PARISIAN SHOPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 285, 2 December 1931, Page 10

PARISIAN SHOPS

. A novel scheme has 'been launched by the Union of Shopkeepers of the Rue St. Honore, one of the oldest and busiest shopping thoroughfares in Paris, writes our London correspondent. That enterprising group of tradespeople has deviied a plan to secure free hotel accommodation for visitors who 'come to the capital on really eenous shopping expeditions. The idea is, of course, to. induce the visitors to make their purchases in the Rue St. Honore instead of spreading their patronage over the various quarters of the city. Every person on.making a purchase is to receive a note of the amount spent, and when such accumulated notes from tne various members of the union- total a oiven sum the customer will/be invited to occupy a bedroom, with bath, m a first-clasß hotel at the -union's expense. Perhaps the idea will, spread to the Place Vendome and the Rue De La Paix. Entertainments oifered as settings for the dress parades grow more elaborate every year. Time was when .sandwiches and tea were considered sufficient. Then cocktails became necessary. Nowadays something more alluring is required, and already the supper cabaret has appeared. Some of the best-known dress houses pay large sums to popular music hall and concert artists to come along and create the appropriately intimate atmosphere and give the added cachet of their names to the entertainment. Audiences, however, are more .carefully selected than ever. Dress pirates have been very active this year, and more precautions have to be devised in order to exclude gate-crashers. Leading dressmakers have now instituted a system : of passwords, divulged to their clients only at the last moment. Saleswomen are unaware of these passwords; caution is necessary lest they should pass them on to friends working at rival establishments. > '■ •>,