The Marais district — essentially the 3rd arrondissement — is a quiet area that’s becoming increasingly trendy and popular with designers. The Stéphanie de Saint-Aignan boutique is in a quiet cobbled residential street with cute shops at ground level and apartments above.
The shop is bright and uncluttered, in a modern style, with the perfumes arranged around the walls on white cupboards. There’s a dinky spiral staircase leading to an upstairs stockroom…
The Different Company shop in Paris is in the Jewish quarter of the Marais district, on the same quiet road as the Miller et Bertaux boutique.
The shop sells the full range of The Different Company products — bottles, leather cases, etc. — but also carries other ranges that match the The Different Company aesthetic of beautiful presentation and packaging. At the time of my visit, the ‘guest’ line was Maison Calavas, which offers cosmetics in gorgeous palettes, many of them leather-clad in a similar way to the The Different Company’s leather containers…
The Miller et Bertaux shop in Paris is in the Jewish quarter of the Marais district, in a delightful area of small alleys and exquisite boutiques; you’ll simply melt with desire for the clothes and handbags in all the windows.
The shop is small, mainly selling clothes and lovely objets…
The poshest shopping street in Barcelona is the swanky Passeig de Gràcia, awash with Gaudi masterpieces and designer boutiques. In fact, you might be so busy goggling at the buildings and the sidewalk tiles (see below), you’ll walk straight past Regia, the city’s best niche perfumery.
Regia is both a perfume shop and the entrance to the Museum of Perfume — actually, a museum dedicated to perfume bottles. Entrance cost to the Museum is €5, rather than free as the guidebooks suggest, so you should be aware that your cash won’t get you access to sniffs of rare Chanels or anything…just a look at the bottles.
Regia packs as much as it can into its long space…
At first sight, the Sephora branch in the El Triangle shopping mall on Plaça de Catalunya looks rather modestly sized. It’s an arrow-shaped space with entrances onto the street and the mall, and it seems to offer mainly skincare products and services.Worry not — there’s a discreet escalator in the middle, which takes you down to a HUGE basement perfume/ cosmetic space.
All the usual European department store fragrances can be found here…