Les Parisiennes des Mamanset: A Sin of Pride

[botemp]

Lovers of Parisian style and fashion with a conscious mindset and lots of chatter in between.

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Favoured Parisian addresses:

Second Hand Shops

Outlets

Favoured London addresses:

Charity Shops, Dress Agencies, and Outlets

Favoured NYC addresses:

[[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FdQbdNEUpGqOyH2oqBQZBVsKISieRgxW_F67mgRLSrw/edit?usp=sharing Consignment shops, Vintage, an
d Restaurants]]

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Previous thread

Feeling the love for my belt Red and Desmond although to be honest the genius was Bottega Veneta and I just got lucky it helps being a late adopter.

It’s pretty lousy weather here in the back of beyond, warm but very wet. Has anybody else started thinking about autumn or am I being vastly premature?

I’m all about Autumn now, @mm47. Months of cogitation on a Summer festival wardrobe have been washed away by the prospect of chilly, sludgy fields. I’ll be wearing my Winter quilting and boots this weekend.

Autumn, thirty years ago, I went to Belgium for the first time on an Inner Temple jaunt - and stumbled, all unknowing, into a Jil Sander shop. (Oh, happy day!) In a couple of months I’ll be there again (entirely different occupation) and I’m so thankful that it will be at my favourite time of year for dressing.

In truth I’m a bit over equipped with woolly jumpers and tweedy skirts - but there’s room in my wardrobe for a trench coat or parka, (I really shouldn’t have browsed Casey Casey yesterday …) new boots and a single, perfect bag. Hoping I’ll have even a few spare hours in Brussels to wander into some actual, real shops.

Oh - the Phoebe Philo website finally acknowledged my existence yesterday! Am now eyeing up my relatives and deciding which one to sell …

I'm very much up for some autumn chat - I don't need anything else for the summer and I've not even seen anything in the Margaret Howell sale to seriously tempt me.

But first and before I forget, another recommendation if you've not seen it already (I'm late to the party): The Wham! documentary on Netflix. I turned on mainly for the tunes and the hair but what I found was a joyful and unexpectedly moving study of a friendship, and a masterclass from Andrew Ridgley in dignity and grace.

Ridgeley

Ooh Flo that is an excellent recommendation will save that for the next dreich day (I’m not Scottish but it’s such a brilliantly descriptive word), could well be this afternoon, we’ve had three seconds of sunshine, the sky has turned silver and dark dark grey clouds have started to gather…

Crkd I once found a pair of short sleeved Jil Sander shirts in an Oxfam shop. I knew nothing about her but the papery crispness of the silk meant I had to have them. I wish I’d kept all the treasures I’ve found in my time although they probably wouldn’t fit me now! Citibreak to Brussels how absolutely lovely. I went there in the winter about 35 years ago and they know how to make cold rainy days bearable with beer and wine and fries and excellent design. Casey Casey makes me drool like a dog outside the butcher’s shop (heads off for a Google…)

I wish I’d kept all the treasures I’ve found in my time although they probably wouldn’t fit me now!

Sing it …

This is the Casey Casey coat. (It’s in the Men’s section on their own site.) Sometimes I don’t understand why the world shows me things I can’t have …

Yes I recall the city centre being very cosy and relaxed - only, like Oxford, somewhat depressing as you travel beyond the centre. Perhaps it’s improved in that respect since then?

Anyway - all suggestions for Brussels shopping welcome.

Will add Wham to my watchlist!

I’m with you @CrkdLttrCrkdLttr Festival this weekend and I’d planned for a cute little 1950s style shorts/shirt set and now need to dig around for warm clothes.

Your planned outfit sounds excellent, @Voltefarce - hope you get to wear it for a few minutes at least!

Don’t know if anyone else is as invested in other (not tiny) people’s clothes as I am. The new season Margaret Howell offers this men’s jacket which would be perfect for a nibling of mine. But I know for certain they’d rather have the money …

Ah Brussels is a bit of a mare for shopping. The interesting shops are behind the Bourse but despite that being a major tourist sight very few manage to wander further to rue Antoine Dansaert. There's Stijl, a boutique that carries all the major Belgian designers and a few Dutch and international ones. Slightly more affordable, there's Icons, just around the corner. And then there's an assortment of rotating shops as Belgian commercial rents are fairly low so there seems to be a constant stream of new shops coming and going. Don't be fooled by all the trendy restaurants though, Belgians are good cooks and Belgian cuisine is great but they somehow do terrible things to food that is not their cuisine.

Then all the way at the other end of town is Avenue Louise/Louiza which is the ritzier establishment shopping area. Shops generally of less interest there as those big name shops are everywhere but there's some good specialty food shops and a consignment shop, called Les fils d'Édouard iirc. Or maybe it's filles?

Then around the Grote Markt, it tends to be tourism central but it's still nice wandering the little shops and passage.

I'm not yet in autumn moods, is the weather that bad in the UK? I have been playing around with drafting patterns on my computer which are all very autumn focused, so I suppose I am somewhat. I hope streamlining the process through a computer will mean I can get to work quicker and knock out some things before autumn actually arrives. The toiles will have to reveal if I'm any good on the computer, it feels less refined somehow but it should all fit together more seamlessly, in theory anyhow.

Oh and for Belgian fries, the one on Place Jourdan, no contest, it's an institution. You can order the fries there and eat them at any of the bars surrounding it. But, it's again off the map in that disjointed Brussels way, right by the EU institutions.

Brexit has ruined our weather, @botemp! All the Europeans have left and carried their lovely weather with them. Nothing but black skies and rain for weeks here now …

Thank you for the Brussels pointers. Last time I remember our lawyerly group stayed in a very smart, corporate hotel, either on Avenue Louise or a step around the corner. (In Luxembourg we stayed in a castle! I have no memory at all of our Strasbourg accommodation. But it was a long time ago.) I took too many clothes and struggled with my luggage. This time I’ll be more streamlined.

Is there a rainbow between you all and sunny Ireland then 😎

I know most of Northern Europe is unseasonably cool atm but it seems to be sunny for the most part so can't be that bad, especially after the heat terror southern Europe had, it seems preferable.

I don't think you're all that much into bags, iirc, but Labellov (also consignment) recently emailed me they opened up shop in the Louiza area, but they also sell some shoes and clothes. If you see anything on their site you can ask them to send it to that shop to try on. I think it's near Ferdinand Obb deli who do the most delicious shrimp croquettes (and some fried Belgian waffles, not my thing but I seem to be an outlier).

Loving the travel by proxy that this thread offers!

I’m in rainy mid-Wales and was all set to chip in to Autumn chat, but the sun broke through today and we had a glorious sunny afternoon on the beach running through the breakers, climbing dunes and digging jumping holes while wearing merino layers. All the better for being totally unexpected.

Yes bo, the weather has been that bad here - we’ve had mushrooms coming up alongside the ripening blackberries, but at least it’s not 40C and all the trees are still alive. Small mercies.

Wasn’t aware MH had a sale on, so thanks flo - will shuffle off for a look now.

On the autumn topic, I’m thinking about knitting myself a chunky cardigan. I haven’t knitted anything since a doll’s scarf in about 1989 so I’m not sure how likely it will be to see the light of day, but I like the idea… talk me in/ out of it!

Ferdinand Obb … shrimp croquettes

Supremely valuable information!

There’s not much left in the MH sale now, @ShangPie, so it’s more frustrating than anything else.

Mushrooms in July, that is concerning. I mean it's all been concerning for some time, sigh.

Have you considered crochet, Shangpie? Somewhat easier to do mindlessly (knitting requires more math IME) and easier to pick up and put down with demanding little ones disrupting your mindful craft time (also, no sharp objects). And less of a disaster if you make a mistake.

We have some stellar shrimp croquettes in NL but the Belgians make them differently, and they serve them fried parsley which is also weirdly morish. Tourists stupidly seem to prioritise beer, chocolate and waffles though, weirdos.

bo shrimp croquettes sound amazing. My mother used to make the normal beef croquettes as an immense treat and I have loved them all my life, even begging for the recipe as a birthday present once! To be fair I don’t know if I’d have ever made them even if I had been given the recipe as am completely terrified of deep frying anything. Mmm maybe my mother’s recipe for croquettes would’ve been the thing that could’ve got me over my fear of deep frying …!

shang I am intrigued: what is a jumping hole? (Sorry never got to grips with knitting but very admiring of those who can.)

I assumed a jumping hole is just a giant crater/hole in the sand to jump in and then, depending on size it sort of fills in around your feet when you land to much childish delight or you just fall over and chill out in a heap to the side of it if it's big enough?

Mm, my grandmother (the one who recently passed) was famous for her kroketten (the beef variety, I've therefore never tasted them). They got her as far as getting a free holiday to some fancy villa in Spain so long as she left the freezer full of her kroketten before she left. I think it was some mark of measure for that generation of women, I think it got her some distinction from graduating school as well (a sort of home economics/finishing school type thing).

There's a cookbook by the baker (kroketten tend to be made by bakers/patisserie chefs, traditionally) of the best ones from Amsterdam (the shrimp and cheese ones are amazing, the veal ones aren't as good though, I've been told) and he's got a cookbook in English now, condensed version of two Dutch ones (which I both own and are great, often made recipes out of them for my GM, actually). I suspect the kroketten recipes will be in there too but can't really check, they're also on YouTube (look up Cees Holtkamp, I think it's on a channel called foodtube), and I could easily translate them out of my cookbooks if desired. Deep frying is not that scary, but cleanup is a bit annoying.

At home people tend to make a variation on them if they don't want to fry them. Either placing the filling in a puff pastry vol au vent or wrapped in a puff pastry shell (just a square with the points folded inwards). It's not quite the same as a kroket though with it's thin crispy shell and I suspect it's more much calorific too.

💐bo’that is a really kind offer. I’ll try your YouTube recommendation first to see what I find and how I get on with it. And plaudits to your grandmother: if she could get a free holiday in exchange for her croquettes, hers must’ve been spectacularly good although I hope she got the place for a couple of weeks, it’s quite a laborious process and to fill a freezer wouldn’t have been just an afternoon’s work!

Also meant to say about nibling- I thought it was a typo - and a very sweet one, but I looked it up and it’s a real word. Definitely got to add that to my lexicon.

Yes, bo has it. A jumping hole is one you dig in the soft sand at the top of the beach, no attempt at a sandcastle or anything more than just a big sandy pit to leap into over and over.

The croquettes chat is making me hungry! I once made Spanish style croquetas at a cookery class and was horrified to learn they are basically a spoonful of really thick béchamel that you roll In breadcrumbs and then fry. Best left to the professionals IMHO

Crochet is probably easier, but I really don’t like the look of it, especially for clothing. Blankets are acceptable, cardigans not so much. Will have a think 🤔

ShangPie are you near a good yarn shop? They sometimes have jumperalongs like this one in Brighton (now ended, but YAK does them regularly):

yarnandknitting.com/product/jumperalong/

Even if they don't, a good shop should guide you through the yarn and pattern choices (crucial) and support you while you knit, even if on knit nights.

The wonderful Tribe Yarns is no longer in Richmond but they do online knit nights and provide advice, and recommend a knitting instructor:

www.tribeyarns.com/collections/events-classes

Milli the owner is moving the business to Scotland and will be selling online only I understand. But she gives a very personal service so maybe can help with the choices once she's settled.

She sells glorious yarn, at lots of differing prices. I still have to knit some qiviut - musk ox - yarn that I got there. It's softer and warmer than cashmere. I have enough for a small scarf.

Have a rummage on Ravelry for pattern ideas, but be aware that lots of new patterns now are for knitting on circular needles often in one piece. I prefer using straight needles, and sewing up pieces for better fit, so prefer British designers like Kim Hargreaves who still use that technique. Fruity Knitting is an excellent series of podcasts: I recommend starting from its first episode and going from there. There are some dodgy Ravelry enthusiasms for example for speckled and/or painted yarns - they look pretty in the hank, at knitting shows, but IMHO look dreadful knitted up.

Another thought ShangPie is the Cool and the Gang kits. Here are some for those just above beginner, to ease you back in:

www.woolandthegang.com/en/knitting/kits/easy?utf8=✓&filters%5B5%5D%5B%5D=42&filters%5B5%5D%5B%5D=55&filters%5B8%5D%5B%5D=111&filters%5B8%5D%5B%5D=112&filters%5B8%5D%5B%5D=113&filters%5B8%5D%5B%5D=114

Ah Poppy, you wonderful, terrible temptress! You have taken me down a rabbithole.

I am fortunate to have a good yarn shop that offers classes not too far from me, and they have a beginner’s knitting class in October. I’m sure if I join it and practice hard, I’ll be wearing my new cardi in, ooh, 2028.

I recall a menswear knit brand setting up around a decade ago that offered a blend of yak and merino, but knitting musk-ox yarn is a new one to me - sounds even more elite than bo’s Lauren Manoogian. Knitwear for the 0.1% over those hoi-polloi 1% 😤

I am not thinking about autumn yet. But I am not in the mood for summer shopping either. But I will be wanting to add a trench coat to my wadrobe this year, the last one I bought was helped by desmond actually a few years ago how many?! Has it been that long???

Your chat about croquettes inspired me actually and I shall make some when I return to the uk. I have had a few croquettes here in Spain where I am actually runs to freezer and finds that previous guest has left zilch, nothing, zero… The ones here I thought they were different to what I remembered and then I realise that there seem to be different variations. The Argentinean ones seem to have spinach featured quite heavily and no bechamel sauce normally, although sometimes we make that variety too.

I am enjoying the elegance of the several madrileños that are on holidays around here. So well put together, when the sun goes down dressing to go out and walk, meet with your friends and talk. Talk a lot. Such a warmth in their ways.