Guided by Fleas

In Paris, our writer discovers that art and beauty are everywhere, even in the city’s historic flea markets

I’m standing in a small, sunlit corner shop in the Marché Vernaison, one of 14 submarkets that make up Le Marché aux Puces de Paris Saint-Ouen — the oldest flea market in Paris and, at 52 acres, the world’s largest. Every weekend in Saint-Ouen, a town on the city’s northern outskirts, 2,000 dealers sell antique bric-a-brac, vintage clothing, textiles, tableware, and furniture like the white wooden cabinet I’ve been admiring for the past five minutes. The piece is tall and fluted, like a column, and beautiful in its simplicity. And it costs 5,000 euros.

The dealer, an effusive man named Marc Salem — “like the witches,” he says — tells me that Catherine Deneuve recently considered it for her daughter’s Paris apartment. And the cabinet’s previous owner was Inès de la Fressange, who, in case you didn’t know (I didn’t), was a famous Chanel model before she had a falling out with designer Karl Lagerfeld. As Salem continues to muse about the cabinet’s provenance — it first belonged to a Swedish aristocrat — I can’t help but think, “You had me at Deneuve.”

This scene is exactly what I had in mind when I was dreaming about the flea markets — les puces — of Paris. The fantasy would often take hold while I was admiring the pressed-tin doors on a pie safe or trying on vivid Bakelite bangles at a local flea market. I’m not sure when I first heard about the puces, but I know this: as soon as I did, I wanted to go there. It’s not that I don’t cherish my hometown fleas. Still, there are surfers who grow up on the Jersey Shore and dream of the giant waves at Waimea Bay. The puces of Paris are my perfect wave.

AND SO HERE I AM, with a weak currency behind me, but fast growing rich with stories, characters, and the history behind each object. It’s early Saturday afternoon when I discover the Deneuve cabinet, which fulfills my trifecta of flea market nirvana: it’s a coup de foudre (love at first sight), an introduction to a lovely, new-to-me decorative arts period (Gustavian), and it has a dazzling provenance, with major bonus points for celebrity and supermodel connections.

An intricately-designed mirror on sale
at Saint-Ouen

My find is a result of years of domestic flea market practice, as well as a day of schooling in the way of the puces, courtesy of Rachel Kaplan, my guide for the weekend. Kaplan is an American expatriate who moved to Paris from New York in the early 1990s. The former arts and lifestyle journalist turned tourism entrepreneur now runs French Links, a company that provides upmarket cultural tours and concierge services for visitors. Kaplan has entertained requests as varied as helping an American bride-to-be find a wedding gown in Paris and taking a Des Moines–based restaurateur around the flea markets to outfit a brasserie.

I can tell as soon as Kaplan picks me up at 8:30 a.m. in my hotel lobby that she’s a seasoned chineuse (French for “one who antiques”). Her petite form is bundled but not bulky in a fur headband and fur-lined boots, and a large purse slung across her chest leaves her hands free for picking. We hop on the Métro and head to Porte de Vanves to visit Puces de Vanves, a well-regarded flea market that’s smaller than Saint-Ouen and a good warm-up for the main event.

The Métro takes us to the southern edge of Paris. Like the puces at Saint-Ouen, Vanves was born when the rag-and-bone men who picked through garbage and resold their finds were tossed from the city in the 1800s. Public health concerns and aggressive urban-planning initiatives scattered these early dealers to the outskirts of town, where they continued to trade in bric-a-brac in the shadow of the city’s fortifications. These makeshift markets evolved into today’s fleas, gaining in popularity through the mid-20th century, in part because they existed in tax-free zones outside the city’s tollgates.

On the Métro, Kaplan reads a list of terms from a book called Le Guide du Chineur Parisien, giving me a quick rundown on flea market lingo. Dans son jus, literally “in its juice,” describes a piece that hasn’t been repaired, painted, or polished. Nearly all merchandise at Vanves is dans son jus, but at Saint-Ouen, you’ll also find reproductions and restored antiques in some submarkets. Un panard is an item that’s only sellable to a naïf. La drouille is a lot of junk, while un chopin and le grand musique both describe something exceptional. Derouiller means to make your first sale of the day, or, literally, to unrust. I decide that the term is just as applicable to the buyer, and I look forward to shedding my rust.

A shopper at Vanves

When we arrive at Vanves around 9 a.m., the crowd is sparse, and I take a minute to take in my first true Parisian puce. In the 1920s, dealers in Saint-Ouen grew tired of laying out their wares on blankets and banded together to build arcades and permanent covered stalls. But no such permanent constructions exist at Vanves, which looks like the commonly held vision of a flea market. The dealers unpack their vans on Saturday and Sunday mornings, throwing blankets over folding tables that are lined cheek by jowl on both sides of a wide sidewalk running alongside quiet Avenue Marc Sangnier. Although this is a smaller market than Saint-Ouen’s, there are still around 380 vendors, and from where I’m standing, the tables stretch endlessly into the distance.

The shoppers at Vanves are chic-looking — I see a woman wearing tall leather boots and huge, modish sunglasses and a man in a tweed driving cap and soft camel hair coat. A gamine with bright red lips, pale skin, and pale cropped hair walks briskly by, her black bell-shaped coat cinched at the waist. As we walk I hear snatches of Italian, Russian, English, Japanese, and, of course, French.

Kaplan is no naïf; she dives right in, making a beeline for some antique jewelry. I try on a marcasite ring, and the dealer, a woman with translucent skin and a silvery-white bob, tells me that marcasite was popular during the Napoleonic wars, when women pawned their good jewelry but still wanted to sparkle in the candlelight. The ring is lovely, and not unbearably pricey, I think to myself, at 50 euros. But before I decide to buy it, a dealer of movie posters and vintage ads sees Kaplan looking at a sheaf of promotional materials for Playtime, a 1967 Jacques Tati film. The dealer grabs my notebook, writes down “85,” crosses it out with a flourish, and writes “65.” “Pour tout,” she says. For everything. Tempting, but I pass.

Before we’d arrived I’d asked Kaplan to point out items you wouldn’t find in America, but now I realize that could describe nearly everything. She picks up a blue glass vase that looks like a Lalique, and singles out a silver-plated chocolat chaud service. On the Métro she had told me that the merchandise in Paris is generally higher quality and more sophisticated. “And most of it is French, so if you love French design…,” she said, trailing off, prompting images of art nouveau vases I’d seen the previous day at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs to dance through my head.

The distinctive modern architecture of the Louvre

The day before, I had also browsed the Louvre des Antiquaires, a market near the Louvre filled with tiny, glass-fronted shops that sell museum-quality antiques. At one of the shops I tried not to gawk at an 18th-century chastity belt lined with faded red velvet. The same dealer had just sold a cast-iron key roughly the size of a grown man’s tibia that once fit the door to a cell at the Temple Prison, where Marie Antoinette and her family were held captive in 1792. On the ground floor, the window displays showed enough bling by the likes of Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Cartier to fill a few Christie’s auction catalogs.

My intent had been to train my eye in preparation for the puces, but in Paris, taking in beauty is as easy as breathing. Objets d’art were all around me. I ate dinner at Café Terminus, a belle epoque brasserie styled by fashion designer Sonia Rykiel. Walking through Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a labyrinthine Left Bank neighborhood packed with high-end boutiques, I bought a box of macarons at Ladurée, the box the color of jadeite, and the macarons inside lined up according to hue, from pastels to jewel tones. It was a simple, and very temporary, work of art.

WITH TWO DAYS of study behind me, it’s not long before I find my first chopin at Vanves, at the table of a young dealer named Christophe who looks like he just rolled out of bed, then drank a cup of strong coffee. Scruffy but alert, Christophe is a second-generation vendor whose father also sold at Vanves. And though he’s only 35, he already has 15 years of selling under his belt. Among his collection of art deco pieces is a silver-plated serving dish with a streamlined silhouette. He tells me the piece is by Christofle, a French designer of tableware, and shows me the poinçon, the identifying mark tucked beneath the handle. Kaplan checks it out and nods. I feel a tightness of breath that I know means buy it now or regret it forever.

Knowing I have to contend with the American dollar, Christophe says he’ll lower the price, and he asks me frankly how much I can afford. I’ve never been asked that before, and I panic a little because I have no idea how much the dish is worth. He’d priced it at 90 euros. I offer 70. He nods. Je dérouille. I’m unrusted, and Kaplan and I zip across the city to Saint-Ouen.

Inside the Cité de l’Architecture, the world’s largest architectural museum

On the map Saint-Ouen is adjacent to the 18th arrondissement, home to Montmartre, an area with winding lanes and old-village charm. But aesthetically, it’s worlds away. After we exit the Métro onto a bleak-looking avenue, Kaplan explains that the Marché aux Puces — the conglomeration of 14 markets — is like “an island for the rich” at the center of a district dominated by subsidized housing. Before reaching that island, you have to cross a few moats. We maneuver around a gauntlet of young men crowding the sidewalk beneath the Périphérique, hawking watches and purses. Then we walk through a market with vendors selling cheap jeans, Converse trainers, and knockoff designer bags. The music is loud and the crowd is thick, but once we turn left onto Rue des Rosiers, which bisects the layout of 14 fleas, and pass through an archway into the Marché Vernaison, we find ourselves navigating a hushed maze of tiny lanes.

It’s lunchtime, and dealers are eating hearty meals from plates balanced on folding tables. I see lamb chops and bottles of wine. Kaplan guides me into a favorite art dealer’s small, glass-fronted shop. Two women from Georgia are agog over a small café scene of a zaftig woman spilling out of her frilly clothes and onto a soldier’s lap, his saber resting next to him on a banquette. It’s a great find, but it’s priced at 15,000 euros.

We wind around a hairpin turn to explore the alley behind the art gallery. Outside a vintage clothing shop stands a rack of starched white linen gowns. Some are embroidered, some are monogrammed, some have soft pink ribbons as straps — and the prices range from 25 to 55 euros. Kaplan says they’re probably from early 20th-century bridal trousseaus. We walk inside, where gowns, skirts, and coats hang from the ceiling, their hems just over our heads. The dealer, an older woman wearing reading glasses on a chain, doesn’t smile. Kaplan tells me that she once kicked a Thai princess out of her shop for ordering her around like a servant.

Now that I’m unrusted, it’s easy to leap in and buy one of the simpler white linen nightgowns, though I don’t haggle over the price — the Thai princess story has made me a little nervous. We see many more trousseau gowns and linens — stacks of tablecloths, napkins, and sheets that are remnants of an upstairs-downstairs past. And tableware abounds: ménagères, which are small chests of silverware often given to couples as wedding presents (sans knives, which were considered bad luck), as well as napkin rings, crumb sweepers, little clamps for grasping lamb chops, and other Victorian-era gadgets. I can imagine the châteaux and grand homes these collections once belonged to, not to mention the large staffs needed to polish all that silver and wash and iron the linens.

Rachel Kaplan, our guide through les puces

I buy a pair of silver-plate napkin rings, one engraved with initials, and the other, mysteriously, with the number 12. I have to tunnel through piles of silver to talk to the dealer, who’s sitting at a wooden table doing some paperwork. She seems to expect me to ask for the best price, because she brusquely lowers the total by seven euros.

When I return the next day, I’ll wait for a table at Café Le Paul Bert for what Kaplan promises is the best onion soup in Paris. It’ll arrive in a large cast-iron crock with a ladle for scooping up stray bits of Gruyère and rafts of bread. I’ll also be drawn in to the tiny La Chope des Puces by the sound of live gypsy jazz. Without Kaplan, I’ll get lost trying to return to shops I’d visited earlier. Today, though, I’m in the zone, being carried away by this perfect wave. We go until late afternoon, visiting shop after shop. In the Marché Paul Bert, one of the more upscale markets of Saint-Ouen, many shops are done up with beautiful interiors. At La Petite Maison there’s a stack of vintage tuxedo collars inside a tall specimen globe, and four cement planters gloriously crusted with moss and patina.

I don’t want to leave, but I must. It was fun to dream, if only for a minute, about owning the Gustavian cabinet, replete with its fairy dusting of It-ness. I can imagine saying, “Oh, that old thing? Let me tell you a funny story about Deneuve and de la Fressange.” But for now I’ll take home the memory and leave the cabinet as a symbol of the chopins that await the next time I head to Paris.

— Caroline Tiger

Getting There: Continental offers daily nonstop service to Paris from its hubs in Houston and New York/Newark. Continental will also start seasonal service to Paris from its hub in Cleveland starting on May 22.

What to Read

Markets of Paris, by Dixon Long, Ruthanne Long, and Alison Harris

Best Buys to French Chic, by Rachel Kaplan

The Essence of Style, by Joan DeJean

Paris Chic & Trendy, by Adrienne Ribes-Tiphaine and Sandrine Alouf

The Markets

At Puces de Vanves (Ave. Marc Sangnier and Ave. Georges Lafenestre; Métro: Porte de Vanves; pucesdevanves.typepad.com) around 380 stands — all outdoors — open at 7 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. Bring bags (most sellers won’t provide them). There are 220 shops in the Louvre des Antiquaires (2 Place du Palais Royal; Métro: Palais Royal or Musée du Louvre; louvre-antiquaires.com), located steps from the Louvre’s Rue de Rivoli entrance. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Leave an entire day (or two) to make a dent in Le Marché aux Puces de Paris Saint-Ouen (Métro: Porte de Clignancourt; 58.61.22.90; parispuces.com), and bring cash, as the ATMs are far and there’s often a line. Hours are Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Monday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Other markets to check out are the tiny one at Aligre (Place d’Aligre, 12e; Metro: Ledru-Rollin), where 30 sellers of low-priced bric-a-brac set up Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to noon, and Montreuil (Ave de Professeur André Lemière, 20e; Métro: Porte de Montreuil), where you’ll need to dig deeper for hidden treasures. Most of the vendors sell junk and new clothing. Open 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday through Monday. — C.T.

Where to Stay

The Hotel Concorde St. Lazare (108 Rue Saint-Lazare, 40.08.44.44; stlazare.concorde-hotels.com) was built in 1889 to accommodate the crowds streaming into the city for that year’s Great Exposition. The grand lobby, adorned with pink granite and mirrors, is a registered historic monument, and the rooms are spacious and comfortable. The hotel’s central location, with the Gare St. Lazare Métro station at its doorstep, makes it a good home base for venturing to the puces and also to Galerie Lafayette and Printemps, both a short walk away. Don’t miss a meal in the hotel’s Café Terminus, which serves classic French fare with a twist.

Oscar Wilde was in chambre 16 at L’Hotel (13 Rue des Beaux-Arts, 6e, 44.41.99.00; l-hotel.com) when he uttered his last words: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” Room 16 has since been redecorated, but the wallpaper remains remarkable at this Left Bank boutique hotel redone by world-renowned designer Jacques Garcia. The rooms, with flocked velvet walls, built-in bookshelves, and smoky mirrors, encircle a candlelit atrium that rises six floors. The over-the-top décor will put anyone in the mood for antiquing. — C.T.