Paris Shopping
Shopping in Paris, France is an experience that must be savored to be believed fully. While it may seem like a lot of hype is given over to Paris for just about anything, it is anything but undeserved. Paris has every kind of shopping experience imaginable for a world traveler. It has department stores, designer stores, quaint little shops, street vendors, art dealers, and every particular quirk or specialty conceivable to be had in a single city.
The city's most famous department stores are Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette. In very close proximity to each other, these stores each comprise multiple sectioned floors of goods, from souvenir trinkets to Parisian fashion, from wine to hardware. While these department stores carry themselves with a degree of class and taste, the highest, and most expensive, shopping is to be found in the stores that fill the perimeter of the Place Vendome. Centered around a column that commemorates Napoleon’s victory at the battle of Austerlitz, the Place Vendome offers everything that the wandering imagination conjures up about Parisian taste and style. Housing the stores of Christian Dior, Cartier, Versace, Armani, and the illustrious Ritz hotel, this part of the city of lights is a haven for the world’s top designers and the well to-do alike.
Beneath the glitz and glam of Paris’ department stores and the stores at the Place Vendome is the quaint Parisian boutique. With vintage clothing always in style around Paris, small stores that open into small alleyways dot the city. Selling 1970’s classic Chanel, traditional French candy, or even simply baubles, these stores all possess a unique and enthralling character. Many of these little stores make Paris live up to its intellectual reputation by selling new, used, and antique books. From Shakespeare and Company, a famous English language bookstore, to the book vendors who make their home on the river Seine, Paris offers any lover of books a veritable buffet of choices.
Paris may seem like it is overrated to the traveler who has never been there, but once a Parisian experience has been had, one will find its reputation to be well deserved.