Shopping Bags: Stylish Souvenirs

Years ago, when I first moved to Paris I was hopelessly lost, broke and desperate to come home with something unique to show for my trip. I began collecting business cards as a way of both keeping track of where I was and collecting something that wouldn’t necessitate a bank loan. When a trendy little boutique ran out of cards and gave me a shopping bag instead, a second obsession began that would eventually trump the first:

Part of the fun of collecting the bags is that unlike the business cards, the bags are not something a non-customer is entitled to and so, depending on the store, the experience can be like asking for one of their light fixtures. The look on almost every storekeeper’s face says “You want what?” and the adrenalin rush in getting one is triple what it is for the cards. In real life, I am someone who rarely, if ever, lies, but somehow in French, I am expert and I construct overly-elaborate, highly suspicious stories about why I need whatever bag I happen to be asking for at the moment. The rain has been a great advantage here because if my creative juices fail me I can always say that I need a bag in which to put my wet umbrella. Before I leave my dorm room for the day I put a few of my things in a small paper bag that is already ripping just a tad to later serve as proof that I need something sturdier. On the occasions when the salesperson looks really tough I behave like the Poor Little Match Girl, cocking my head and turning up my eyebrows like a Keane drawing.

The detail and construction of most of them are so complicated they look like sculptures. The bag for Victoire, the upscale clothing boutique on the Place des Victoires is an over-sized rectangular box so rigid it can stand independently. It could be turned upside down and used as an end table. On its creamy white canvas, covering the entire bag, is the sea green etching of the Places des Victories in some long-ago century. When I enter other stores carrying it, the sales help flocks to me, thinking I have bought something there and may possibly buy something else at their store.

The bag from the shoe boutique, Sartore is a subtle tan with the store’s logo of a little dog waiting for its mistress to finish shoe shopping. The thick rope handles look like the straps of a Vuitton handbag. The hipster boutique Une Aprés Midi du Chein has an oh-so-French-looking baby pink background with chalky white bow and looks like something out of the 50s.

At a certain point the bag collecting game reverses itself. Instead of finding the store and asking for a bag, I am now finding the bag and going to the store. I create a mental point value for them and I challenge myself each day to get the next, most coveted one.

One day while walking on the rue Cambon, which is being ripped up and didn’t have the glamour I’d expected it to, I spied a much older French woman walking down the street carrying an enormous hat box. Very old money-looking, she wears what looks to be a real Chanel suit, white gloves, spectator heels and a large hat, all in ninety degree heat. A sort of Brooke Astor type, she navigates the butchered streets and precariously balanced machinery with the nimbleness of an athlete working an obstacle course. The hat box has the most wonderful-looking signature of, I assume, a hat maker and the moment I see her pass by with it, I immediately turn and follow her down the street to see if there is an address. I need this box. I dodge cranes and barricades and ditches to catch her. Even though she swings it back and forth as she walks, I manage to catch the address. It is 10, rue Cambon.

There is no storefront at this address, but welded to one of the windows of an upper-story floor is a huge three-dimensional sign in the shape of the signature. Tentatively, thinking I might be barging in to a private house, I enter the building and climb the stairs until I see a sign of the signature by one of the doors. Just as I began to knock, the occupant opens the door, and I come within a centimeter of pounding his head with my closed fist. Instantly he realizes what almost happened and starts to laugh. “Bienvenue!” he cries and welcomes me into his flat with a wave of his hand.

As it turns out, I have stumbled into the private atelier of one of Paris’ great hat makers. His walls are covered in pictures of celebrities and royalty wearing his creations. Before I had a chance to make up some lie to get the box, I had a hat on my head. A mad hatter if ever there was one, he quickly ushers me over to a mirror where he stands behind me and adjusts that and the twenty or so other hats (most of which are at least the size of birdcages) he has his little assistant bring over. Has he mistaken me for a scheduled client? When he summons his muse to bring over a second pile, I think I’d better make it clear that I have no intention of purchasing one, although he doesn’t seemed terribly concerned about that since he just keeps putting hat after hat on my head and getting a bigger kick out of it with every new look. Somehow, in spite of his enthusiasm, I am too embarrassed at having already taken so much of his energy to ask for a box so I politely say I need to go and thank him with equal enthusiasm for his time. Deeply disappointed that our time together is over, he gives me a hug and a business card (without my asking for it) and says to come back any time I want. I promise to return as soon as I am in the market for a new hat.

The prize of the trip, however, is a bag I’ve seen all the chic young women in Paris carrying, and as my time here gets shorter and shorter, I get more and more nervous about securing it. From Jean-Paul Gauthier’s clothing boutique, it is about three feet high, in the shape of one of those famous green kiosks that are found all around the streets of Paris and is not just the best shopping bag, but the best statue I’ve ever seen. It is the Birkin of shopping bags.

Had I walked into the store with the intention of stealing something, I could not have been more nervous. Sheepishly I “shop” until all the customers have gone. I figure I’ll have a better shot if the clerk doesn’t have to worry about other “customers” following suit. (I briefly contemplate buying a pair of on-sale capri pants made out of a toile fabric just to get the bag. Upon closer inspection of the material, what look to be scenes of peasants in a field are actually groups of Hell’s Angels on Harleys. Brilliant.) When the coast is clear, I make my move. I’ve been debating for days about what lie to tell the clerk. Should I have a dying sister in the U.S. who really, really wants the bag? Should I be a representative from the Museum of Modern Art trying to get one for the permanent collection? Should I be a writer from W magazine? At the last minute I go with the little sister idea, changing her terminal illness to an interest in fashion. The salesgirl, who looks to be about 17 herself, is paralyzed with fear over what to do. As if this is the most challenging moral dilemma she has faced in her young life, she looks around the empty store seemingly waiting for it to give her guidance. As if she is momentarily straying from an otherwise heretofore highly ethical existence and wants me to know it, she discreetly slides a folded kiosk bag across the counter and looks the other way while I’ll take it. As if completing a drug deal, I look at her as if to say that if asked, I will take the heat for both of us.

Fifteen years and many, many trips to France later, I still can’t help playing the game when I’m there. That which is underappreciated, undiscovered and still uncommoditized still thrills me over that which the world is able to acquire with either money or ease. I have now amassed so many cards and bags that they are used in my house as art and attract more attention from visitors than hard-earned pieces of furniture that take up whole rooms. “What are these?” someone will say when looking at random cards tucked into the glass doors of an antique china cabinet. “Are those shopping bags in those frames?” they say, inspecting the wall of my den. “Yes,” I want to say, “they helped me find my way.”

Photo credits: Shopper photos: @Tinou

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3. The Little Black Book of Paris, 2011 edition

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