Taking the D Train

Now that I’m lucky enough to return to Paris each year, certain spots snap me right back into place. The bench in the Tuileries from which you can line up the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais and Place de la Concorde; a green lawn chair in the Luxembourg gardens overlooking children pushing model sailboats in the pond; an outdoor market full of people jostling for the best melon like their lives depend on it. Sights like these, plus a croissant, never fail to revive my faith in the city’s enduring beauty.

Once my transformation from addled Angeleno to world weary Parisian is complete, I take my yearly pilgrimage to Galeries Lafayette. To call the overstuffed dinosaur a department store does not do it justice. This is no grey, functional Macy’s.

It’s a place to live for the day—to soak in the ebullient art nouveau architecture, nibble on a pastry from one of Paris’s best bakeries, watch a fashion show, wander an entire city block of shoes and another half floor of baskets (French for sneakers), swan around the designer department, get spritzed with the best perfumes, ogle the status hand bags, check out adorable paper products and ribbons, try on a $440 headband, and then end the day with a glass of wine on the rooftop terrace. I’ve seen families shopping with their sloppy sheepdogs in tow, husbands diplomatically advising wives on dresses, and female friends making a day of it. Shopping aside, this is prime people-watching in a 100 year-old artifact.

As for the service, it is pure luxe. I felt so swaddled after a sales person spent about an hour helping me purchase a bra that I was teary-eyed when we said good-bye. Another time, when I described a shade of pink to a salesman in the lobby, he took a moment. Then he seized my  elbow and guided me upstairs to the primo scarf department that carries about 10 shades of pink in the softest cashmere. The professional scarf vendeuse then swaddled me with so many shades of pink I channeled Barbie for a minute.

It’s not fair to compare, but the last time I wandered into a high-end store here at home, I felt like the apocalypse had come and taken away all the inventory and happy salespeople. Forget about finding a sympathetic ear. Just try finding someone to ring you up.

It’s not fair to compare, but the last time I wandered into a high-end store here at home, I felt like the apocalypse had come and taken away all the inventory and happy salespeople.

We used to have our own great department stores. When I was I growing up in New York in the 1950s and ‘60s, several grand old department stores dotted Fifth Avenue from 34th to 59th street. Stores like Bonwit Teller, Best & Co., B. Altman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel’s were designed to service the carriage trade. Tailored men in starched uniforms (now called security guards) politely opened the doors and operated the elevators, welcoming society women and working girls into a dreamscape of soigné cocktail dresses and accoutrements for the ladies who lunch. Saks and Bergdorf Goodman’s on Fifth Avenue are the last ones standing.

As a high school kid in the Bronx, upscale stores were my day ticket to fantasyland. When the dreariness got me down and I needed an escape, my best friend and I skipped school and took the D train downtown. In 30 minutes we would get off at Rockefeller Center, cut to Fifth, and spend a few hours wandering up and down the avenue dashing through the best, most elegant stores. Now I think of it as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”—if Ferris was a girl from the Bronx yearning for more, better outfits to wear to school.

Did we try things on? Yes! Did we treat ourselves to a ladies lunch at the dainty tea room at Lord & Taylor? Yes! Did we ever buy anything? Rarely, but I do remember saving for ages to buy a pair of clunky shoes that made me stand out among the more plebeian high school girls whose mothers were still shopping with them. Did we ever get caught? If our parents suspected anything, they never said a word. Sales people mostly ignored us. Senior year we both got after school jobs in snooty department stores that demystified the glamour but did come with a 30% discount.

But by the time I moved to Los Angeles in the early ‘80s, Robinson’s Beverly Hills and Bullocks Wilshire were starting to smell of moth balls and stale perfume. Nonetheless, I made the scene at Bullocks Wilshire’s tea room just minutes before the doors closed in 1993.

It’s common knowledge that retail is in the midst of reinventing itself now that we are all Amazon shoppers. But e-commerce will always be a pale replacement for feeling fabric against your skin, seeing how color changes everything, or having a salesperson who cares about finding you another size. Other than that short ping of adrenaline that comes from completing an online purchase, modern shopping is a joyless, lonely experience. Please don’t tell me how easy online returns are; I didn’t retire to run a small mail room.

There’s no going back. But I can’t help feeling nostalgic for the quintessential urban experience that exists today only in a few old-world pedestrian cities. I suppose I’ll just have to return to Paris.

Los Angeles food writer Helene Siegel is the author of 40 cookbooks, including the “Totally Cookbook” series and “Pure Chocolate.” She runs the Pastry Session blog.