Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷

If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

🍊 A dedicated space for the parfumerie and papeterie collections of fave Paris makers Astier de Villatte has just opened practically next door to the original boutique, at 171 rue Saint-Honoré, leaving more space for ceramics at 173. Come for the eaux de parfum and colognes – including the brand new Tanger, a fragrant evocation of the bohemian Moroccan city – alongside scented candles and incense. The cult agenda is back in stock too.

🪑 Following last year’s acquisition of one of France’s oldest furniture workshops in Villers-Cotterêts, historic Parisian fabric house Maison Pierre Frey is doubling down on its furniture collections. Opening tomorrow, not far from its legendary fabric showroom on Rue du Mail, Galerie 14 Mail brings together the maison’s French-made furniture, including collaborations with contemporary talents Constance Guisset, Christophe Delcourt and Tristan Auer.

⚡️ A year after his giant Centre Pompidou survey closed, and following a year as visiting professor at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, Wolfgang Tillmans returns to Galerie Chantal Crousel with a new solo exhibition. Glade / Clairière brings together photographs, cameraless photograms, sculpture, and video works made during a recent residency at the Cité internationale des Arts. Opens Wed.

🏛️ The address is the same; the menu has changed. New restaurant Eupatoria 5 has taken over the former site of Eva Pritsky, whose legendary bar/ brocante was a Ménilmontant fixture with Parisian personnalités exceptionnelles for almost 40 years. The restaurant has kept much of its character – including Eva’s library – while chef Basile Eidel brings a fresh, instinctive take on modern Greek food, served alongside natural wines and a terrace overlooking the local church.

🍸 A year after unveiling its gobsmacking new home at Palais-Royal, the Fondation Cartier starts a new chapter with the opening of two new culinary spaces from Anne-Sophie Pic, one of France’s most esteemed chefs. First up, Utopic, her debut cocktail bar, opens Fri, with drinks inspired by her imprégnation philosophy of aromatic layers and infusions, and with a dedicated entry on Rue de Marengo. Two weeks later comes Anne-Sophie Pic Paris, replacing La Dame de Pic, her Rue du Louvre address since 2012. The new restaurant brings Pic’s cuisine into dialogue with Jean Nouvel’s architecture and the Fondation’s exhibitions (Ibrahim Mahama. The Harvest Season opens 22 Oct), with an entrance on Rue de Rivoli.

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

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 second-generation Puces dealer, Hugo grew up with the trade in his blood. His mother, Hélène Greiner, opened her gallery on Boulevard Raspail in 1990 – the year Hugo was born. Positioned between the historic artists’ quarter of Montparnasse and the gallery world of Saint-Germain, she spent 30 years there championing and rediscovering a largely overlooked strand of twentieth-century sculpture. Her influence continues to shape Hugo’s practice today, particularly his passion for Modern sculpture and his instinct for artists who sit outside the canon. His own eye, however, is deliberately difficult to pin down. In 2026, he moved from Serpette to the Marché Dauphine, bringing this expansive sensibility with him. His selection moves between Surrealism, abstraction, Modern sculpture, American and European furniture, glass and lighting, resisting the idea that a dealer needs to belong to a single school or period. Eclectic by conviction rather than by accident, he is interested in the connections between things – and in following his own eye in an age increasingly mediated by algorithms and received opinion. Music is central to his sensibility too, informing his instinct for rhythm, juxtaposition and unexpected connections. For Hugo, old and new are less opposites than echoes, each continually reshaping the other.

Read more

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”.

Never wanting to pin himself to one period or speciality, Jean-Luc Ferrand is a generalist in the best sense of the word. At the heart of Marché Biron, his roomy, two-floor stand brings together eighteenth-century furniture, objets d’art and twentieth-century pieces, arranged less like a traditional, shambolic flea-market stand than an elegant showroom. Each room is carefully decorated, with rugs, art and furniture creating the kind of setting that allows clients to picture the pieces in their own homes. Across the Puces, at L’Usine, a much larger stockroom is open for private visits, alongside Ferrand’s workshop, where his full-time cabinetmaker, Fabien Schmidt, carries out restoration work in situ. Ferrand runs the business with a distinctly modern sensibility: an up-to-date website, price tags on every piece, and a practice that moves between antiques and contemporary production, with mirrors, furniture, art and sculpture commissioned from contemporary artisans. The son of an antique dealer, Ferrand grew up in the trade, and now one of his daughters, Victoire, is beginning to work alongside him. Yet for all his familiarity with the Puces, he remains under its spell – fascinated by the sheer improbability of its existence, its constant movement, and its strange, ever-changing mix of people, objects and stories.

Read more

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”.

With roots in Saint-Ouen stretching back to the years between the wars, Dominique James belongs to one of the Puces’ great family dynasties. His grandfather began as a junk dealer, clearing houses with a cart while his grandmother ran a restaurant on Rue Pasteur in Saint Ouen, before his father established the family business at the Puces in 1948. His uncle joined him in the 1960s, and together they transformed Maison James from a dealer in contemporary furniture into a specialist in nineteenth- and eventually eighteenth-century French furniture. During the “trente glorieuses”, as he calls it, from 1970 to 2000, the business really took off, fuelled by a booming export market and strong demand for 18th-century French antiques from American buyers, and the family expanded into several stands at Vernaison. Today, a deep affection for the eighteenth century and an instinct for the exceptional object remains at the heart of Maison James. In an era of Google and Instagram, he remains attached to the old ways of the trade – to knowledge accumulated through looking, handling and hunting for objects, and to the thrill of the find.

Read more

I’ve just been profiled by the brilliant Véronique Hyland for her Style Points column in ELLE, talking about the Puces de Saint-Ouen, how I came to write The Paris Flea Market, and why the flea market remains such an important resource for the creative industries – including, of course, fashion.

“For so many, the market is an endless well of inspiration that never runs dry. Van den Boogert likens it to a living museum. “You’ve got centuries of style and design and materials all rubbing up against each other. It’s just so rich and multiple, the scale of it, the quantity of things that you can see.”

It was a pleasure to talk about the way the Puces feeds into the creative life of Paris. Fashion designers, stylists, artists, interior designers and collectors have long mined the market for inspiration, materials, references and treasures.

Read the full article on ELLE USA.

Share

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

A graduate of London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture, Julien Sebban founded Uchronia in 2019, on his return to Paris. Originally the title of his graduation project, Uchronia refers to an imagined or alternative timeline – a world that exists outside conventional history. Since then, it has evolved into a multi-disciplinary creative collective working across architecture, interiors, furniture, scenography and artistic direction. United by a belief that spaces should evoke emotion as much as function, its work resists minimalism and good taste design in favour of joyful, generous and unapologetically colourful interiors that aim to feel at once contemporary and timeless.

Read more

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

Following my guide to the Vernaison and Biron markets, then the Dauphine market, this third instalment focuses on the dealers of the Marché Paul-Bert and Serpette, as well as surrounding market streets. Together, these three chapters reveal why Saint-Ouen remains an essential destination for anyone interested in the history, culture and future of fashion.

Fashion has always been part of the DNA of the Puces de Saint-Ouen. Long before vintage became desirable, before archive fashion entered the industry lexicon, and before stylists, designers and collectors arrived in search of inspiration, the market’s predecessors were already sorting, repairing, repurposing and reselling clothing.

The roots of the Puces lie in the world of the chiffonniers, or ragpickers, who from the nineteenth century sifted through Paris’s discarded possessions in search of anything that might be reused or sold. Textiles were among their most valuable finds. Rags were recycled into paper, garments repaired and resold, and a thriving second-hand economy emerged on the margins of the city. Many of the specialist dealers who followed – including Jewish immigrants with backgrounds in tailoring, hat-making and clothing repair – found a natural home in Saint-Ouen, helping establish the market’s long association with fashion and textiles.

Today, the fashion landscape of the Puces is remarkably diverse. Vintage specialists sit alongside dealers in military surplus and French workwear, designer vintage, archive fashion, luxury bags, jewellery and other accessories, streetwear, deadstock, antique costume, lace, textiles and menswear. Fashion students, costume departments, collectors, stylists and luxury brands all come here to research, source and buy.

The market itself continues to evolve. The stretch running alongside the périphérique that was once known for trinkets, second-hand clothing and American military surplus has largely been overtaken by an industrial-scale trade in counterfeit goods – everything from Chanel to Nike – creating a sharp divide between two very different worlds. Yet beyond this barrier, the Puces remains one of Europe’s richest hunting grounds for vintage fashion.

Read more

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷

If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

⚡️ François Morellet arrives at Versailles, marking the centenary of the birth one of France’s great pioneers of geometric abstraction. Six major works are installed throughout the château and gardens, where neon, steel and mathematical systems cut through the lavish interiors with the radical, playful spirit that defined Morellet’s practice.

🌱 After working in some of Copenhagen and Berlin’s most celebrated restaurants, Montreal-born chef Jules St-Cyr has opened his first Paris restaurant, Bittikesu. Tucked away on a quiet street behind the Bassin de l’Arsenal, the space seats just 10 guests around a bespoke oak counter, reflecting his intimate approach to cooking. Drawing on wild foraging, produce from his own vegetable garden in Montreuil and close relationships with fishermen, growers and farmers, the menu evolves with the seasons. A wood-fired oven adds another dimension.

📦 To coincide with the recent opening of its third Paris boutique beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, Lemaire presents A Box of Impressions, a photography exhibition contained within a box rather than displayed on the walls. Co-curated by Lou Stoppard and Sarah-Linh Tran, it brings together works by more than 20 photographers, including Teju Cole, Paul Kooiker, Justine Kurland and Jeff Mermelstein, exploring observation, ephemerality and the shifting boundaries between public and private – a nod to Colette, who chronicled life from her Palais-Royal apartment, and a timely echo of the photography season underway in Arles.

🪑 JW Anderson has opened a summer pop-up in Paris at 15 rue du Louvre, bringing the label’s fashion collections together with a selection of craft, design and everyday objects. The space reflects Anderson’s expanding vision for his namesake brand, which continues to evolve as he takes on his new role at Dior. Among the finds are Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s oak lamps and stools, Jason Mosseri’s Hope Spring chairs, ceramics by Akiko Hirai, Lucie Rie mugs, Murano glassware, Welsh blankets and honey from Houghton Hall – what Anderson calls “things I like and would like to have around me”. Until 24 Sep.

♻️ And finally, a major step towards a more circular fashion industry in Europe. Since yesterday, the European Union has banned large companies from destroying unsold clothing, accessories and footwear under its new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). Brands must now prioritize resale, donation, repair and reuse, with medium-sized companies following the same rules from 2030.

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

Following my guide to the Vernaison and Biron markets, this second instalment focuses on the dealers and stands of Marché Dauphine. Part 3 will explore Paul-Bert Serpette and the surrounding market streets. Together, these three chapters reveal why Saint-Ouen remains an essential destination for anyone interested in the history, culture and future of fashion.

Fashion has always been part of the DNA of the Puces de Saint-Ouen. Long before vintage became desirable, before archive fashion entered the industry lexicon, and before stylists, designers and collectors arrived in search of inspiration, the market’s predecessors were already sorting, repairing, repurposing and reselling clothing.

The roots of the Puces lie in the world of the chiffonniers, or ragpickers, who from the nineteenth century sifted through Paris’s discarded possessions in search of anything that might be reused or sold. Textiles were among their most valuable finds. Rags were recycled into paper, garments repaired and resold, and a thriving second-hand economy emerged on the margins of the city. Many of the specialist dealers who followed – including Jewish immigrants with backgrounds in tailoring, hat-making and clothing repair – found a natural home in Saint-Ouen, helping establish the market’s long association with fashion and textiles.

Today, the fashion landscape of the Puces is remarkably diverse. Vintage specialists sit alongside dealers in military surplus and French workwear, designer vintage, archive fashion, luxury bags, jewellery and other accessories, streetwear, deadstock, antique costume, lace, textiles and menswear. Fashion students, costume departments, collectors, stylists and luxury brands all come here to research, source and buy.

The market itself continues to evolve. The stretch running alongside the périphérique that was once known for trinkets, second-hand clothing and American military surplus has largely been overtaken by an industrial-scale trade in counterfeit goods – everything from Chanel to Nike – creating a sharp divide between two very different worlds. Yet beyond this barrier, the Puces remains one of Europe’s richest hunting grounds for vintage fashion.

Read more

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

♠️ Melbourne archival fashion freaks DotCOMME have brought their vast archive to a new permanent space in Saint-Germain, celebrating the creativity of Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Walter Van Beirendonck. Somewhere between archive, gallery and boutique, it treats fashion less as retail than as cultural memory. 1 rue de l’Abbaye

🍏 Madeleine de Sinéty finally gets the retrospective she deserves at the Jeu de Paume. Born into a Loire Valley château but instinctively drawn to the lives of workers, farmers and rural communities, the self-taught photographer spent a decade in the Breton village of Poilley, where she worked alongside local families while creating an extraordinary archive of more than 50,000 images documenting a France that has all but vanished.

🥖 Chez Alain Miam Miam, the Marais institution long beloved for its maximalist sandwich philosophy, opens a new spot at 3 rue Pastourelle tomorrow, just a block down from its current address. Staying true to Alain’s ingredient-driven approach to street food, while exploring a more traditional baguette format, SANDWICH expands beyond the grilled panini-style format that brought the local legend such unexpected viral fame.

🦅 Annette Messager, a defining figure in contemporary French art for more than five decades, takes over the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature with Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps. More than 80 works have invaded one of Paris’s most eccentric and enchanting museums, with crows, giant snails and other fantastical creatures taking up residence among its taxidermied collections. Outside, Caro Diario creative food studio has chosen the museum’s leafy courtyard for the fourth edition of its annual summer gelateria Il Gelato Museo (until 19 July).

🎒 Next weekend at the Puces, José Lamali welcomes Ephemera, Pascal Monfort’s archive of rare fashion books, magazines, invites and memorabilia, to his stand at the Marché Dauphine for a weekend residency, setting up a dialogue between his edit of DIY clothes born of youth culture and fashion’s inspiring paper trail.

See you there!

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!

Share

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

👘 Kenzo Takada moved into 3 Place des Victoires with his audacious label Jungle Jap in July 1976. Fifty years later, Kenzo returns to the square with La Fête de Kenzo, an open-to-all takeover running throughout Men’s Fashion Week. Curated by artistic director Nigo, the project activates multiple addresses around the circular square (2, 8, 10 and 12 Place des Victoires), including a pop-up showcasing the FW26 collection, a café by We Are Ona, a flower shop by Debeaulieu and a “konbini”-inspired Japanese market, turning the site of the house’s original Paris home into a celebration of the brand’s exuberant spirit. Opens today!

📚 JUST AN IDEA BOOKS returns with a new drop designed to make your eyes pop! For its fifth collection of artists’ books, Sarah Andelman brings together a kaleidoscope of voices finding their first expression in book form, from Tom Binns to Helga Stentzel, Tim Klein to Marc Azoulay. The launch events continue this Thu at Librairie Yvon Lambert (6–8pm), where illustrator Stéphane Manel presents Day After Day, his daily diary in which artists, writers and cultural figures – from Baudelaire to Billie Eilish, Cocteau to Snoopy – haunt its pages in a vast meditation on time, memory and art. Foreword by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. (Next up: Derek C. Blasberg launches at 7L on 7 July.)

🪨 La Caverne du Pont Neuf, JR’s homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s epic Pont Neuf Wrapped, closes this Sunday after a run cut short by technical issues. The immersive installation transforms the bridge into a sensory passage through Paris’s own geological origins, blending sound and scent in a multi-layered environment shaped by Thomas Bangalter’s electro-acoustic soundtrack and an olfactory design by Sarah Bouasse. The experience continues through merchandising at the dedicated gift shop, La Caverne Souvenirs. Closes Sun.

♻️ A new Centre Commercial store extends its quietly radical retail universe from Canal Saint-Martin to 26 Rue de Charonne. Rooted in a tightly edited selection of labels committed to more conscious, transparent production methods, the project leans further into premium territory. The stripped-back interior, designed by local sustainable architecture studio Hugo Haas Studio, sets the scene for a sharp mix of brands, from J.M. Weston to Studio Nicholson, alongside a lifestyle offering including Comme des Garçons fragrances and accessories.
Opens Thursday!

📍 And finally: save the date! The annual Fête des Puces returns to the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market on Thu 24 Sep. Following the Marché Biron’s centenary in 2025, this year’s edition takes on a special resonance as Paul-Bert Serpette celebrates its 80th anniversary (1946–2026), marking eight decades of influence on the world’s antiques stage, with celebrations curated by the Pinto agency.

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!

Leave a comment

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

What follows is a guide to the dealers and stands in the Vernaison and Biron markets. Part 2 will follow, focusing on the Marché Dauphine, and Part 3 will document Paul-Bert Serpette and the surrounding market streets. Collectively they continue to make Saint-Ouen an essential destination for anyone interested in the history, culture and future of fashion.

Fashion has always been part of the DNA of the Puces de Saint-Ouen. Long before vintage became desirable, before archive fashion entered the industry lexicon, and before stylists, designers and collectors arrived in search of inspiration, the market’s predecessors were already sorting, repairing, repurposing and reselling clothing.

The roots of the Puces lie in the world of the chiffonniers, or ragpickers, who from the nineteenth century sifted through Paris’s discarded possessions in search of anything that might be reused or sold. Textiles were among their most valuable finds. Rags were recycled into paper, garments repaired and resold, and a thriving second-hand economy emerged on the margins of the city. Many of the specialist dealers who followed – including Jewish immigrants with backgrounds in tailoring, hat-making and clothing repair – found a natural home in Saint-Ouen, helping establish the market’s long association with fashion and textiles.

Today, the fashion landscape of the Puces is remarkably diverse. Vintage specialists sit alongside dealers in military surplus and French workwear, designer vintage, archive fashion, luxury bags, jewellery and other accessories, streetwear, deadstock, antique costume, lace, textiles and menswear. Fashion students, costume departments, collectors, stylists and luxury brands all come here to research, source and buy.

The market itself continues to evolve. The stretch running alongside the périphérique that was once known for trinkets, second-hand clothing and American military surplus has largely been overtaken by an industrial-scale trade in counterfeit goods – everything from Chanel to Nike – creating a sharp divide between two very different worlds. Yet beyond this barrier, the Puces remains one of Europe’s richest hunting grounds for vintage fashion.

Read more

Tell us a bit about why you became fascinated with the Parisian flea market.

The Puces fascinated me because it felt like a city within a city: sprawling, eccentric, deeply human and surprisingly difficult to understand from the outside. The more time I spent there, the more I realized it wasn’t simply a place to buy things. It’s a literal ecosystem of expertise, taste, history and commerce populated by remarkable characters whose knowledge has often been built over decades. What began as curiosity became an obsession.

What’s so special about the place?

For me, the markets are part museum, part escape, part social theatre. It’s like disappearing into a little village on the edge of Paris, with its own rhythms, characters and codes – a spirit that still feels connected to the old popular Paris of ragpickers and Les Halles.

What did you learn about the Puces of St Ouen during your research for your book that surprised you most?

I remember discovering old photographs of “La Zone”– the informal settlement that grew up outside Paris’s fortifications in the mid 19^th century, and where many chiffonniers, or ragpickers, lived. I first encountered them in an exhibition by the gallery Lumière des Roses at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in 2019. Those images completely changed my understanding of the Puces. They revealed that behind today’s world-famous antiques market lies a much rougher, more marginal and deeply human history.

I was also struck by a passage in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862), where the chiffonnier Vargouleme describes his daily sorting. It brings this lost métier vividly to life, and in many ways feels like an origin story of the Puces: “In the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort my things. This makes heaps in my room. I put the rags in a basket, the cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard, the woollen stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, the things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed.”

You use a word to refer to the French art of browsing, chiner – can you unpack that meaning for us?

Chiner is the French verb for browsing or hunting for second-hand objects, but it’s a word that doesn’t really translate. It’s not quite antiquing, bargain hunting or treasure hunting. You can’t chiner new things. It describes a very specific way of moving through the world of objects: browsing without necessarily knowing what you’re looking for, guided as much by intuition as by intention. It’s less a transaction than a process – almost a state of mind. The Surrealists loved the Puces for exactly this reason – André Breton and Giacometti came here searching for those strange moments of “objective chance”, where an unexpected object seems to speak directly to the unconscious.

With many different markets sprawling over a huge footprint, it can feel overwhelming for a traveler to get off the metro at Porte de Clignancourt and know where to start. What’s your advice?

Rather than thinking of it as a single flea market, it helps to see the Puces as a village in its own right – made up of different quarters, each with its own history, rhythm, and specialist language. It really is a place with its own culture, almost its own set of rules. So my advice is simply to slow down. Don’t try to “do” it in one go, and don’t worry about orientation at first. Start with curiosity rather than strategy. You inevitably get lost – but that’s part of the experience. I sometimes joke that I feel like I need my passport when I go, because you really are crossing into another world.

How did you choose the vendors you featured in the book and what are some common traits?

The book is not a guide or a “best of” the Puces. It is a curated sample – a small chorus of 23 voices (including a handful of creative professionals) that, together, suggest something of the spirit of the place. The Puces is vast, with thousands of dealers, and what I wanted was to capture a sense of its diversity rather than attempt to summarize it. But there are thousands of dealers there, and I continue to publish portraits of them on my Substack because the place is never fully captured. It keeps evolving, and you can only ever approach it through fragments.

Can you pick three?

Ok, if you insist! Eva Steinitz is the granddaughter of famed antiques dealer Bernard Steinitz, who had a gallery on Faubourg Saint-Honoré – so she’s Puces aristocracy in a way. Her taste is bold and creative and looks to go beyond “good taste,” which I find so inspiring. She says, “It depresses me to try to have ‘good taste,’ I don’t like the feeling of superiority. I don’t want to be obsessed with pleasing, with corresponding either to fashion, the diktats of the market, or to an idea of beauty; I prefer charm, to speak to muted sensitivities, and arouse curiosities, ways of seeing that are not predictable.”

Max Keys, originally from London, has a great and eclectic eye, sourcing just as many fabulous anonymous pieces as ones with a signature, or documented provenance. He’s a great ensemblier, inspired by the idiosyncratic taste of Jacques Grange, David Hicks and Christopher Hodsoll. To quote him: “I have a pretty quirky style. I have always found strength in individual pieces, rather than focusing on a certain period or style. I predominantly buy 20^th century pieces, but I would gladly buy Renaissance if it had something going for it. I recently sold a Byzantine gold necklace and in the same day bought the most amazing Deco chairs. I’m more interested in items than names and I think the item has to really speak, has to make an immediate statement.”

And the flamboyant Erwan de Fligué of Falbalas is a brilliant fashion historian and recognized expert who consults for many of the fashion museums here. His knowledge is vast and he’s great to listen to, but also to look at! He only dresses in period costume from between 1880 and 1939 and takes his role as a second-hand dealer very seriously: “When I go hunting for pieces, and I spot, on top of a pile of crap, an old piece that no one else has spotted, I feel like I’ve saved something, and that it will be of use to someone else. This is really important for me. In fact, it’s political…. I would like most of the things that are older than me to survive me. It’s not about objects that pass by and that I consume. I consider myself to be simply a custodian.”

I love this idea that you write about, that exploring the market is both a time capsule and a sort of subversive sensory and aesthetic experience…

Yes, that’s very much how it feels. The Puces is full of layers of time – nothing is linear there, every period coexists. It’s like a time machine moving through the history of civilizations, from Ancient Rome to Art Deco, the Middle Ages to Mid-Century Modern, the Renaissance to Memphis Milano. At the same time, it is a very immediate, physical experience. You’re constantly moving between eras, styles and values, but also between instinct and analysis. That tension is what makes it so compelling.

Do you have favorite vendors that you always return to again and again, and for what?

Over time you build affinities, both aesthetic and personal. And more than finding things to buy, it’s the rich human tapestry there that I love to engage with. I’m constantly meeting new people and making new friends there.

A few of the dealers I’ve only got to know since my book came out and who I love include: Mei Mei @meimei_vintage, a working model and a music, fashion and animal-lover (check her Instagram to meet her pet cockatoos) and the owner of a vintage fashion stand in the Marché Vernaison. Love her fashion inspo! Last Sunday she was wearing a ‘70s leather jacket and dress, a t-shirt she bought at a Chemical Romance concert accessorized with a Basque beret and shoes from UK brand Body Amplification Devices.

Over at the Marché Paul-Bert, Christophe Guérard (@anti_matiere_interieur_) and Manolo Vosse (@galeriekopek)share a very personal, almost poetic approach to the antiques business – one that values the secret histories and intrinsic formal power of objects over their market price. Another young dealer is James Darle of @darlemalotaux who curates bold, unexpected, fun and cool displays on his stand: a 1970’s B&B Italia sofa by Afra & Tobia Scarpa next to a pair of Swedish monk chairs from the 1930s, a Spanish cabinet from the early 17th-century and a ceramic vase by Ulrica Hydman-Vallien for Kosta Boda from the ’90s.

Practicalities: Best day to go? Is it okay to bargain? Do most vendors ship? Is it better to pay in cash?

It’s really only open at full capacity on the weekend, so that’s the best time to go. Yes, bargaining is absolutely part of the experience, and visitors are quickly given a masterclass in haggling! Shipping can generally be arranged for a price, and on the surface it can appear relatively straightforward. In practice, there are subtleties that come into play depending on the type and volume of pieces, as well as the destination. Over time, one learns how to optimize that process quite carefully. Cash is still useful, and some dealers only work in cash, although most now accept cards. There are only a few ATMs at the Puces, and they can have long queues, so it’s better to come prepared.

What are some of your best scores over the years?

Honestly, I don’t really go to the Puces to shop anymore – my tiny Paris apartment is already bursting at the seams! But humble little treasures do occasionally follow me home: an old Indian glass painting of a butter-stealing Krishna, a carved lion’s paw from a forgotten piece of furniture, a beautiful old silk scarf probably from a Lyon workshop, the broken marble hand of what may have been Apollo, pulled from the bottom of the Mediterranean for a dealer friend, or a tiny fragment of Byzantine mosaic picked up for a handful of coins.

Read the full article/ interview here.

Share

Hi, and welcome to Paris, Puces. 🇫🇷
If you’d like to stay in the loop, consider subscribing. I share a weekly edit where art, fashion, design and the Puces de Saint-Ouen flea market collide.

Subscribe now

🏋🏽‍♀️ Paris based fashion photographer Camille Vivier gets a first retrospective, opening today at the MEP. Best known for her surreal images that blur the boundaries between fashion and art, Vivier has spent more than two decades exploring the body, femininity and sculpture through photography. Among the highlights is her “Sophie” series, centred on a female bodybuilder whose powerful, carefully constructed physique challenges traditional ideas of beauty and identity.

🍨 Folderol, the cult natural wine and ice cream bar from Le Rigmarole founders Jessica Yang and Robert Compagnon, has just opened a second address in the 11th arrondissement, at 40 rue Faidherbe, around the corner from Clamato. Since launching in 2020, the place has become one of Paris’s most influential food spots, drawing queues for its small-batch ice creams, low-intervention wines and the unexpected but perfect pairing of the two.

🫸🏽 Surrealist Giacometti: Objects like Sculptures at the Fondation Giacometti revisits the artist’s surrealist period (1929–1935), when sculpture and functional objects were still fluid categories. Alongside key works from his time with André Breton, the exhibition brings together lamps, vases and sculptural “objects” made for designer Jean-Michel Frank, showing how Giacometti’s surrealism extended into everyday form before he turned decisively towards the human figure.

👠 Following Prada Group’s €1.25bn takeover of Versace last year, a large-scale, privately organized Gianni Versace retrospective lands at the Musée Maillol for the summer. Put together by independent curators working from a major private collection, the show gathers more than 400 looks and objects, from baroque runway excess to 90s supermodel-era iconography, tracing the house’s maximalist visual language at full volume.

📸 Daido Moriyama, now 86 years old, returns to Paris with Love Letters to Photography at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. Rather than a conventional retrospective, the exhibition follows the Japanese photographer’s lifelong fascination with the medium itself, starting with his seminal 1972 book Farewell Photography, which helped rewrite the rules of contemporary photography.
In the video below, the director of the Fondation HCB and exhibition curator Clément Chéroux talks us through the show (with English subtitles).

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!

Share

Philippe Starck is one of the defining designers of the late twentieth century, a figure whose work helped shape the visual language of the 1980s and beyond. Today, that period has become part of the Puces de Saint-Ouen itself, where dealers such as Remix Gallery specialize in design from the 1980s onwards, an increasingly important part of the market, alongside the antiques on which the Puces built its reputation. Yet Starck’s attachment to the Puces has little to do with collecting.

Read more

🪨 Final week to catch ‘Guest House’, the Paris takeover by Milan-based art-world internet phenomenon The Pink Lemonade at Item Idem. Founded by Italian artist Francesco Vullo, the project began as an Instagram art page before morphing into a kind of virtual museum gift shop for the online art crowd. Bringing its digital universe into physical space for the first time in France, the exhibition mixes all sorts of collectible oddities by artists including Corrina Goutos, Julia Obermaier and Andrew Orloski, alongside pieces by our Parisian friends We Do Not Work Alone and of course, the inspired host Item Idem.

🌚 After Los Angeles, New York, Shanghai and London, the sprawling exhibition Beyond the Streets arrives at La Villette’s Grande Halle tomorrow, tracing how graffiti moved from subway cars to museums while reshaping cities, language, music and global visual culture along the way. The Paris edition places special focus on the city’s own graffiti history, with for example FUTURA 2000 and André, while a gift shop conceived with our very own Sarah Andelman offers special editions and collabs throughout the run.

🎮 From 8-bit bleeps to full symphonic scores, a new exhibition Video Games & Music at the Philharmonie de Paris explores how video game music evolved into one of the defining soundtracks of contemporary life. Designed like an open-world game, the exhibition invites visitors to move freely through immersive installations, playable consoles, cult soundtracks, instruments, archives and around twenty games tracing the history of the genre, from Pong onwards.
(For French-speakers, you can watch this intro by the exhibition commissioners.)

🎈 Already all over Instagram despite not officially opening until 6 June, JR’s La Caverne du Pont Neuf reimagines Paris’s oldest bridge as a cave that pays tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s magnificent 1985 project The Pont Neuf Wrapped (which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025). Free and open to all 24/7, the inflatable work transforms the bridge into a free public art work, visible from multiple vantage points. Two spaces selling merch are already open: at La Samaritaine’s Loulou, and Merci / Le Vieux Campeur.

🏆And finally, on Saturday, it’s the Champions League final! Arsenal face Paris Saint-Germain at the Puskás Aréna in Budapest, with PSG arrive as reigning champions, chasing back-to-back titles after a dramatic semi-final win over Bayern Munich, while Arsenal return to Europe’s biggest stage for the first time in 20 years. Paris is set to erupt, with fans across the city preparing for a huge night.

See you there!

Kate

[ BOOK RELEASE ] The Ofr. Paris Cookbook, a collab between Mkrs. and my friends at 0fr., celebrates the joy, ritual and radical hospitality of the Parisian table.

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!

Share

This interview is excerpted from 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 second-hand dealer whose stand occupies a prime position at the entrance to the Marché Vernaison, Damien Vannienwenhove continues a family history at the Puces, taking over a space first run by his father, himself a dealer.

Read more

🗿 “Open this issue at random and imbue the image or word you encounter with an unknown power”, invites the Profane team. Launching Thu, issue n°22 has something slightly divine and prophetic about it – a desire to distance itself from harsh reality and invent a world where believing, wanting to believe and consciously dreaming become creative acts. One of Paris’s most singular indie mags, Profane is a biannual publication dedicated not to the art world proper, but to the figure of the amateur: obsessive collectors, outsiders, self-taught or weekend artists working far from official circuits. (6-8pm, Librairie Sans Titre, 143 av. Parmentier, 75010)

⚕️ Inside the little-known MAHHSA museum of Sainte-Anne hospital, a major psychiatric and neuroscience hospital in the 14th, an exhibition presents 145 drawings and paintings created between 1858 and 2020 by artist-patients, psychiatric patients turned artists, and artists engaging with psychiatry. Works by recognized figures such as Aloïse Corbaz, Unica Zürn and Maurice Blin sit alongside anonymous creations, regrouped through themes of refuge, imaginary worlds, symbolism and adventure – offering a fresh reading of the museum’s collection of outsider art.

🍽️ The historic Le Grand Véfour on the Palais-Royal enters a new chapter with chef Bruno Doucet now in the kitchens, following the departure of Guy Martin after 34 years, and the sale of the institution to the Paris Society group. A pivotal figure in Parisian bistronomy, Doucet built his reputation outside Michelin circuits at La Régalade, before also taking over Le Comptoir du Relais from his friend Yves Camdeborde. At the Grand Véfour, his ambition is to turn the 240-year-old institution into what he calls a “luxury brasserie”. The opening menu stays close to his bistro DNA while nodding to the grandeur of the setting – pâté en croûte, foie gras with smoked eel, poached skate with confit potatoes and caviar beurre blanc, and pigeon with petits pois à la française.

👖 Atelier Tuffery brings its French denim heritage – made in the Cévennes since 1892 – to Paris with a new Marais boutique (39 rue des Blancs-Manteaux, 75004). Across four generations, the family house has helped turn workwear into a wardrobe staple, still producing its jeans in Florac with a focus on durability and longevity. More atelier than flagship, the space offers tailoring, alterations and repair services, extending the life of every piece it sells.

🎭 And finally, inscriptions open Thu at 2.30pm for a rare public sale at the Opéra National de Paris, where more than 5,000 stage costumes and accessories from iconic opera and ballet productions will be made available to the public, with prices ranging from €2 to €800. From Les Indes galantes to Eugène Onéguine, Coppélia to Siddharta, pieces from landmark stagings by Robert Carsen, Thomas Jolly, Angelin Preljocaj and others will be available across three days (29–31 May) at the Opéra Bastille.

Thanks for reading :)

Kate

[ BOOK RELEASE ] The Ofr. Paris Cookbook, a collab between Mkrs. and my friends at 0fr., celebrates the joy, ritual and radical hospitality of the Parisian table. 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!

👉🏽 In stock at 0fr., other good bookshops in France, and on French Amazon

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!

Charles Mas makes the business of the second-hand dealer something closer to a laboratory for turning junk into poetry. His two stands at the Marché Vernaison are part inventory, part installation, part philosophical prank.

Read more

🎂 Founded in Belleville in 1936 and still entirely family-owned, French tennis shoe brand Spring Court is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year! Festivities include a capsule of its iconic G2 model (the same model worn by John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their wedding in Gibraltar btw), and to launch the capsule – available in 4 bright monochromes – Spring Court has unveiled this joyful campaign starring retired dancers Jo Ann Endicott, Elisabeth Clarke and Lutz Förster of Tanztheater Wuppertal, longtime collaborators of Pina Bausch. It feels fitting for a brand whose greatest luxury, according to the three Grimmeisen sisters now running the company, remains “independence”.
PS Florence, Laura & Théodora Grimmeisen of Spring Court are featured in Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Editions).

🍷 Coffee shop by day, wine bar by night, La Cordonnerie is an understated new place set up by seasoned chef duo Jonathan Schweizer (Café Les Deux Gares, Le Goncourt) and Nora Hauber, out in the Gambetta neighbourhood. The simple, flavour-driven menu riffs on smørrebrød from Hauber’s German heritage – pickles with dill butter, obatzda with smoked paprika, rillettes, anchovies with beetroot and horseradish, sauerkraut and crème crue, and taleggio with endive and pear – paired with a curated list of “very natural” wines. Fun.

Share

⚽ Our friends the Paris Makers Macon & Lesquoy have transformed their workshop a few steps from Place des Vosges into an atelier-boutique open to the public. Both shop and creative studio, the space offers a curated selection of rare embroidered pieces, including one-off samples and fashion items customized in-house, alongside the new collab with Paris Saint-Germain, arriving just in time for the Champions League final between PSG and Arsenal at the end of the month! 3 rue Saint-Gilles.

✨ Now on view at the Grand Palais, Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Temple (1906–1915) marks the first major monographic exhibition in France dedicated to the pioneering abstract artist, whose work radically reshapes the chronology of modern art. Trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, she developed in parallel a conventional figurative practice and a secret, spiritually driven abstract body of work informed by theosophy and spiritualism. Long predating Kandinsky and Malevich, her bold geometric compositions – first revealed to the public in 1986 – reassert her place at the origins of abstraction.

📸 And finally, our friends Eddie and Virginie of Fotoautomat – who save and operate some of the last black-and-white analogue photo booths in the world – have unveiled a first digital + colour booth, marking a new chapter for their project. Open at 4 rue Androuet, just around the corner from their original Montmartre location – opp. the cult grocery in Amélie Poulain – the luxe new booth introduces warm-toned, high-end prints on thick fine-art paper, housed in a custom-built solid oak storefront. And of course, our favourite booth, their first, remains proudly in place at the Palais de Tokyo. Open daily 8am-11pm.

Thanks for reading :)

Kate

[ BOOK RELEASE ] The Ofr. Paris Cookbook, a collab between Mkrs. and my friends at 0fr., celebrates the joy, ritual and radical hospitality of the Parisian table. 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!

👉🏽 In stock at 0fr., other good bookshops in France, and on French Amazon

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 is now paywalled, but Life in Paris remains free).

👉🏽 After years exploring the Puces de Saint-Ouen and researching for my book ‘The Paris Flea Market’, I now share that insider knowledge through bespoke buying and research tours – for collectors, decorators, architects, or anyone who wants to explore the markets with a deeper eye. Hit me up!