Window shopping

I only walked up to the Marais yesterday to do a little work in a cafe.

When I saw the stalls along the rue de Bretagne...

I wasn't impressed. I was there to work, not shop, and the last brocante I went to was dissapointing (and freezing) in February I was annoyed to see the road closed, to have to step over pile of watch-chains, dolls' arms, retro-modern table lamps...

I think it was the shirts that got me, ranks of them: men's, women's, new shruken, faded, all check.(I have a bit of a thing for check).

Unlike the surrounding designer stores of the Marais, where a single shoe, a sole necklace has the luxury of an empty vitrine, in the brocante objects and clothes are piled in heaps, themed or unthemed. It reminded me of Zola's Ladies' Paradise and how Octave Mouret's shopping revolution included the use of loss leaders; price-undercutting and a radical approach to shop windows:

Pieces of cream-colored paper were piled like strangely-shaped pamphlets. Littering the counters were the fancy silks - watered silks, satins, velvets looking like beds of mown flowers, a whole harvest of delicate and precious materials.

Now that scarcity rather than profusion adds value, the 19th Century approach to marketing is something that survives only in street markets.

With one difference.

Everything on sale here once belonged to somebody else.

And their ghosts are still hanging around in the way the heel of a shoe is worn down, the creases made in an old pair of jeans, the wear in a second-hand ring. Disembodied bodies are everywhere.

Some of them, like the skeleton of the Marché aux Vêtements are about to be brought back to life...
 

Others will go back into their in boxes to wait for the next brocante...

If you'd like to come and hear me talk about window shopping,  amongst other aspects of reinventing tourism, come along to Shakespeare and Company,Paris, tonight; the Idler Academy on Wednesday, or Foyles Bookshop on Saturday.

 

Comments

[Rachel]

Lovely post - I love the idea of the brocante as the ghost or afterlife of Le Bon Marche. (Speaking of which, are you familiar with Vallotton's painting and prints of it?)

By the way, where is the Marche aux Vetements? I don't think I've ever come across it and Google isn't helping...

[badaude]

Aw thanks! I'm not sure whether the colour pic on the Penguin edition cover I have is by Valleton but I didn't know he also did illustrations: I love his work obv as it's b/w and will investigate.

The Marche aux Vetements is one block north of the rue de Bretagne, round the back of the Mairie of the IIIe. There's a bit about the rennovation here http://www.teqteqparis.com/2011/02/rue-dupuis-3e.html. Are you in Paris or elsewhere?

[Claire - Lola Is Beauty]

My friends live just off rue de Bretagne and they call the brocante "The Broken" haha - last time I passed when it was on I was on my way to the eurostar and saw a table I really liked. Wasn't really logistically feasible!

[Rachel]

The painting on the cover of the Penguin edition of Au Bonheur des Dames is definitely Vallotton. As for prints, he did two - one that's actually called Le Bon Marche and another called The Milliner (Le Modiste) that looks as if it could well be set there, even if the shop isn't named... the BNF Cabinet des Estampes has both, if I recall correctly, so you could pop in there on your next trip to Paris!

Thanks for the tip about the Marche aux Vetements. Alas I am not in Paris at the moment (my next trip across the pond is three weeks away which means I'm going to miss you at Tate Modern, argh!) but it's nice to know about for when I'm there next...