Join Paris’s fairy-tale couture club
PARIS lends itself to fairy tales, in the 2001 film Amelie, the titular heroine trips around an emerald-tinged Paris apparently distilled from a Toulouse-Lautrec poster. In the Paris of Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, the pesky fact of time is can-canned right off the screen as Owen Wilson, playing the Allen simulacrum, time-travels to party with Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald.
Having done the starving artist version of Paris — in my early 20s, I veered around the city, crashing at night on a futon near Pere Lachaise cemetery — I was beyond ready to experience the fairy-tale version during a recent weekend trip. The Paris of my fairytale is a shade less literary and a lot more contemporary.
From the moment I stepped into Hotel Plaza Athenee on Avenue Montaigne, it was like stepping into the final episodes of Sex and The City — Carrie’s Sonia Rykiel double-stripe Breton with the Eiffel Tower behind her was an ionic image of that particular Paris fairy tale.
There’s a damn good reason it feels like Sex and the City. Plaza Athenee is where Carrie Bradshaw stayed. Swoon. But, of course Carrie stayed here, the Plaza Athenee’s nearest neighbours are Celine, Fendi and not one but two Chanel shops practically across the road from each other. If it seems all a bit, well, Carrie Bradshaw-ish, to make Paris all about shopping, hear me out. The history of Plaza Athenee is one that is irrevocably enmeshed in haute couture. Since 1913, Plaza Athenee has been a fashionable destination for the glitteratti. Marlene Dietrich stayed there and eventually took up permanent residence in an apartment across the street.
In 1947, Christian Dior established his couture house opposite and showed his inaugural collection at the Plaza Athenee. For many years, he photographed his models at the hotel and the restaurant even served a “model-friendly” dinner, presumably of minuscule proportions.
In 1971, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor stayed for six months, along with a reportedly enormous entourage. In 2012, the hotel received the status of Palace, surely just a formality, after all, royals of the film and fashion world had already deemed it their Paris pad for decades. And what a pad.
The hotel has undergone much expansion in its 100-year history and now has 194 rooms, including 46 suites, and boasts the best views of the Eiffel Tower. One suite, the Suite Royale on the fifth floor, is 450 square metres or, in other words, four times the size of my house.
The Michelin-starred Restaurant Alain Ducasse is a stunning blend of classical and contemporary design. The ionic columns and the ornate ceiling mingle with stark chrome banquette seating, calling to mind luxury cars. The room is pure theatre, a two-way mirrored cabinet conceals precious curios, revealed when the objects on display are lit within, and above the whole room, hovers a glittering confection of Swarovski crystals suspended like a private, dazzling weather system above the rarefied diners. Breakfast here is, needless to say, a banquet.
More fairy-tale happenings occur in the hotel’s large interior courtyard which transforms into an ice skating rink in winter. The hotel bar is another fantasy realm with a bar rising from the floor like a huge plume of smoke made solid. Below ground, the Dior Institut — one of only five in the world — is surely the most luxurious hotel spa ever. As Dior said: “Women understood that I dreamed not only of making them more beautiful, but happier too.” An afternoon cocooned in this incomparable luxury could make one very happy indeed.
Reluctant to leave my new couture life behind, naturally my first foray is to an exhibition of designer Martin Margiela at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, exploring his years at the helm of Hermes. Margiela famously rejected so much of the fashion world. He refused to label his garments, opting instead to place four stitches framing the space where a label would be, yet in 1997, nearly 10 years after his bold entry into the fashion world, he went from refusing to label his own clothes to taking on one of Paris’ greatest heritage labels. The exhibition looks at how Margiela subtly disrupted fashion from the inside and influenced a new generation of designers.
We also delved into the museum’s stunning jewellery collection containing pieces from antiquity right up to contemporary designs.
After a satisfying falafel in the Marais — a hub of independent shops and cafes known as the centre of the LGBTQIA+ community in Paris — we walked up to the Picasso museum to wander through an exhibition of paintings, drawings and objects which Picasso collected during his life. Continuing in the Marais, dinner was at La Chaise Au Plafond, a lively cafe-bar. The owner, chef Xavier Denamur, recently caused a stir when he revealed many French restaurants were relying on buying in pre-made food, something he abhors. His tasty dishes are all homemade, of course.
The following day’s wanderings took us from the high-end splendour of Avenue Montaigne — there was a pre-10am queue outside Gucci — to the bohemia of the Rive Gauche, taking in Notre Dame en route.
A day’s walking called for a hearty farewell meal. We headed to a Paris institution, Chartier in the 9th Arrondissement. Originally a workers’ cafe, the restaurant is a monument historique in the Belle Epoque style. The queues here often wind through the courtyard outside, in through a reception area and then back outside onto the street. The food is typical French and phenomenal value, I had a simple endive salad and poulet roti, but the spectacle of service is the real draw. Waiters hustling past with overflowing trays, drinks perilously close to the edge, and the bill scrawled on the tablecloth at the end.
On the way back to the hotel, I got lost, but in Paris there are no wrong turns. Each new corner offers a stunning view — probably with an obliging accordion player ready to provide the quintessential Parisian soundtrack to your fairy tale.