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Dream City: Paris Favorites by David Coggins

Dream City: Paris Favorites

by David Coggins

It’s only natural to fall in love with Paris, a city that welcomes affection, when we’re young. Paris still gets better with age because its eternal charm evolves. When Ernest Hemingway was in the City of Light in the 1920s, Le Select had just opened. Now, it’s a beloved standby for many generations of drinkers, whether they enjoy absinthe or not. Paris, like all great cities, exists both in the imagination and in reality. And it just so happens that the reality is astonishingly good.

Paris is a city of writers, not just French but American too. To get in the Paris mood, you can read The Sun Also Rises, naturally, which celebrates its 100th anniversary next year. One of the characters drinks in, yes, Le Select, but also the bar at Hotel de Crillon, when somebody else is picking up the tab. The book, when you pick it up again, is still astonishingly modern. For a little context, read Lesley M.M. Blume’s wonderful Everybody Behaves Badly, which details the characters who inspired Hemingway. In some cases, it won’t surprise you to learn, they were not at all happy with their portrayal.

More romance can be found in Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill, which focuses on Gerald and Sara Murphy’s extraordinary lives on the French Riviera. Their friends included the Fitzgeralds, Cole Porter, and Picasso. There’s plenty of glamour and, yes, misbehavior. “Didn’t you know?” Zelda famously said. “We don’t believe in preservation.”

When I’m in Paris, I like to walk, to look at paintings, and to eat. You can’t really beat that. Here are a favorite few places to visit between trips to the café.

Marché Biologique, Boulevard Raspail. The wonderful organic market on Sundays. For food, naturally, but also perfect for watching French women get very specific about which slice of brie they want. Tremendous.

Café Le Dome. Terrific Dover sole, oysters to start, a glass of Chablis, or a bottle, depending on what you’re planning to do afterwards. Comically good millefeuille even if you’re a dessert agnostic.

Charvet, Place Vendome. Yes, the main floor is lovely for anything silk—pocket square or scarf—but head upstairs to the atelier, where you can get fitted for a shirt, surrounded by endless bolts of lovely fabric. There are more shades of white than you think!

Les Pouces de Vanves. Saturday flea market for old paintings, antiques, and a thousand other things you didn’t know you needed.

Le Bon Marche. A classic department store that I visit for the wildly great food court (which doesn’t really seem like the right phrase for how lovely and ambitious this is). Not forgetting the second floor, for incredible home goods—whatever you need for the kitchen, and gifts for those back home who are jealous you’re living well in Paris.


Written by
David Coggins, The Contender
NYT Bestseller MEN & STYLE
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The Lost Generation

For those drawn to this particular moment in time, we’ve created a journey that traces the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel across Paris and beyond, exploring the places, rituals and creative energy that defined the Lost Generation, one hundred years on from The Sun Also Rises.

Discover The Lost Generation itinerary

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