BUYING CLOTHES IN PARIS

Evening Star, Issue 19918, 14 July 1928, Page 20

BUYING CLOTHES IN PARIS

THE INVISIBLE SHOPS In the matter of shopping, French Paris is very different from the tourist’s Paris—much cheaper and more interesting. But the uninitiated visitor goes there and comes back without knowing it exists, or disappointed because she has no key to it (says in the Manchester ‘ Guardian’). The Paris of tourists resides in the “ grands magasins ” and in all shops with window display. Eero you find gowns and fripperies sufficiently attractive, but sufficiently high-priced also, and lacking that subtle elegance associated with French clothes. These places are for all and sundry, not for the true Frenchwoman. But for every shop that flaunts itself, there are fifty little shops tucked away on second and third storeys with no visible signs of existence at all. These provide the excitement of Paris shopping, and transform it into an art—one which is never tedious, though it may be ingThe traveller who wants to make francs work like guineas, begs all possible addresses of these places before starting to shop in Paris, because no matter how reasonable the price asked in a big shop there is nearly always a small one which sells the same article, or another even more enticing, at a lower price. To know these confidential little salons is a matter of luck and perseverance. And when you have found them it is no good to glance and come away, for it is their characteristic that they are seldom what they seem on the surface. One that I know claims to sell only sports suits. Yet through it one obtains exquisite lingerie at next-to-nothing prices, bottles at a few francs of the identical perfume sold by a famous dressmaker at a staggering price the ounce, and—strangest of all —fresh eggs from a Normandy poultry farm.

Hardest of all to find, because they operate in semi-secrecy, are the shops that sell copies of model dresses. The fashion bootleggers who ran them will admit their traffic only to their known friends, or to friends of friends, and the best entrance to such a shop is a card to a saleswoman of the house. Paradoxically enough, it is from saleswomen at the big fashion houses, more than in any other way, that I have learned of good copyists. Many a vendeuso already in receipt of a handsome commission on sales from the house that employs her is secretly receiving further commissions from a copyist at a small place to whom she has introduced clients. These copyists are nearly always found in obscure quarters of Paris, on upper floors of unpretentious houses. They are not ashamed of their profess-on, nut they have a well-developed bump of caution. A type of shop worth looking for is the one which sells model dresses discarded by the dressmakers who made them. The turnover on Paris collections is now so rapid—the . life of a model being only about three months in the house which creates it—that there is an almost constant supply of model costumes available at sale prices. There are 25,000 models created by the first-class bouses every year, and they cost no more than a few guineas. There is one drawback, however, to these bargains. They are made for idealised figures. Some of the clothes can be remade, but the majority can only be worn by; the exceptional customer—hence their price. The woman who buys clothes in Paris must allow at least ten days for their completion. The shops which work more rapidly are, as a rule, the more careless and expensive ones. But, generally speaking, Parisian dressmakers and seamstresses are not interested in customers who rush them.