The Petit Livre Bleu

Astier de Villette
Astier de Villette
The rue Saint-Honoré has had its share of beautiful shops across the centuries, but nothing on it quite prepares you for Astier de Villatte, a short walk from the Palais-Royal,... Read more...
Mad et Len
Mad et Len
In one of Paris’s most beautiful covered passages, a house born from a refusal to live any other way makes candles and scents of startling depth. Mad et Len is... Read more...
Oriza L. Legrand
Oriza L. Legrand
In a quiet passage off the rue Rambuteau, the oldest pastel manufacturer in the world has been making colors by hand since 1720. A visit is among the most singular... Read more...
La Maison du Pastel
La Maison du Pastel
In a quiet passage off the rue Rambuteau, the oldest pastel manufacturer in the world has been making colors by hand since 1720. A visit is among the most singular... Read more...
La Soufflerie
La Soufflerie
There is a particular quality of light inside a glassblowing studio — molten, amber, alive — that has not changed since Roman glassworkers were plying the Seine valley two thousand... Read more...
La Mère de Famille
La Mère de Famille
There is a kind of shop that refuses the logic of the present tense — that exists not as a retail operation responding to contemporary demand but as a continuous... Read more...
Officine Universelle Buly 1803
Officine Universelle Buly 1803
There are shops in Paris that exist as arguments — arguments about what luxury means when it is taken seriously, about what the French relationship to the body and its... Read more...
Mélodies Graphiques
Mélodies Graphiques
There is a short, unremarkable street in the 4th arrondissement that runs between the Rue de Rivoli and the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, a block from the Seine, a... Read more...
Antoinette Poisson
Antoinette Poisson
Among the most quietly significant acts of cultural recovery in contemporary Paris is the work being done in a Marais studio and boutique by two young men who became fascinated,... Read more...
Deyrolle
Deyrolle
There are shops in Paris that sell things, and there are shops in Paris that make arguments. Deyrolle, at 46 Rue du Bac, has been making the same argument since... Read more...
E. Dehillerin store front in Paris, France
E. Dehillerin
There is a kind of shop that has transcended its commercial function so completely that it has become, in the minds of the people who know it, something closer to... Read more...
Berthillon
Berthillon
There is a particular kind of Parisian institution that earns its reputation not through spectacle, novelty, or the machinery of contemporary marketing, but through the unbroken application of a single... Read more...
Stohrer
Stohrer
There is a particular kind of historical continuity that Paris preserves better than almost any city in the world — not the continuity of the museum or the monument, which... Read more...
Nicole Barthélémy
Nicole Barthélémy
To experience this is to understand why some of the city’s best restaurants have Mme. Barthélemy’s cheeses on their menus. Nicole Barthélemy has been in business for almost 50 years... Read more...
LIBRAIRE 7L
LIBRAIRE 7L
  What It Is, and Why It Matters There is a sliding glass door at 7, rue de Lille in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, and stepping through it is... Read more...
Marin Montagut
Marin Montagut
There is a Paris that exists independently of the Paris that is always being reinvented — a Paris of tiled café floors and painted enamel signs, of the concierge’s loge... Read more...
Miarage Frères
Miarage Frères
There is a particular kind of knowledge that only sustained proximity to a single subject over many years can produce. The French have a word for the person who possesses... Read more...
Marie Daâge
Marie Daâge
La Haute Couture de la Table at the Rue de Tournon There is a kind of object that rewards the act of setting a table in the way that a... Read more...
G. Detou
G. Detou
  There is a category of Parisian shop that exists outside the logic of retail as it is currently understood — that has never employed a brand consultant, never submitted... Read more...
Alix D. Reynis
Alix D. Reynis
There is a particular moment in the Rue Jacob, just past the antiquarian booksellers and the gallery that has been there longer than anyone can exactly say, when the street... Read more...