42. A sign of the gallery’s growing momentum, the expansion comes shortly after their artist Xie Lei won the 2025 Prix Marcel Duchamp. The new project space launches with Françoise Pétrovitch’s Très exactement, a collaboration with writer Marie Darrieussecq, where ink washes and prose mingle across isolated landscapes, birds and absent figures, as Semiose continues to champion underground cultures, and forms and ideas born on the political, social and geographical fringes. 42 rue Quincampoix, 75001 Paris

👗 Cult vintage fashion showroom INSITU has moved to a ground-floor space in the courtyard at 13 rue Chapon, behind Parcelles restaurant, and is now open to the public. Olivier Châtenet, alongside protégé Angèle, presents a seasonal edit of vintage designer pieces mainly from the 70s–90s, ranging from Gianfranco Ferré to Giorgio Armani, Versace, Issey Miyake, Alaïa and of course Yves Saint Laurent. Châtenet’s authority is hard to overstate: a former designer, creative director and obsessive collector, he assembled a 4,000-piece YSL collection (1966–1985), acquired by the fashion house itself in 2020. A rare chance to access serious fashion history, quietly and up close.

📸 And finally, on the centenary of her birth, and following the 2022 retrospective at the Musée du Luxembourg, Vivian Maier returns to Paris with a new exhibition at Les Douches la Galerie, which has championed her work for more than a decade. Underscoring Maier’s enduring attention to urban rhythms, ordinary gestures and marginal figures, the show Rue Vivian Maier invites a sensitive, formal reading of her streetscapes, fleeting faces, architectural fragments and subtle plays of light, demonstrating the coherence and modernity of a body of work now recognized as central to 20th‑century photography.

Thanks for reading :)

Kate x

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty, founders of Studio KO, belong to a generation of architects for whom the Puces de Saint-Ouen are not a weekend diversion but a working landscape. Long before Studio KO became synonymous with tactile, layered interiors and architecture rooted in place, the flea market was already shaping their eye. For them, the Puces are less about nostalgia than about movement – across time, styles, and uses – a living archive where objects are encountered and reactivated. Many of these finds begin a second life in their online shop and gallery, L’Oeil de KO, a manifesto of their instinctive taste. In this conversation, they reflect on how hunting, combining and living with objects informs their practice, and why the flea market remains one of the last truly eclectic territories in contemporary design.

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From the ruins of Tipaza to statues of Apollo, from jazz under the kitchen table to the grand neoclassical tradition, Bernard’s passions celebrate the extraordinary in the small, the miraculous in the mundane, and the deep, personal connection between collector and object. In the conversation that follows, published as a special tribute, Bernard reflects on a lifelong obsession with history, beauty, and music, and a singular approach to antiques that prizes an object’s spiritual and artistic resonance.

This edited interview is taken from The Paris Flea Market (Prestel, 2024), a book that draws back the curtain on this remarkable place through encounters with a handful of the dealers at its heart.

Read more

🍦 Opening Fri at the Jeu de Paume: Martin Parr – Global Warning. One of the world’s most acclaimed documentary photographers, Parr died on 6 Dec, only weeks before this major retrospective opened. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, Global Warning spans fifty years of his work, from beaches and tourist crowds to consumer rituals and tech addictions, all captured in his signature saturated, ironic style. Beneath the humor and bright colors, Parr quietly charted the environmental and social consequences of mass tourism and overconsumption – a visual record of the climate crisis hiding in plain sight ?

🍕The team behind the deliciously militant bakery and grocery Fermentation Générale has opened Acid Lactic just down the street at 15 rue de la Folie Méricourt. Valentin and Christopher bring the same fermentation expertise and attention to quality, crafting natural sourdough pizzas from organic heritage wheat by Cyrille Renault. Highlights include tomato with smoked ricotta, ‘nduja with fior di latte, rocket pesto with gorgonzola, and classic margherita, all paired with natural wines. Open Mon to Sat for dinner.

⁉️ A new edition of Le Point d’Ironie is out now. The longrunning free art newspaper, developed in 1997 by Agnès b. with Christian Boltanski and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, gives artists carte blanche to transform each issue into a unique object. For #70, William Eggleston presents photographs from The Outlands (1969–1974), capturing the mythic American South in his pioneering color palette. The release coincides with a new exhibition of Eggleston’s final dye‑transfer prints at David Zwirner, New York. Copies available of course at La Fab, and elsewhere.

🌱 Mayor Anne Hidalgo just shared a striking series of before-and-after shots on her Instagram, highlighting a decade of making Paris greener – more trees, fewer cars and a lot more bikes. The mayor is coming to the end of her second term and has announced she will not run for a third, expressing hope that Senator Rémi Féraud will succeed her. PS: The next municipal elections are scheduled for 15 March, with a potential runoff on 22 March.

🍋 Bookings are now open for Occasion, an ambitious and thoughtful new restaurant by Breton-born chefs Candice Brée (ex-Pages) and Margaux Baju (ex-Pouliche), opening 3 Feb in the Goncourt neighbourhood. Trained in top schools and kitchens, the chefs offer an omnivorous yet vegetable-forward cuisine, blending French traditions with Breton and international influences, with each ingredient shining in a four-course seasonal tasting menu (€49).

🖤 And finally, RIP Marian Goodman – the pioneering New York gallerist, who opened her Paris gallery in 1995, passed away last week at 97. Renowned for her exceptional eye and support of artists, Goodman introduced major European voices to American audiences and championed conceptually ambitious, socially engaged work. Don’t miss the IN FOCUS Presentation of selected Christian Boltanski works on view in Paris through Wed, highlighting historical and iconic pieces, some rarely seen. www.mariangoodman.com

Thanks for reading :)

Kate x

Welcome to Paris, Puces. on Substack. Expect the best of : LIFE IN PARIS 🇫🇷 each week, plus expert intel and tips from the world’s most epic FLEA MARKET✨ Art, Fashion, Design !

On Mondays: Life in Paris postcards - a curated mix of sights, bites and delights, celebrating Paris Makers, and the strange, new, true, and beautiful, forever!

On Fridays: Flea market intel - in-depth guides, behind-the-scenes stories and practical tips (this content will eventually be paywalled, but Life in Paris will remain free).

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