movies,  Paris,  travel

ooooh la la!

Oooh La La!

On Friday we visited the famous Galleries Lafayette. Probably the first department store ever invented. Did you know the French invented the department store? It totally figures. Galleries Lafayette is a department store like no other. There is a whole floor dedicated to lingerie. Another to swim wear and on and on and on and on. I have never seen so many pretty things to buy all in one spot before. If money is the root of all evil then this is definitely a very broad path to destruction. If my credit card had been working I would have probably bankrupted myself. As it is I bought nearly $200 in bras and panties!!! I am on “holiday” as they say and I will never ever be able to buy such pretty things again. Red, peach, turquoise… I now have beautiful bits to show under my clothes on purpose!

We also had the privilege of attending a private fashion show. Not a real fashion show but a special one in English especially for tourists like us. A special thanks to blueberry moon for letting us in on this little secret before we even got here. All you have to do is email them and reserve your space and they will let you in a secret side entrance to a small room where real live breathing models sashay up and down the center of the room to vivacious music. I filmed a bunch of clips here (5meg quicktime) if you want to see more. I apologize for putting it to the most annoying song ever but I’m away from home and my dance music collection is pretty scraggly.

I’ve always wondered how the models keep on those clothes that look like they are just about to fall off in the pictures. Guess what, they don’t. Their clothes do fall right off and oooh la la you get to see a bit of France you never saw before. The girl in the long white gown actually had trouble keeping her dress on altogether. If she wasn’t showing something in the front, you could see her thong in the back. I think the dress was just a little too big for her. They put this fashion show every Friday so maybe it’s not so much of a priority to have things fitting exactly. It was fun for a non-sophisticate like me. My mom and I definitely got a kick out of it and sitting in a room with a specially reserved seat was very nice after feeling a bit crowded with the throngs of holiday shoppers in the main store.

Apparently there has been a bank holiday and a lot of people took Friday off to make it a long weekend. Every where we go we have found ourselves in the thick of it. While I don’t like crowds that much, the holiday does make things more festive. Small bands play music in squares, flags flap in the wind and this morning some air planes flew over leaving trails of patriotic smoke in red and blue and white behind them. May is a very big month in Paris!