Shop local
GIFTSHOP (1st arr)
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Tucked just off the Palais-Royal across from France’s Ministry of Culture, the new boutique GIFTSHOP is easy to miss. There’s no flashy storefront, just a discreet door marked with the name. Ring the doorbell and climb the beautiful old staircase to the second floor, where the boutique subtly reveals itself.
A highly curated, design-led souvenir concept that’s part boutique, part creative studio, GIFTSHOP produces objects tied to the city’s best addresses, old and new. Inside the apartment-like space, a bistro table is set with linens from La Fontaine de Mars, Café des Ministres wine glasses, and an ashtray from La Closerie des Lilas, objects that carry the memory of crowded tables and slow, sunlit afternoons. In the next room, a wooden cabinet holds bistro plates from Brasserie Lipp, Le Paul Bert, and Au Pied de Cochon, their typography instantly recognizable to anyone who has lingered late into the evening at these iconic Parisian establishments.
A polished brass luggage cart, more hôtel particulier than retail fixture, holds a varsity jacket, scarves, and colorful hats from Folderol. And the pièce de résistance, an orange bike from À la Mère de la Famille (whose craques might be among the most addictive chocolates in Paris), leans against the wall. Each item is part of the setting, yet everything is for sale.
Conceived by Mathieu Lebreton and Julien Pham, GIFTSHOP is both a shop and an editorial project, creating collectibles rooted in craft and storytelling rather than mass production. There are no miniature Eiffel Towers, no clichés here, rather a more meaningful reflection of the Paris that still exists. Many of the locales they collaborate with remain family-run, passed down through generations, and the shop is a quiet reminder that the soul of the city lives in these places, and in the people committed to keeping them alive.
There’s something about the address, too. This very spot once housed Le Boeuf à la Mode, founded in 1792 and considered one of the first restaurants in Paris, a little piece of history that echoes what GIFTSHOP is doing more than two centuries later. –Sam Brenzel
→ GIFTSHOP (1st arr) • 8 rue de Valois • Mon-Sat 11h-19h.