The Montreuil Flea Market
This is how I kept my closet full during my and Michael’s La Boheme days living in the 20th, or “Red” (red for Communist) arrondissement of Paris. Quartre pour dix—four for ten in English. Four items of clothing for ten francs! Could you beat it? Every frosty Saturday morning Michael and I would walk across the bridge over the monstrous peripheral highway (La Route Nationale Périphérique) and travel from a quaint little rundown neighborhood of cobblestone streets and mansard roofs to a huge cacophonous bazaar filled with shouting Arabs.
I miss plunging my hands into the heaps and heaps of old clothes. Clothes that made the circuitous route from volume dealers in the US to volume dealers in Haiti—yes, Haiti, the used-clothes capital of the world—to the volume dealers in Europe, to the very bin I was forcefully rummaging through, elbowing out my space among the Bosnian mothers who would, without wasting a second on decisions, grab armfuls of anything, anything, and pack them into their enormous boxy vinyl shopping bags. Is that a pair of size 42 Calvin Klein turquoise jeans? C’est le mien! I would cry out, while entering a tug of war with a woman far larger than I. I bought silk scarves not too frayed, out-of-fashion jackets (with epaulets!) , well-worn panties, out-of-shape bras, the occasional designer label dress and, sometimes, something which actually fit. Half my haul eventually ended up in the church charity box. It didn't matter, the thrill of the hunt was warmly intoxicating.
Shopping at the marché puce was the one bit of bright luxury during that wet, bone-chilling, penny-pinching snowless season. En hiver à Paris il n'y a aucun soleil.
Originally published on Skirt!
[Mathilde]
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