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accounts—to spread their gospel of cool.
There’s Le Vif, a showroom and shop sell-
ing American-made vintage clothing (think
jeans, T-shirts, military jackets). Nearby is Hol-
iday Boileau, a store with a collection of easy,
vintage-inspired clothes whose founder, with
journalist Marc Beaugé, reintroduced Holiday,
a travel magazine from mid-century America
that remains an inspiration for designers.style bible. Holiday Boileau, he explains, is a
cocktail of American vintage and French cul-
ture. “We love to make ‘bourgeois’ clothes
that feel worn in, mistreated, sexy,” he says.
The only store not in the 16th, yet frequently
mentioned alongside the Boileau boys, is Hus-
bands. In the center of the city, Husbands is a
rare gem. It started out featuring bespoke
clothing and has recently expanded into ready-
to-wear that focuses on classics worn with a
modern attitude. There’s a nod to Savile Row
in the cuts and cloths, but it’s hardly stuffy.
Imagine Bryan Ferry, not Prince Charles.
Founder Nicolas Gabard, 40-something, is
his own poster child for Husbands. His go-to
look is a fitted gun-check hacking jacket of
robust British tweed worn over a denim shirt
washed to within an inch of its life. He calls
Husbands “the opposite of the obvious in fash-
ion—accepting a smaller but much more pas-
sionate audience.”
Rifling through the racks at Husbands
reminds me of les minets, a French version of
British mod style that emerged in Paris in the
mid-’60s. While the Brit version was thor-
oughly working class, the minets were essen-
tially bourgeois, many hailing from the well-
heeled western suburbs, and blew their francs
on imported American and British style or
homegrown brands like Renoma, founded in
the 16th in 1963, whose pinched sartorial sil-
houette was championed by pop stars like
Jacques Dutronc and Serge Gainsbourg.
In some ways, these small Parisian brands
are a throwback to that localized way of think-
ing about—and shopping for—clothes, to the
kind of plugged-in neighborhood stores style
hounds would once run to, precisely because
others didn’t.
“We all share the same vision,” says Gab-
ard. “Restoring the luster and beauty of good
clothes, re-creating the one-stop shop at a
time where everyone else is launching a
one-product brand.”Borsarello says Holiday Boileau’s custom-
ers are looking beyond workwear and ex-
treme tailoring.
“Now they simply want to feel current
rather than dressed up as someone else, but
to have quality clothing—whether that means
a sneaker or a T-shirt or a pair of Levi’s.”
In this age of digital ubiquity, and as men’s
style is now contemplating the post-street-wear landscape, being smaller and a little out
of the way fosters an air of mystery that is com-
pelling for anyone looking for something
unique, well-made, and cool. Fortunately, all
of these brands have a growing presence
online through sites like Moda Operandi and
Mr Porter, so you don’t have to fork out for a
plane ticket to Paris to get hold of them. But
if you do, it’s worth the trip west.Clockwise from top: The 2019–20 Autumn/Winter edition of Holiday magazine;
interior of Beige Habilleur in Paris; issue no. 3 of L’Étiquette magazine;
Jacques Dutronc rocking les minets style in 1966 Paris; Le Vif founder Gauthier Borsarello;
the Doek Court Shoe from Beige Habilleur.GETTY IMAGES (DUTRONC). @THOUSANDYARDSTYLE (BORSARELLO).
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