Three stylish boutiques to add to your shopping itinerary...

Pleasure for the Eye and Ear

In the Batignolles neighbourhood near Place Clichy, French Touche is a small cave where you enter without knowing what you are looking for, and yet find the item you’ve always wanted.

Since it opened in 2002, Valérie and Emilie’s shop has sold French handmade products from about 200 craftsmen/artists in limited run or unique pieces. This adorable boutique offers delightful objects from retro ceramic jewellery to amusingly illustrated candy-pink cards and notebooks, from crockery to children’s clothes and toys. All these riches are designed to be nice to touch and pleasing to the eye, like the colourful leather disc sashes, astonishing velvet hats with decorative charms, elegant fur collars, and handbags made of patchwork. Simultaneously contemporary and classic, French Touche’s treasures are perennially fashionable rather than just trendy.

The shop is also home to a music label that sells out-of-the-way French pop and poetic songs, such as those from Arnaud Fleurent-Didier, Verone and Guillaume Fédou. As lovers of music and, above all, sensitive lyrics, Valérie and Emilie created the label in 2003 as a reaction against the so-called French Touch trend embodied by the electronic bands Air and Daft Punk. French Touche’s music is sold in a cleverer and sexier incarnation of the standard disc, the ‘Chansonpoches,’ or pocket songs—business-card shaped CDs: A must.

French Touche, 1, rue Jacquemont, 75017. Metro : La Fourche. Tel : 01 42 63 31 36. Open: Monday to Saturday, 11am to 2.30pm and 3.30pm to 8pm (non stop on Saturday). Selling online, www.frenchtouche.com

Intelligent design

Inside a blue and apple green cube, intriguing furnishings display men’s clothes. Contrary to what its name invokes, Lieu Commun is not common. It is the result of a vibrant association of talent: designer Matali Crasset, stylist Ron Orb and musicians Eric Morand and Laurent Garnier, founders of the electronic music label F Communications (discoverer of artists such St Germain, Llorca and Avril). This boutique’s key words are modularity and mobility. Hence, ‘Planning permission,’ a chair made of articulated Leatherette pieces, can be rearranged according to your mood: from sitting straight to lying down, with or without armrests.

Lieu Commun seeks to demythologize design. Made of Leatherette, velvet, or plastic, the playful furniture comes in pink, purple, yellow and green, and are good for children and grown-ups alike. Not only pretty, the items are also versatile and multifunctional: Stools turn into cots, eccentric columns into extra beds, and carpets into playgrounds for children.

And clothes are intelligent too! Ergonomic, they perfectly accompany the bending of knees or elbows. Jackets and jeans are made of resin that looks like leather but feels softer. Sleeves perfectly fit the shape of arms; appliqués reinforce comfort and line. Ron Orb even thought of putting a discreet hole in the pocket for cell phone cables and iPods.

Lieu Commun, 5 rue des Filles du Calvaire, 75003. Metro : Filles du Calvaire. Tel : 01 44 54 08 30. Open : Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 1pm and 1.30pm to 7pm. www.lieucommun.fr

Beauty as a cure

Beauty and cancer: two words rarely seen together. Yet, an astonishing boutique near the Bastille, L’Embellie, reconciles these two concepts. The shop aims at embellishing the life of women suffering from cancer by providing them with both elegant and practical items. “Because an ill woman is not just ill…” announces the few words written on the shop window.

“I wanted to create the place I dreamed of when I was ill, with all the details which can make a sick person’s life not only easier but also prettier and more comforting,” explains Anne Matalon, herself a cancer survivor who founded L’Embellie a few months ago. “Sick women need to enjoy their everyday life again—shopping, taking care of their body and skin. I’ve never enjoyed being elegant as much as when I was ill.”

Along with exquisite broaches, necklaces, bracelets, scarves and hats, women can find all the accessories they need during their stay at the hospital: mini-radio, mini-Thermos flask, personal mini-fan, small patience games, attractive toilet bags and many original note-books. The shop also presents wigs with fashionable haircuts, mammary prostheses, and clothing adaptable to the constraints of cancer—that is to say, made of organic material, easy to slip into and loose enough not to press scars. To help women fight nausea, hair loss, or exhaustion, Ms. Matalon offers yoga classes, counselling (sometimes with psychotherapists), and make-up sessions that use cosmetics for sensitive skin and teach tricks to hide traces of the disease or to skilfully delineate eyebrows lost from chemotherapy. Shoppers can share a cup of tea, mutual understanding and bits of advice in one of the tearoom’s unbelievably pink-red and lilac armchairs.

L’Embellie, 29 Boulevard Henri IV, 75004 Paris. Metro : Bastille. Tel : 01 42 74 36 33
Open : Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm.
www.embellieboutique.com