paris breakfasts: lunettes

Showing posts with label lunettes. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Paris ♥ Lunettes

If you can tear your eyes away from street level vitrines and look up...

You'll note an amazing variety of lunette signs

Quite abstract they are too...

And graphically sophisticated

Unless you're fond of Floridian jazzy numbers...

A transparent sign with iconic eyeglass symbols

A nice combination of lunette symbol and typography

On-the-wall sign alerts you they are open Mondays too

L'art de Voir - what a competition of both signs and shop names

Les enfants de Paris get their own lunette shops if this is a child...it could be a shrunken adult or a child posing as an adult..qui sait?

Woody Allen's glasses iconically announce a play

Even chocolate Easter eggs at Fauchon get lunetted

The proprietor of this Marais shop yelled at me for taking a picture of her sign.

And her quite unique lunette though it was well past closing time. She raced inside to shut off the lights.

Trop tard! Are there as many lunette shops in Paris as patisseries?

And her quite unique lunette though it was well past closing time. She raced inside to shut off the lights.

Trop tard! Are there as many lunette shops in Paris as patisseries?

Monday, May 28, 2012

Blue-Bleu

Blue suede shoes seem right for Memorial Day no?

Here's a way to double your creativity - spritz yourself all over with blue paint like Jean-Paul Goude did to Jean-Paul Gautier!

One of my favorite shots of French ultramarine blue watercolor swatches.

Mother and child reunion.

Have you noticed how French moms and daughters dress alike in Paris?

Blue bag + blue dress.

All she needs are those blue suede shoes. I saw a lot of blue in Paris.

A stunner of a bleu wall at an art show in March.

A touch of bleu at the show.

One of my favorite boutique hotels (in the Marais) is solid blue, Hotel Caron de Beaumarchaise. I long to stay here one night...

And their prices are nothing to get bleu about either.

Tres joli/beau oui?

A blue dollie at La Petit Blah-Blahs

Have you seen Nicole Robertson's gorgeous (means multi-colored Ha!) new book on Paris In Color?

Nicole of Little Brown Pen lives in Paris full time. Take a look at her blog and swoon or get ze book and look offline whenever you want to sink into Paris colors.

I went looking for some Cobalt blue yesterday but all I found were these jazzy, Floridian rhinestone sunglasses at Gap Kids of all places ($10)

I was relieved to see turquoise bleu is A OK in Paris but will it double my creativity? One wonders...

I spent most of my time in March shooting lunette signs...

Do not ask my why?

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Parler Comme un Politicien

Today's post is a 'shaggy dog' story with much meandering. I was in the 16th arr./Passy dragging poor Peter's Paris around to patisseries

And lunette shops - not at all his usual route since he's into history and architecture. I fell deeply in love with these red glasses(240€). Peter quickly reminded me I would look like...

French presidential candidate, Eva Joly of the Green party if I got them.

Which brings me round to how to improve your Fr. I read somewhere listening to French politiciens can have language benefits. They must enunciate and speak slowly so everyone can understand them. If you're lucky, when tuning into Fr2 News, you'll hear a slew of candidates enunciating endlessly. They even provide subtitles!

Elaine Scholino provides another source of French bla bla bla with her article on TV talk shows in the Times. The French take “le talk show” very seriously. The clash of ideas has been part of France’s national identity for centuries, and the intellectual — almost anyone with an air of gravitas and the confidence to opine on any subject in three points — enjoys a special status in society and a place of prominence on television. Days before France’s presidential election, the country has gone into talk overload, with both serious debates and silly posturing.

Her link to 'In The Air'/Dans l'Air will provide you with an hours worth of election bla bla to keep your Fr brain stimulated

Drawing from Dico des Betises
Or finally exhausted with all the bavarder/blab blab blab

Time to return to the more interesting subject of glasses/lunettes and dogs.
Last October at Cote Vue, 97 rue du bac, on impulse I bought 2 pair of adorb round glasses in scarlette and tortoise for a mere 50€. I felt quite pleased with myself but I never wore the tortoise pair. I wondered if I might exchange them for another red pair. The reputation of the French regarding store returns and exchanges preceeds them and it's not good. Just read David Lebovitz and you'll get it.

Cote Vue could not have be nicer about the exchange, even though I was 5 months late (!) Walking down rue du Bac I felt like I'd climbed Mount Everest. I happened to look in the latest issue of Elle, saw these round sunglasses and made a rdash back to the shop to have a copycat made. Yahoo

Two major victories in one day surely deserves one madeleine from Patisserie des Reves just next door.

The same little guard dog was out on rue du Bac comme d'habitude.

Did you know you can get protective sunglasses (Doggles) for your pet at Chacabo 17 boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, 75003

Back to the election - in today's Washington Post there's a fun story on the stylish changes the French candidates are putting themselves through with pointers from various Parisian fashion experts. A pair of red specs couldn't hurt M. Sarkozy IMHO.

Getting back to immersing yourself in Fr, it seems the best route is to drink Alice's potion and get very small.

Here's a touching story by American mom in Paris, Paige Bradley Frost of how her bilingual tots speak better French than she does. Some clever enterpreneur should open a 'Maternelle'/nursery school for us grownups. Sign me up!