Paris is best in the early morning

EARLY in the morning is the only time to see a tourist magnet like Paris without the crowds.

WISH 6 March 2015

THERE is one upside to jet lag: you wake up earlier.

I like to make use of this extra awake time and go running. Even if you’re not a runner, getting out and walking around a foreign city as the sun comes up — no matter what the temperature — is one of the best ways to see it, primarily because it’s free of tourists. Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world (the fifth, in fact, according to Euromonitor International, with more than 15  million tourists annually). So when people ask me when is the best time to visit Paris, I always answer, “6am”.

This is our second Paris issue (our first was in September 2011) and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the city a few times in the intervening years. I used to find French retail hours frustrating as a visitor and somewhat anachronistic. The laws are complex but for the most part stores are not allowed to trade on Sundays. Our trip to the French capital to produce this issue ran over a cold late-November weekend. Here’s another tip: if you don’t like crowds then don’t go into a Parisian department store on a cold late-November Saturday.

There’s a belief among retailers worldwide that being allowed to open for longer hours will increase their sales and help fight competition from online shopping, but the French situation is an interesting one. Parisians shop on Saturdays and just do other things on Sundays. They eat Sunday lunch in a restaurant, they spend time in the city’s museums and art galleries, they enjoy its parks and gardens. And, yes, they probably also spend a lot of time on Sundays shopping online.

They won’t, however, be shopping online at Chanel. This issue includes an interview with the president of fashion at Chanel, Bruno Pavlovsky, who says that the very successful company has no immediate plans to sell its products via the internet.

Neither does France’s latest hit luxury brand, Moynat. The luggage maker, which was founded in 1849, was acquired by LVMH in 2010 and unlike most luxury brands today, it’s products are only available in a handful of stores worldwide; nor will there be an online one any time soon. Alice Cavanagh met the creative director of Moynat, Ramesh Nair, for the magazine.

A big thank you to Etihad Airways for getting us to Paris in style.