Zara and John are going to be married under a chuppah.
I love this idea, a canopy of love in the form of cloth, held up by a community of friends and family - what could be more perfect- I just don't know.
from a message to Zara...
The moment I read this I thought, were will I go to find antique French fabric? There is a market on what used to be the outskirts of town (in the 1880s). It was started by men who would comb the city at night looking for discarded items that might still have some worth. They would go just outside the city gate at the Porte de Clignancourt to resell their tattered wares. They became known as the pêcheurs de lune (fishermen of the moon) because they searched the streets only at night. I just think this concept is so romantic, so French, to turn the anxiety and hunger of scavengers into poetry. The market has since grown to be the largest of its type in the world and it is marvelous. I am sure that all the dusty treasures on the tables could tell a thousand secrets. I am going to go there to find a piece of cloth with a love story to tell. I can't wait to see what find for you.
I found everything-nothing. I was lost for hours in the dingy alley ways and the impossibly charming cobbled streets- for hours! There were amazing chandeliers hanging over chaise lounges embroidered with red and gold thread, sets that looked as if they had been pillaged from Versailles itself.
There were moldy leather telescopes...
and rickety wooden chairs and torn leather capes all so beautiful -awesome in their own yearning ways.
But I was looking for a piece of cloth, something that looked like a noble lady out one night with her gallant suitor, you know something really sweet like that.
Everywhere, I kept finding these lovely little bits of delicate white lace, torn and sometimes yellowed, piled in wicker baskets, stacked messily on an old table or warming under a vendor's snooty lap dog. But god, they all looked so sad and forgotten. There was nothing cherished about them. It was electric to take off my glove and fondle something so fragile and so charged with other people's troubles. I had to say never mind none of this would do. But I kept walking. I met a suspicious older man who offered to walk with me. He insisted I would need help looking for love in the form of antique lace. Uhm, thanks but no. He wouldn't let me take his picture because I wouldn't let him take mine-fair is fair. There was nothing striking about his look anyway, the look of a Gaul.
He was helpful in defending me from the wrath of the proprietor of this shop of plastic jewelry.
I snapped a single photo and she went mad! Yelling and screaming from behind what must have been an entire tube of lipstick and at least a tub of mascara. "It's so private what you have invaded!" I wanted to say "Well then why is it on a table at a market?!?" The Gaul said it for me. "Madam if you don't want me to see your panties then why do you lift up your skirt?" Uhmmm... thanks? I don't just don't know about that guy.
There was however this terribly sweet crêpe maker, a young man who should be swept away to Hollywood to play the role of the nerdy hero in some amorous techno-drama.
He helped me when I was lost and couldn't find my way out of the market and he makes a mean Nutella crêpe
And then on the outside of the market, still totally lost, while looking for the metro I found the past. It was what the market might have been like when the rag and bone men, the fishermen of the moon, would bring their tattered wares to the outskirts of the city to sell.
It was entirely different than the antique markets and the trendy one off hip-hop boutiques. I was a little bit frightened. There was something there. If I had an entire year to spend on this corner I might not ever learn what.
I found everything-nothing. I was lost for hours in the dingy alley ways and the impossibly charming cobbled streets- for hours! There were amazing chandeliers hanging over chaise lounges embroidered with red and gold thread, sets that looked as if they had been pillaged from Versailles itself.
There were moldy leather telescopes...
and rickety wooden chairs and torn leather capes all so beautiful -awesome in their own yearning ways.
But I was looking for a piece of cloth, something that looked like a noble lady out one night with her gallant suitor, you know something really sweet like that.
Everywhere, I kept finding these lovely little bits of delicate white lace, torn and sometimes yellowed, piled in wicker baskets, stacked messily on an old table or warming under a vendor's snooty lap dog. But god, they all looked so sad and forgotten. There was nothing cherished about them. It was electric to take off my glove and fondle something so fragile and so charged with other people's troubles. I had to say never mind none of this would do. But I kept walking. I met a suspicious older man who offered to walk with me. He insisted I would need help looking for love in the form of antique lace. Uhm, thanks but no. He wouldn't let me take his picture because I wouldn't let him take mine-fair is fair. There was nothing striking about his look anyway, the look of a Gaul.
He was helpful in defending me from the wrath of the proprietor of this shop of plastic jewelry.
I snapped a single photo and she went mad! Yelling and screaming from behind what must have been an entire tube of lipstick and at least a tub of mascara. "It's so private what you have invaded!" I wanted to say "Well then why is it on a table at a market?!?" The Gaul said it for me. "Madam if you don't want me to see your panties then why do you lift up your skirt?" Uhmmm... thanks? I don't just don't know about that guy.There was however this terribly sweet crêpe maker, a young man who should be swept away to Hollywood to play the role of the nerdy hero in some amorous techno-drama.
He helped me when I was lost and couldn't find my way out of the market and he makes a mean Nutella crêpe
And then on the outside of the market, still totally lost, while looking for the metro I found the past. It was what the market might have been like when the rag and bone men, the fishermen of the moon, would bring their tattered wares to the outskirts of the city to sell.
It was entirely different than the antique markets and the trendy one off hip-hop boutiques. I was a little bit frightened. There was something there. If I had an entire year to spend on this corner I might not ever learn what.
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