Cabaret club’s sails collapsed in April and new ones are up in time for Olympic torch to pass by on 15 July
Paris’s Moulin Rouge cabaret club, whose landmark windmill sails fell down in April, has inaugurated a new set, a week before the Olympic torch was due to pass by the venue.
The home of the can-can was temporarily laid low after the sails of the red-painted windmill tumbled to the ground in the early hours of 25 April.
Continue reading...Luxury brand’s studio team turn to timeless tweeds and neat silhouettes in first show since Virginie Viard’s sudden exit
There were 12 boucle-tweed suits, in colours from pistachio to raspberry. There were endless swishy blond ponytails tied with black silk bows, and a clatter of satin Mary Jane shoes with pearled heels. There were Hollywood faces – Keira Knightley and Michelle Williams – in the front row of the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris, countless quilted-flap 2.55 handbags in the front row and a finale bridal gown with a sweeping ivory silk train.
But one crucial thing was missing from this season’s Chanel haute couture show: a designer to take a bow. Since the sudden exit this month of the designer Virginie Viard, who had led Chanel since the death of Karl Lagerfeld five years ago, this mighty luxury brand, worth an estimated £15.5bn ($19.7bn), is headless. The vacancy for fashion’s top job is the talk of Paris fashion week.
Continue reading...French president’s comments made on podcast as RN releases manifesto pledging to ‘limit immigration’
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the far right National Rally (RN) party and the leftwing New Popular Front coalition – both of which are frontrunners in the parliamentary election – risked bringing “civil war” to France.
Macron told the podcast Generation Do It Yourself that the manifesto of the RN party – which election pollsters put in first place – and their solutions to deal with fears over crime and immigration were based upon “stigmatisation or division”.
Continue reading...Fashion house takes inspiration from Olympic Games in grandest sense for show in garden of Musée Rodin
Like everyone else in Paris right now, the Dior designer Maria Grazia Chiuri is thinking about the Olympics. Her latest Dior haute couture show was staged in the garden of the Musée Rodin, a stone’s throw from the grand open space of Esplanade des Invalides, where banks of seating are already being erected in preparation for the archery competitions of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
But in haute couture, where no price tag is fewer than five figures, athleisure does not make the cut. So this season’s Dior was Olympian in the grandest sense: classically draped goddess gowns, with asymmetric necklines cut to expose a shoulder and skirts cascading in silken layers.
Continue reading...The designer homed in on staples for the show, without losing a sense of adventure or playfulness
The Dior menswear designer Kim Jones has gained a reputation as a somewhat prolific collector of art and rare books. His homes are peppered with pieces by Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol, and he is the owner of the largest collection of Virgina Woolf books and letters in the world – 21,000 pieces and counting. So it’s not surprising the aesthete enjoys melding the world of art with his other great love, fashion.
For his latest spring/summer 2025 collection that he showed in Paris on Friday afternoon Jones worked with the South African ceramicist Hylton Nel. The octogenarian is best known for his plates, pots, figures and vases featuring whimsical illustrations and satirical text.
Continue reading...Filmmakers and students evicted by police in 2022 make a triumphant return to the historic venue after raising funds to buy it for €2.7m
Two years after being evicted by Paris police, a collective of students and film-industry professionals returned to the arthouse cinema they had occupied from 2019 to 2022 on Thursday to reinstall the wheels of a 35mm projector.
The crucial difference is that this time they did so as legal owners of the keys to the 600 sq metre community cinema in the French capital’s Latin quarter, appropriately called La Clef (The Key).
Continue reading...Following a mystery disappearance sparking outrage and rumour, the original damaged and fragile figure has been replaced by a ‘very fine’ copy
A shadow has been lifted over a corner of Paris: Voltaire is back in the City of Light.
The statue of the 18th-century philosopher, a key figure of the Enlightenment, vanished from its plinth almost four years ago, sparking a series of increasingly sombre rumours.
Continue reading...Man, 26, questioned under suspicion of participating in terrorist conspiracy after explosion in hotel north of Paris
French anti-terror prosecutors have launched an investigation after a Ukrainian-Russian man detonated explosive materials in a hotel room north of Paris.
A source at the French anti-terrorism prosecutors office (PNAT) said that on Monday night the 26-year-old man was given medical treatment by fire officers in a hotel in the Val-d’Oise, north of Paris, for “significant burns after an explosion”.
Continue reading...Text appears to have been copied out and backdated by Camus in 1944, possibly as a way to raise funds during Nazi occupation
A handwritten manuscript of the classic French novel L’Étranger by Albert Camus has sold for more than €650,000 (£553,000) at auction, despite bafflement over the reasons for which the Nobel prize-winning author appeared to have faked and backdated it.
The bound, 104-page draft of Camus’s novel about a French settler in Algeria who kills an unnamed Arab man went under the hammer in Paris on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Campaigners say operation to bus ‘undesirable’ people out of city and wider Île-de-France region has intensified
Thousands of homeless people have been removed from Paris and the surrounding area as part of a “clean-up” operation ahead of the Olympic Games, campaigners say.
Those moved on include asylum seekers, as well as families and children already in a precarious and vulnerable situation, the collective Le Revers de la Médaille, which represents 90 associations, said in a report released on Monday.
Continue reading...Three men charged after five coffins inscribed with ‘French soldiers in the Ukraine’ were left at tower
French police are investigating whether the placing of five full-sized coffins covered with the French tricolour at the Eiffel Tower at the weekend was another act of Russian interference.
Three men were formally put under investigation on Monday – the equivalent of being charged – in connection with the coffins, each of which was inscribed with “French soldiers in the Ukraine”.
Continue reading...Woman from Riposte Alimentaire arrested after sticking poster on impressionist painter’s Coquelicots
A climate activist has been arrested for sticking an adhesive poster on a Monet painting at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to draw attention to global heating, a police source said.
The action by the woman, a member of Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) – a group of environmental activists and defenders of sustainable food production – was seen in a video posted on X, placing a blood-red poster over Coquelicots (Poppies) by the French impressionist painter Claude Monet.
Continue reading...Event aims to reverse decline in local people visiting boulevard, which has become hub for wealthy tourists and designer stores
Thousands of people have gathered on the Champs-Élysées for a giant free picnic organised by a committee of local traders and businesses fighting to halt the slow decline of the boulevard long known as “the most beautiful avenue in the world”.
Once a favourite haunt of Parisians, the Champs-Élysées has in recent years been steadily abandoned by local people as popular stores and cinemas have given way to luxury boutiques and the avenue has become the preserve of wealthy tourists.
Continue reading...Organisers expect 75% of identified bacterial pollution will be gone by the time the starting gun fires for the open water events
Beside a sign saying “No swimming”, Pierre Fuzeau defiantly pulled on his swimming cap, slipped into the green water of the Ourcq canal on Paris’s northern edge, and set off with a strong front-crawl.
The 66-year-old company director regularly joins his open-water swimming group for well-organised illegal dips, including in the River Seine, where swimming has been banned since 1923 largely as a result of the health risk from unclean water and bacteria from human waste.
Continue reading...Reports say investigators looking into possibility that Russian security services ordered vandalism in Paris
France is investigating whether graffiti painted on the wall of Paris’s Holocaust memorial last week was a destabilisation operation coordinated from Russia, French media have reported.
On the morning of 14 May, about 20 spray-painted red hand symbols were discovered on one of the memorial’s exterior walls, which is dedicated to honouring individuals who saved Jews from persecution during the Nazi occupation of France.
Continue reading...Pop star thrills Paris crowds with songs from newest album The Tortured Poets Department
Taylor Swift has added her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, to an already packed setlist as she returned to The Eras Tour after a two-month break.
Swift had described TTPD as “new works reflecting events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure”. In Paris on Thursday night she put it more succinctly: “Female rage, the musical.”
Continue reading...Third-party hospitality packages are outlawed, yet agency part-owned by associates of Rafael Nadal and LeBron James promises access to top events as well as to stars
Members of the global super-rich are spending as much as $500,000 (£400,000) on “ultra-exclusive” packages for the Paris 2024 Olympics that promoters claim include meeting athletes, access to the athletes’ village and “the chance to be part of the opening ceremony”.
GR8 Experience, an “international experience agency” part-owned by the business manager of the basketball star LeBron James and the PR manager of the tennis player Rafael Nadal, is selling Olympic packages that it claims include tickets to 14 events such as the men’s 100m finals and the opening ceremony for $381,600.
Continue reading...University students air frustration that sit-ins motivated by peace are being shut down instead of heeded
Jack, 22, a student in public administration, was dragged out of his university building by the arms and legs on Friday, as police forcibly removed several dozen students who had been occupying Paris’s Sciences Po university overnight in a protest against civilian deaths in Gaza.
“We’ll keep going,” said the French-American student in his final year at the prestigious political science school, whose alumni include the president, Emmanuel Macron. “This is about speaking out against a genocide, it’s an international movement. We occupied the building peacefully.”
Continue reading...French left denounces rightwinger Valérie Pécresse’s move against prestigious university
The Paris regional authority has temporarily suspending funding for Sciences Po, one of France’s most prestigious universities, after it was rocked by pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
“I have decided to suspend all regional funding for Sciences Po until calm and security have been restored at the school,” Valérie Pécresse, the rightwing head of the greater Paris Île-de-France region, said on social media on Monday.
Continue reading...New room would give thousands of daily visitors better experience, says museum president
The Mona Lisa, the world’s most famous portrait, could get a room of its own in the Louvre, the museum’s president said.
Such a move would give visitors, many of whom visit the Louvre for the famous painting alone, a better experience, Laurence des Cars told the broadcaster France Inter.
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