PARISIAN WALKWAYS ❘ LE SENTIER


campaign in Egypt through the renaming of several of the Sentier’s streets (Alexandrie, Aboukir, Nil, Caire), including the city’s first covered shopping arcade, Passage du Caire, whose ‘spider web’ glass-paned roof has enchanted visitors since 1798. In the 19th century, the founding nearby of the Bourse, Paris’s stock exchange, saw this residential district transform into a primarily commercial one. The bourgeoisie left, and by the late 1800s the neighbourhood was becoming a vibrant working class area, thanks to waves of immigrants fleeing conflicts around the world, from Alsace to Turkey to Russia. For these destitute new arrivals, nowhere was it easier to find work than the garment industry, requiring only a sewing machine and some cloth to get started. Over time, the Sentier became seen as a kind of immigrants’ El Dorado, a reputation fed by stories like that of Mehmood Bhatti, who arrived in the Sentier in 1978 as a


penniless Pakistani immigrant and eventually became a millionaire prêt-à-porter baron. In fact, by 1989, 5,000 or so businesses in the Sentier were annually earning a collective 55bn francs, or nearly $11bn.


DIGITAL REVOLUTION But in the 1990s the industry began to change. Big chains like Gap and Zara arrived on the scene and started manufacturing their own models. Then in 2001 China joined the WTO and its textile industry began exporting to Europe. The Sentier would never be the same. The big wholesalers folded or moved out to the Paris suburbs. And yet the Sentier’s garment industry didn’t die: historic manufacturers like Atelier Boivin, specialising since 1920 in silk ties and bow ties, endure today, while successful Sentier-born brands like Sandro and Maje, along with many smaller designers, show there is still a future in the neighbourhood for quality- minded manufacturers producing “accessible luxury”. But textiles are no longer the only game in the Sentier. Starting in the late 1990s, internet start-up companies began setting up in the Sentier, attracted by the fibre optic broadband networks already installed nearby for the AFP and the stock exchange. The arrival


52 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Aug/Sep 2022


of Yahoo! and lastminute.fr and many more earned the neighbourhood the nickname Silicon Sentier. Yet the area’s allure for creative wheeler-dealers goes beyond its internet access. “The Sentier is a place that has always drawn pioneers, and it’s still a bastion for avant-garde entrepreneurs today,” says Sandra Mielenhausen, co-founder of Plaq (4 rue du Nil), the first bean-to-bar chocolate maker in Paris. “From the founders of the new Hôtel du Sentier to the chef of the (neo-Californian cuisine) restaurant Echo, this neighbourhood is a microcosm of people who aren’t afraid to innovate and offer Parisians something completely new.” Founded in 2019, Plaq is the most recent arrival on Rue du Nil, a once-deserted street which became a forward-thinking foodie heaven. Today the Sentier is teeming with innovative eateries, from the trendy Balkan café Ibrik (9 rue de Mulhouse) to Maafim (5 rue des Forges) by Israeli chef Yariv Berreby, to Pantagruel at 24 rue du Sentier, where chef Jason Gouzy’s culinary revisiting of traditional French dishes earned him a Michelin star in 2021. Similarly, at 222 rue Saint-Denis, the ebullient Brasserie Dubillot was created out of a desire to inject the waning institution of the French brasserie with a new lease of life. Other addresses


IMAGES @ J T IVERSON, LOU LE BLOAS, PARIS WITH CHARLOTTE


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