SPECIAL REPORT: taste & trends from Paris 🚬💋

Step into the Parisian capital with two of the city's coolest women along with on-the-ground coverage of what people are wearing, eating, and doing.

Explore previous special city and art reports, including Paris 2024, Marseille, and Barcelona. Totally share this newsletter if you ~love~ it bb 🤭

Bonjour! Greetings from Paris!

Bobby Aaron Solomon

and I spent the past two weeks (more or less) in the French capital, partly to celebrate my birthday, partly to see friends, and partly to take a few meetings and meet a few people. It was a whirlwind! And, despite the periodic rain, it was fantastic. I come bearing gifts too!

Three, in fact: two brand new Taste Report™ interviews with two fabulous Parisian subjects and a (Paid!) breakdown of on-the-ground trends from Paris along with some recommendations of things to do in the city.

The first interview is with

Marissa Cox

, an interior designer who creates content for brands and runs the Instagram and newsletter

Rue Rodier

while also looking after partnerships for Substack in France. Marissa is someone whose approach to the world I love because she is the epitome of classic — but her approach to “the classic” is so inventive and interesting. She’s also very much someone who I think embodies the Parisian spirit and I was intrigued to get her take on what makes Parisian style.

A lil amuse-bouche of what we discussed, weaving in and out of the subject of taste and style: Marissa stressed the need to lean into history, both as a form of knowledge but also as an act of preservation and a point of departure to build; we mapped the connections between personal style and expressing yourself in a physical space, as interior designers are very much like a stylist of the home; she picked apart a few ideas that many persons (Like myself!) hold in their mind when they think of Paris and France, that the idealized and glamorized style of the country is as strong as ever; how English design does comfort in a unique way and, in aging, this approach is something that has become a point of nostalgia for her; how to approach nursery design without sacrificing your life and point of view.

It was a thrilling conversation! And quite cute too: read Marissa’s Taste Report™ here.

The second interview is with

Saveria Mendella

, a journalist and literal PhD in fashion who frequently contributes to Vogue France, GQ, and previously Harper's Bazaar who has a popular style and fashion podcast. Everyone I speak with in the series is so smart and has such great taste — but Saveria is truly on another level.

A few ideas that I really loved from our conversation: she spoke about how trends and so much of culture now is lost in mesmerization, that we become “stunned” by ideas and objects that are preventing us from creating culture or even living, in some ways; she planted the kernel of the loss of process, which we stumbled upon by talking about the state of Paris and how the city — like many cities — is less an individualized, site-specific culture as it’s becoming about going from restaurant opening to restaurant opening, a cultural holding pattern that has most modern cities in a chokehold; the state of the fashion industry, from how it trivializes women to how over-commercialization has extracted the art out of clothing; how autofiction defines this moment — but that this moment is ending, that we’re in desperate need of imagination, of fiction. I left our conversation with my head bloated with ideas. Come for the fashion talk, stay for beautiful intellectualizing of trend cycles.

There’s all that and more in our chat: read Saveria’s Taste Report™ here.

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Now, let’s get into the 🇫🇷Paris🥖Trend🧀Report™🍷 where we’ll dissect things that were noticed on the street to recommendations of places to go and things to do. Think of this as a sequel and building on both last year’s Report™ and the Marseille Report™.

Food at Le Cheval d'Or, "French tapas," Bobby and L'Ilot, 19 Sant Marche, O'Tacos, and French Tacos.

First, the world of food.

• French tacos have exploded, which is not a “new” trend but is something that seems to have become a more organized force as O’Tacos definitely seems to be pushing to take over and “claim” the space as the dish feels to be a culinary breakthrough that expresses French culture right now in the way that tikka masala is now the definitive UK dish. I am going to say this — and I am willing to put money on it: we are a few breaths away from French tacos having a major crossover moment, of a restaurant opening in LA or New York and then kicking off a culinary sensation.

• Similarly — and likely tourist-based — I kept seeing signs for French tapas, which is likely code for small plates but is an interesting turn-of-phrase that again suggests global culture has come to and has become Paris. This is a bit disappointing but also is how most cities are now. Soo la voo!

• To both of the aforementioned items, there is definitely a Latin influence on Paris right now as I saw so many Peruvian places and so many Mexican places, which feels very much of-the-moment as these didn’t seem to exist a handful of years ago (definitely not in, say, 2022). I cannot say that any of the Peruvian or Mexican food I had was particularly amazing but it has come a long way. Example: when I went to Paris in, like, 2012, Bobby and I ordered tacos at one spot and they seemed benign enough — until we took a bite out of the “tortillas” to realize they were raw gyoza wrappers. The things you lose in translation!

• A new wave of European coffee chains are taking over. The two main offenders, which have a modest presence in Barcelona and were not in Paris (to my knowledge) last year but are now everywhere: The Coffee (which is technically Brazilian) and Good News, two places that ironically have okay coffee and okay news. The “reason” that these are likely having a moment is that they both apply aesthetics above everything: they are very TikTok-friendly spots. We’ll talk about this later but these things are connected.

• Tea shops above coffee shops though, as there is a huge roster of tea shops that range from boba to generic “Asian tea.” This is a part of a larger trend, underscoring how something like Mixue is now bigger than Starbucks: tea shops may quickly cannabalize the coffee space.

• The god damned flower restaurants have become a plague. No more fake flowers on your damn façade, people! It’s over!!!!

A workwear child, Merci candles, the Cos quilted bag, Merci soap, canvas tote bags, and the Merci totes.

Now…fashion!