A la Bonne Renommée

I went for a walk in the Marais the other day and took pictures of one of my favorite shops, A la Bonne Renommée, which I can highly recommend for anyone who loves ethnic textiles. It's a fabulous store, very inspirational. I'm going to include it on my list of places for quilters to visit in Paris.

Just look at the window display. Ethnic jewelry, beautiful ikat, and a suzani. Swoon.
Beautiful pillow made of ikat fabric (at least I assume that's ikat, somebody correct me if I'm wrong).
And a close-up of the little silver pitcher with fabric tassels. So simple, yet so lovely. Gives me decorating ideas.
I love these embroidered slippers.

A lovely jacket. I did a terrible job of getting the labels photographed, so I'm afraid I don't know the details of this piece.
A shisha'd jacket from Gujarat in northern India.

I so wanted to take good pictures of the suzanis, but always caught lots of window reflection. Suzanis are embroidered wallhangings made in Central Asia in countried such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. From this picture you might believe this is an appliqued quilt.
Look at the hat - the christmas lights at the top are a festive touch. The wooden object in the lower right appears to be a pin cushion - at the very least it has pins sticking out of it, and more of those wonderful fabric tassels.
Another suzani.
A close-up. I'll talk more about the book later in the post.
I went into the store for the first time and worked up the nerve to ask permission to take photos. They agreed - woohoo.
These pointy hats are such a hoot.
I love the embroidery on the scarf.

More suzanis and an embroidered pillow:

Suzanis and patchwork pillows:

This outfit is so cute. I'm sure I couldn't carry it off (aka wear it successfully) but I do adore it. This just reinforces my desire to buy a sewing dressform so that I can display clothing as art.

My favorite hat and look at that beautiful bag, another embroidered piece from Gujarat:

The store info for anyone coming to visit:

I came home and immediately checked amazon for information on this book Textiles & vêtements du monde : Carnet de voyage d'une styliste by Catherine Legrand. The link will take you to the French site, because the book is newly published in this France, but doesn't appear to have been translated into English. Hope it will be someday.

If you read French and are interested in ethnic textiles and clothes, I suggest you check out the book - I know the pictures are wonderful. The author is a "styliste" at this store. My french dictionary translates that as a coutour designer.
On a completely different subject, my husband took the day off yesterday and we visited the Louvre. Wow, there are so many fewer visitors on a weekday in the winter - we're going to have to do this more often. We then went to Angelina's to have their famous old fashioned French hot chocolate. More like a liquified candy bar - very thick and rich. Delicious but almost too much. Okay, that also might be due to the fact that I ordered a pain au chocolate with it...
I got a great email from someone who told me that I needed to try Strasbourg for Christmas decorations and ornaments. I'm ashamed to say that I can't find that email now in my account, not in any of the folders including the deleted folder. aiyeee. Can you write to me again? Would love to correspond.