PARISIAN WALKWAYS ❘ LE SENTIER LE SENTIER
Jeffrey T Iverson visits Le Sentier, Paris’s historic garment district, a neighbourhood which has been all too often neglected but which is finally enjoying its share of the limelight
LIBRAIRIE PETITE ÉGYPTE 35 rue des Petits Carreaux
Tel. (+33) 1 47 03 34 30
Founded in 2015, this vibrant independent bookstore caters to the Sentier’s wide clientele of creative professionals, schools and families with a vast collection of works for all ages and interests, most of which are carefully curated from small publishers. Its name refers to the Sentier’s many Egypt-themed streets, and the store offers a number of books on the history of fashion and the Sentier.
T
WILO & GROVE 40 rue des Petits Carreaux
Tel. (+33) 1 89 32 96 80
After a decade working at Christie’s, Fanny and Olivia decided it was time the archetypal French art gallery got an overhaul. Out with the white box décor and the snooty reception, they created a gallery as welcoming as your best friend’s apartment, filled with vintage furnishings and an exquisite collection of sculptures and paintings by rising artists at prices for every budget.
he neighbourhoods of central Paris have always ranked among the most cherished in the city for property investors and tourists alike, from Île Saint-Louis to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Yet one neighbourhood at the heart of
the city has always been snubbed as the odd one out – le Sentier, a tangle of streets in the 2nd arrondissement, bordered on the north and south by Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle and Rue Réaumur, and on the east and west by Boulevard de Sébastopol and Rue Montmartre. Home to a notorious slum in the 17th century and transformed into a bustling garment district by the 19th century, the Sentier has long been disregarded by many Paris lovers as a gritty enclave of cacophonous textile workshops and traffic jams. Yet today that’s changing. As segments of the textile industry have begun to leave Paris, a wave of French start-ups and dot-com companies has moved in, while former workshops have been transformed into chic loft apartments. A host of new restaurants, galleries and boutiques has opened to satisfy a growing clientele of cultured, curious and affluent Parisians. Now with hip new hotels popping up,
50 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Aug/Sep 2022
ATELIER ALICE HUBERT – LE SPHINX 97 passage du Caire Tel. (+33) 9 54 67 34 83
Ever since stars from Maïwenn to Mélanie Laurent started wearing her creations, Alice Hubert has been one of Paris’s most talked about jewellers. Inspired by jewellery from Egypt to the 1900s, and with a penchant for using saucy bons mots and images to awaken one’s inner femme fatale, Alice’s jewels don’t just catch the eye, they start conversations.
The Oasis of Aboukir by botanist/artist Patrick Blanc
tourists are coming to the Sentier for the very first time and discovering a new face of the City of Light – a fascinating quartier with a tradition of go-getter entrepreneurship which has made it one of the most dynamic reservoirs of trendsetting businesses in Paris. When visitors would step off the Metro at the Sentier stop a decade ago, it was usually to take a stroll south down the Rue Montorgueil, an historic, postcard-perfect market street beloved of foodies. Yet today, many of those stepping off the Metro are walking north instead, across Rue Réaumur and up Rue des Petits Carreaux into the Sentier. There, the narrow, cobblestone streets are lined with shops, bars and restaurants, mostly recently opened. People dine and sip drinks in the sun at tables covering the square between Rue des Petits Carreaux and Rue d’Aboukir, overlooked by a towering wall of greenery known as the Oasis of Aboukir – a five-storey vertical garden created in 2013 by the botanist/artist Patrick Blanc to cover what was once a sad façade of bare cement.
In this once sleepy corner of the Paris garment district, the signs are everywhere that a dynamic change is afoot. Take the lively bookstore Petite Égypte,
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