Everything's on soldes!

Since January 9th, it's been the time of winter sales in France. Stores everywhere--that's right, throughout the country--put their old stock, or at least some of their old stuff, on sale, or soldé. This isn't just a curious social custom, but a state-mandated necessity. French stores are allowed by the government to have sales only twice a year, and the state sets the exact start and end dates.

I'm actually late writing you this postcard. I intended to write it at the opening of the soldes in January. But I was too busy putting products on the shopping page. So just under the wire--before they end--I thought I'd tell you about this curious phenomenon. At least, to me as an American, it's curious. Well, weird, actually. State-mandated sales?! Is this what it means to live in a socialistic democracy? But I'm being flippant. Living in the socialistic democracy of France also means free health insurance for all citizens, among other civilized notions.

But let's get back to the soldes. When I first heard about this phenomenon, I was incredulous. "You mean, if I own a store, I can't just put some merchandise that isn't moving on sale, when I feel like it or need to?" I asked my companion Denis. He patiently explained the infinite wisdom of the French state. Apparently, without government regulation, stores were buying in cheap junk merchandise just for their sales and then pretending that it was good stuff they had marked down. (Imagine!)

To protect the French populace from such outrageous and unfair treatment (on the part of merchants--government bureaucrats are neatly excluded here), the state mandated that sales would take place only for a period of about 5 weeks in January and February, and again in July and August. Only pre-existing merchandise--ostensibly end-of-the-season stuff--is allowed to be marked down.

In fact, this has become an assimilated part of French commercial culture. Before the winter sales, for instance, it's nearly impossible to find anything springy, for example. May the gods of French shopping have pity on you if you need summery clothes to go someplace warm over the holidays. "Resort wear" simply doesn't appear at least until the soldes begin--well after the holidays. The markdown of the old wintry stuff miraculously allows the nouvelles collections to start appearing. Out with the old and in with the new. Literally.

The markdowns begin rather modestly--usually at 10%--and then become deeper as the sale weeks roll buy, finishing up at a whopping 50 to 70% on whatever's left at the end. Thus, shoppers play a sort of solde roulette, gambling on whether their desired purchase will stay around long enough to be marked down more deeply. Or if like me, they're too busy to get out early, they simply get lucky--or unlucky, as the case may be. Wealthy international shoppers are of course crazy about the soldes, and in the large department stores during the first couple of weeks of the sales, you hear almost any language but French spoken by the shoppers, who have descended on Paris from all over the world to get a bargain.

But, the state-mandated soldes, like so many French rules, have a loophole. Sales do appear at other times of the year. Oops! No, I don't mean sales, I mean promotions. For that's what a store marking down their merchandise at any other time of the year must call it--a promotion. Don't laugh. All French citizens firmly believe in the protective benefits of the official soldes. And that soldes are definitively different from promotions, a very fine distinction which I believe you must be French to perceive or properly appreciate.

Like so many of the quirks of life here, I find it all amusing. As for my own shopping--well, I've never been a very virtuous shopper. My attempts to "go shopping" during the sales usually result in my buying something I don't really like all that much, but bought because it was a good deal, thus giving me the transitory illusion that I can be a virtuous shopper--or perhaps at least have the potential to be.

Thus I bought a winter coat last winter, in the company of my daughter, right at the end of the soldes. I'm sure I was influenced by her presence in this attempt to be virtuous. I was trying to set a good example, unlike my usual tendency to buy things I really like when I feel the urge, regardless of the sale seasons. I hate this coat. It has a sad mauvey beige color that depresses me, a collar I don't like, and a set of hooks and eyes that has ruined all my scarves by snagging them.

The thing I like best about the soldes is looking at all the announcements of the sales in the windows. In the usual creative and individualistic French way, these announcements are often made delightful to look at. The placard in the photo--a confection of white dried straw flowers on a background of moss--was in a beautiful fabric store on the Left Bank. The kind owner graciously unlocked her door--even though she had just closed--so I could photograph it without the glare of the glass. For me, it's the composite mosaic of all the individual shards of beauty--visual and human--that make life here wonderful.

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