When Josephine Baker sang, “I have two loves, my country and Paris,” she was speaking directly to me. Only in my case it turns out I have three loves: New York City, of course (like Ms. Baker, I am an American girl!), magical Paris—but not just the Paris I visit whenever I can invent the flimsiest excuse. I am also infatuated with the Paris of the past, so vivid and vibrant in my imagination. My dream life, in which I am traversing the city as if it were 1850 or 1950, is abetted by the city itself, where, despite relentless reinvention, much of the architecture, and the streets themselves, have remained unchanged for centuries.
I have heard about people who go to Paris for the museums, for the cuisine, for the cultural enrichment. Not me. I shop. How better to fulfill the fantasy that I am visiting my bygone Paris—hobnobbing with Colette, sipping absinthe with Toulouse-Lautrec—than to visit places that were in business decades ago and are still trading?
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