This has been a pretty busy couple of days. A steady stream of exams is fast approaching as I try to shake off the holiday rust and get back into “school mode.” Vacation is over. This was made evidently clear with the steady onslaught of assignments; I have to give a 15 minute presentation on a book that I was supposed to have read over the break (of course, I didn’t read anything), I have an exam in my writing class which is just a reaction (meaning the professor will give a prompt, and I will fail in my attempt to quickly come up with something logical and bearable to read) and I have an oral exam in my oral French class. The last one shouldn’t be too hard and requires no preparation at all. But the real reason this week in Paris has been frantic is the beginning of les soldes. Imagine the epicenter of the fashion universe and all the insanely high-priced clothing. Now, imagine all that on sale!
Well, that’s a bit misleading. Not everything is on sale, and the really cool stuff is only marked down a little bit, maybe 30%. The store workers were quickly posting up signs advertising the sales of their stores and some places were staying open late and opening early for the sale-crazed shoppers looking for great deals. At Zara, a pretty cool and popular clothing store, the sales touched most items in the store. There were tables covered with shoes, piles of shoes. Shoes on the floor and in the aisles. People trying on shoes and tossing them back on the table. No shoeboxes. Nothing at Zara piqued my interest, but this wasn’t the only store to visit.
H & M, another popular store here, has some sales. So far, I’ve fought my way through the hoards of shoppers and looked at all the jackets and hoodies I considered buying, but to no avail. Nothing screamed, “Buy Me!” yet, so I’m still looking. Today, I went with Sean on a hunt for some new jeans. We went to Printemps, a mega department store that stretches from one side of the street to the other. It boasts the large collection of remarkable (and expensive) clothing from the premier fashion designers in the world. All the crazy expensive stuff, from the 4,000 Euro leather jackets to the 200 Euro shirts, was nice to look at, but not for me. I’m looking for jeans. And I found some.
I sifted through the 200 and 150 Euro jeans to find that the ones I liked were either too tight, or not marked-down enough for my tastes. We moved on to Uniqlo, a trendy store, to look for some jeans there. I tried some on, but they were too tight. Les soldes have been a great opportunity to snag some cool threads, but they’ve posed some problems as well: long lines and terrible clothing selections of discounted items, as well as terribly long lines for dressing rooms. After trying on some cool, yet ill-fitting jeans at Uniqlo, I couldn’t stand to wait in the long line again, so we made our way back home.
The search continues.
Printemps – http://departmentstoreparis.printemps.com/
Uniqlo – http://www.uniqlo.com/fr/