Times Online - Luxury with Lucia

LUXURY WITH LUCIA

A CAPITAL GUIDE TO THE CHIC CHARMS OF PARIS

Some years ago I wrote a highly personal, idosyncratic guidebook to Paris. It was filled with what were at the time the hot, insider addresses culled from my own visits and from the address books of well-travelled friends. How times change. Some of the best of the addresses have gone... gone to the great graveyard where trendy boutiques and hip-hop hairdressers go. The charm of Paris, of course, has always been its combination of those wonderfully reassuring bastions of quality and the refreshing little upstarts offering of-the-moment chic. Since I'm always much more partial to personal, hard-earned, very pared-down advice than the sort that comes in big tomes of standard guide books, let me recommend Susan Tabak's very own insider guide to shopping in Paris.

I've written about Tabak before. She's a dauntingly chic New Yorker who knows Paris like the back of her hand and seems to be on best-buddy terms with such Parisian taste-leaders as Laura Ungaro and Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand. From time to time (for a not inconsiderable fee) she takes groups of shoppers on her very own insider's tour of Paris. Since the fee is beyond the means of most of us, the next best thing is to buy her book, Chic In Paris: Style Secrets & Best Addresses, for a mere £15 (from September 18 at Waterstone's and Daunt's).

This is primarily a girlie book, full of the stuff we all want to know. Where to get the best underwear? Sabia Rosa. Where does Nathalie Rykiel get her hair done? Christophe Robin. What's the secret of Loulou de la Falaise's style? Black skinny trousers, a cashmere V-neck in a bright colour and a black velvet jacket, that's what. Oh, and black jewels in jet and onyx.

Much of the information is dispensed through interviews with eight impeccably au fait Parisiennes. First off there's Georgina Brandolini, who was once Valentino's muse, then worked for Balmain and nowadays has a gorgeous little knitwear line which can be found at 16 Boulevard Raspail, Paris 6.

Then we have Loulou de la Falaise, whose own boutique at 7 Rue de Bourgogne, Paris 7, I've written about before. Mina d'Ornano has the wonderfully quirky line called minaPoe at 19 Rue Duphot, Paris 1. Marie-Helene de Taillac, the jeweller, is another of her interviewees and is followed by Spela Lenarcic (stylist and currently consultant for Celine) who, when she's not wearing Celine, wears Viktor & Rolf and goes to Mehdi Glaoua for her haircuts (by appointment only: telephone 06 1350 7972).

Carole Rochas loves Delage shoes, bags by Renaud Pellegrino and Asian baskets while Ines de la Fressange, former muse of Karl Lagerfeld, recommends antique jewellery from Barboza (356 Rue Saint-Honore, Paris 1) and knitwear from Zadig et Voltaire (15 Rue de Jour, Paris 1). Finally there's Nathalie Rykiel, who, besides telling us where she gets her hair done and her favourite lotions and potions also reveals that you can get a great Turkish bath at the Ritz.

This is Paris more through the eyes of eight incredibly chic and well-connected Parisians than through Susan Tabak's own discoveries. Nevertheless there are places here that even I, once the author of a little Parisian guide, have yet to visit. What I love most about it is that it is tightly edited. Instead of hunderds of names that dazzle by their comprehensiveness, there are just a few with which one knows Tabak and her clutch of women friends are all intimately acquainted.

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