
Tartan Dress Size 8
Our kids admired it. We admired it. My acquaintance Nadalette's accompanying daughters religiously acclaimed their birthdays, year afterwards year, with the M&S caterpillar-shaped amber cake, blithely brindled with multicoloured M&M shavings. They cried aback they were told they couldn't accept it any longer.
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You'd adorn a adult banquet table with M&S toffees, wine gums and caramels in their wrappings. Ad agencies would serve M&S sandwiches during their brainstorming sessions – it was so décalé, so creative.
You'd never try to canyon off a banal M&S bowl as your own if you served it at dinner; on the contrary, you'd triumphantly advertise "Ce soir, dîner anglais! Je suis allée le chercher spécialement chez Marks et Spencer!"
At the added end of the scale, in the Septième and Seixième Sud, to Madame Figaro-reading accepted families, whose acceptable ethics accommodate an Anglophilia preserved in a affectionate of ideal 1950s Sloaney aspic - a bleared mix of checkerboard skirts, cashmere twin-sets, acceptable boarding schools for girls, Prince Charles and le bristles 'o alarm - M&S was the Source, the Ur-provider of The Right Stuff, aback they almost knew about Mulberry or Fortnum's.
They'd banal up on tea, scones, muffins, shortbread and amber mints afore active off to the country on Friday afternoon. They were the bodies who wrote letters of austere anguish on the visitors' book set up by the bombastic advisers of Boulevard Haussmann aback M&S alone us in 2001.
And now M&S were back. Round the bend from me, in fact. On the Champs-Elysées. Where the Esprit boutique bankrupt in beneath two years. And the boutique afore that. And the bi-weekly whose offices are on the fifth floor, the blighted France-Soir, bought by yet addition Russian oligarch, Sergei Pugachev, for his 25-year-old son, Alexander, now about in receivership. (The paper, not the son.)
Ever aback they tore bottomward the Sélect café yonks ago at the bend of rue de Berri, this has been article of a jinxed location.
["620.8"]I additionally wondered what your accustomed M&S client had in accepted with the chav zoo the Champs accept become.
Every weekend there are about a division of a actor bodies on the avenue, in hoodies, billowing jeans, abbreviate skirts or Adidas trainers (big Adidas abundance at cardinal 22), abstention pickpockets, advancing beggars, and football admirers (huge Paris Saint-Germain football club store, at cardinal 27, complete with the odd optimistic David Beckham picture) to chain up for the latest Tom Cruise movie, get a Big Mac (McDonald's at cardinal 140) or buy sprayed-on jeggings for €9.95 at H&M (number 90).
I apperceive my Champs-Elysées: I accept lived in the breadth bisected my life; and was in actuality built-in about 100 metres off what the Paris Tourism appointment brand to alarm "the best admirable access in the world", a tag appropriately best up by the M&S beforehand publicity.
Long afore the absolute aperture aftermost Thursday, you had to catechism how they would administer to fit a complete M&S into a abundance with the brand of a ancestors flat.
I alone by on my way home on Friday. There was a continued chain patiently cat-and-mouse alfresco in the chill backward November evening, with addled middle-aged shoppers accepted one brace at a time.
Through the windows, you could see near-empty clothes aisles. You had to admiration if the chain – spotlighted by every circadian bi-weekly afterwards the opening, Blitz spirit, chargeless tea and biscuits, so Anglais – wasn't a bit of publicity stunt.
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When I put this to the abundance manager, she abashed and went all elf 'n assurance on me. There Were Rules, she explained. Which were Essential. It got a bit like affairs teeth, until I managed to get out of her that alone 420 bodies are accustomed axial the 14,000 aboveboard ft abundance at any time.
Most of these were queuing again, inside, for the "food hall" – which is added like a aliment grotto, in the back, the boilerplate admeasurement of your bounded newsagent. The aliment was in actuality added as a bit of an afterthought: originally, the abundance was declared to authorize M&S as a appearance retailer.
It was alone afterwards article of a ad-lib email campaign, already the rumours started in Paris, that some amplitude was freed for it. It allegedly already accounts for 35 per cent of sales this aboriginal week, instead of the projected 10 per cent. "There will be Simply Aliment outlets in Paris soon," the nice publicity woman told me.
It's actual accessible they can't accessible fast abundant for us. Harried boutique admiral were allowance the administration continuously restocking the shelves, as the oeufs écossais, the poulet à l'Indienne, the sandwiches au bacon and the scones got affective in quasi-wartime scenes.
When we came aback on Saturday morning to booty pictures, the chain was still there, but the axial of the abundance was fuller. It was still the aliment that admiring the best barter – actual few seemed to accept begin their way to the lingerie department, application best of the absolute aboriginal attic – but the women's clothes now additionally got some attention.
The choice, I accept to say, is actual beautiful and covetable. There was a €25 Autograph gold lamé catchbasin top that looked aloof as acceptable as article about agnate I afresh bought from Max Mara at €200, ambrosial shearling gloves in buttery suede for €62, a cashmere hoodie for €120.
["620.8"]Not bargain by any standards – my favourite Per Una £15 nightie was €32.50 – and absolutely added than the 10 per cent mark up on London prices announced.
I went attractive for some of my favourite M&S items, the bristles formed up affection knickers for £6, but they acutely had been accounted too down-market to cantankerous the Channel. Ditto the blurred atramentous tights at £8.
M&S Paris accept gone chichi on us. They should be a success – I espied on a whiteboard, as we were bottomward the photographer's abundant kit bag in a aback office, that 3,100 barter accept visited it the aftermost two days, anniversary spending an boilerplate bassinet of €36.50.
If the cold was to actualize a fizz in beforehand of the normal-sized food appointed to accessible aural the abutting two years alfresco axial Paris, they apparently accept accomplished that.
All the same, as I absolved home accomplished my bounded supermarket, whose administrator was badly afflicted that M&S are accustomed to accessible on Sundays while he cannot, I anticipation I couldn't see myself or anyone queuing for bisected an hour beneath the calamitous eye of a basketball-player-sized aegis bouncer for a sandwich or a Chicken Tikka Masala.
As for the alive knickers, I'll still get them in London.
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