This week in May
Le Grand Rex, a Chanel spiral, terrasse hunting, and some thoughts on where to post
We’re in May now, and the city has that particular late-spring energy where everything feels slightly too bright and slightly too warm for long sleeves but you wear them anyway. This week had a few things that stayed with me.
1. The Devil Wears Prada 2 at Le Grand Rex
I went to see The Devil Wears Prada 2 at Le Grand Rex, and I’ll be direct: the film was okay. Not terrible, not great, just a sequel that exists because the first one became a cultural object and someone decided there was more to extract from it. But the cinema itself was the real experience. They recently renovated the hall, and it’s stunning. The original building is from 1932, Art Deco down to the bones, and the renovation brought it back to that spirit without turning it into a museum. The ceiling is still that famous starry vault, the new lobby has these albâtre panels and gold corniche details that catch the light in a way!!!
I wrote recently about spaces being stripped of their beauty, about the trend of flattening everything into the same beige minimalism. Le Grand Rex is the opposite argument. They spent years and real money restoring something instead of replacing it. Time Out named it the most beautiful cinema in the world this year.
2. Falling into a Chanel spiral
I can’t stop thinking about Chanel. It started with a Karl Lagerfeld interview, the one with WWD’s Bridget Foley, where he talks about his life and designing for the house. He’s so sassy in it, so precisely German and French at the same time, this mix of discipline and hedonism that I find irresistible. He has an organic way of reflecting on things, of seeing the world through pleasure and aesthetics without it ever feeling shallow. There’s an intelligence to his frivolity, if that makes sense.
Coco Chanel herself is more complicated for me. Her Nazi past is a whole conversation I’d love to get into another day, and it sits uncomfortably next to everything else. But I’ve been thinking lately about what psychoanalysis calls libidinal objects, the things onto which we project our desire, the objects that become charged with something beyond their function. And I think a Chanel bag, Chanel shoes, a Chanel lipstick, these are mine. I’m a politically conscious person, I care about social issues, I read Bourdieu and understand exactly how luxury operates as a class distinction. And yet……. My love for Bourdieu and my love for Chanel sit in the same heart, and I’ve stopped trying to resolve that contradiction. I just navigate it carefully.
What I also genuinely appreciate about the house is what they finance: the métiers d’art, museums, the Opéra, the Grand Palais. There’s a version of luxury that only extracts, and there’s a version that puts something back into the culture it borrows from. Chanel does more of the second than most, and that matters to me.
I think I’m about to pull the trigger on a big purchase after years of saving and looking and then saving again. Keep an eye. The one below is from the collection Métiers d’art 2026-New York.
3. The return of Instagram and YouTube (?)
I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms this week. I grew my TikTok to 14k, which sounds like it should feel like something, but the truth is, I struggle to connect there in a way that feels real. My videos don’t get pushed to my own audience half the time, and it creates this weird dynamic where you’re producing content just to reach people so they can see the other content you’re making. It becomes circular. You’re marketing the marketing.
I’m seriously considering going back to YouTube. Longer conversations, Paris vlogs, the things that actually interest me at the pace they deserve, not compressed into 60 seconds of hooks and cuts. I want to find a community that can actually see what I’m making, consistently, without an algorithm deciding each time whether they’re allowed to.
And Instagram, strangely. I re-started an account, 34 followers, basically zero, and I used to hate the app. But lately it feels less chaotic than TikTok, less like an endless consumption machine. It might be the right place for my photos and my “what I see” content. I don’t know yet. I’d love to hear what you think.
4. Le Petit Bal Perdu, or the art of finding a terrasse
Paris, as many of you know, is the love of my life. And one of the things a good love offers is a place to sit and contemplate, to see and be seen. Finding the right terrasse in this city is my personal version of a quest, my Google Maps is full of saved pins and little stars and notes to myself.
This week I went to Le Petit Bal Perdu, on rue Tournefort in the 5th, near the Panthéon. It’s run by the same people behind Chez Janou in the Marais, the place famous for its enormous chocolate mousse. Le Petit Bal Perdu opened recently and they specialize in the cooking of southwest France, magret de canard, that kind of thing. What I loved is that they kept a classic, almost quaint French bistrot look, the Thonet chairs, the old posters, the name itself is a reference to a Bourvil song, but then they play with some more modern southwest elements in the food and the overall atmosphere. It felt like sitting inside someone’s good taste without them trying to prove anything.
Closing thought
An “okay” sequel inside the most beautiful cinema in the world, a Chanel obsession I’ve stopped trying to justify, the panic of not knowing where to put your work online, and a bistrot in the 5th with a terssase that you just love. None of it was extraordinary. All of it was mine.