It’s early Saturday afternoon when I discover the Deneuve cabinet — a tall cupboard, fluted like a column — 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. This “puces” (French for “fleas” and, colloquially, for “flea market”) is the oldest flea market in Paris and, at 52 acres, the world’s largest.
The dealer tells me 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.”
The piece 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. It doesn’t matter if the dealer’s stories are true – part of flea-marketing is indulging in suspension of disbelief. This is exactly why I skip the Louvre and go to the fleas whenever I’m in Paris—the finds and stories are as delicious as the to-die-for onion soup at Café Le Paul Bert, a bistro tucked among Saint-Oeun’s markets.
Early that morning I’d hopped on the Métro and headed south 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. Like the puces at Saint-Ouen, Vanves is located on the city’s outer limits and was born when the rag-and-bone men who picked through garbage and resold their finds were tossed from the city in the 1800s.
photos by Caroline Tiger
On this particular day, it doesn’t take me long to find my first chopin, French slang for something exceptional: a silver-plated, covered vegetable dish by French maker, Christofle. Later, at Saint Oeun, I buy a simple linen gown (a steal at 10-euros) that was probably part of an early 20th-century bridal trousseau and a pair of silver-plate napkin rings, one engraved with initials and the other, mysteriously, with the number, “12.” I can imagine the châteaux and grand homes these items once belonged to, not to mention the large staffs needed to polish all the silver and wash and iron the linens.
It was fun to dream, if only for a minute, about owning the Deneuve 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 5,000-euros plus shipping is way too steep. 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.
Stacia Friedman hunts for bargains — and treats — in one of Paris’ grandest department stores here.
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