sunday in paris
how we spend our laziest day
A week after I moved to Paris, I came across the phrase “faire la grasse matinée” in an interview Jess Graves did with our mutual friend, the designer Janessa Leone, which you can read here. It means (loosely) to have a fat (read: indulgent) morning, which is sort of every Sunday morning in Paris, whether that was your intention or not.
At that time, it was late August, and I wasn’t having an indulgent anything. We had just arrived to an empty apartment. The beds that we’d ordered months ago were still mysteriously missing, its since-past “estimated delivery date” mocking us. (When we finally reached a live person, she said blithely: “On est en août. C’est normal.”1 We’ve since learned there are many infuriating things that are dismissed with a “c’est normal.”)
We’d arranged for our daughter to arrive a week later to give us time to make the apartment feel like home. We filled her room with new books and stuffed animals, but the true markers of a home - art we obsessed over until it found its way to our walls, creased novels, objects imbued in memory - were missing.
Since then, some of those pieces have trickled in. An article for another day, perhaps, on the slow hatching of a home vs. one designed to every detail. I’ve had both, and each comes with its own beauty and discomfort.
But today, we are discussing Sundays, and specifically, Sundays in Paris, which is a very specific sort of day, one that perhaps only exists here, with its grey, ennui-strewn skies.
There is a misconception that Parisians take two hour lunches and turn off their phones at 5 (blame Emily). I’ve found the opposite: Parisians work hard and typically work long hours. My Parisian clients often call me in the evening, and once in a while, on a Saturday.
It is true that, in many ways, Paris is made for pleasure, not productivity, I find that applies more to the bureaucracy and the cultural richness than work life. It’s a city, after all, and regardless of how beautiful the Haussmannian architecture is, our daily routines aren’t that different. We have kids to raise, work to do, fulfillment to find. In the end, it’s still just death and taxes. (Also, if you’re at a dinner party in Paris and run out of things to say, just start complaining about the tax rate.)
Sundays, though, are where the slow romance of Paris shines.
Parisians are protective of their fat mornings. There is a forced slowness to life here, but never more felt than on Sunday. My neighborhood yoga studio, Bandha, doesn’t offer classes before 9 AM on any day; on Sunday, that shifts to 9:45 AM. My coffee shop opens at 10.
Receiving packages is a spider’s web. I once went to a stranger’s apartment to pick up a Dries dress from MyTheresa. In Mumbai, India, the lunchbox delivery system, the Dabbawala, feels chaotic - a mess of bike messengers navigating the streets in hurried mayhem. In reality, it’s a COO’s dream, so efficient that Harvard deployed an outside management firm to India to write a case study on their learnings.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I get about 85% of the packages I’m supposed to (my assistant has a tracker that she updates, but some still disappear into the ether, a reversal of the natural order that loss comes after possession. C’est normal.) That means everything isn’t a click away, and it’s easier to do errands the old fashioned way, by walking into a store and having a conversation with a human. It takes longer, yes, but it also adds purpose, and comradity.
My daughter has also warmed to the idea of the fat morning, which means the first few hours of my day (I am an early riser, despite my best efforts) are in rare, forced solitude. I say forced because there is the choice to be alone, and then there is the realization that you are. Every Sunday, I half expect her or my husband to appear, in search of milk or toys or breakfast, and sometimes they do, but most often, it’s me, unable to caffeinate or work out, wondering what to do.
At first, I pinpointed this window as prime, uninterrupted work time. Then the ghost of the fat morning appeared, scolding, telling me to open a book.
SUNDAY IN PARIS
10 AM - YOGA AND A COFFEE
All black, but two different blacks, perhaps a hint of grey, always leggings and a t-shirt, loads of jewelry on, sometimes accompanied by an oversized cashmere sweater.
There’s no matching workout sets. No overthought to any of it. And even on Sundays, people change into regular clothes in the locker room after, no trace of effort expelled as they go on with their fat mornings.
My favorite yoga teacher, the only person I’ve seen wear color, the lavender popping against her dark olive skin, sometimes wears a flannel. She sheds it casually before she does the crow jump-back.
12 PM - THE MARKET STROLL
Post yoga and caffeine, my daughter and I walk to one of the food markets, the anchor of life in Paris. For months, our apartment didn’t have a microwave, an inconvenient trait I tried to protect (I lost this fight), since it meant a forced habit of buying fresh groceries and cooking only what we’d eat that day.
Most often, it’s the easy Sunday stroll to Boulevard Raspail, a mecca of purveyors for everything from cheese to fish to artisanal honey. The prepared food stalls occupy my daughter as she searches for her Sunday morning treat, which gives me enough time to do a proper haul of what we need for the week.
If the weather is nice, we’ll sometimes head to Rue Cler, a manicured market street (it’s storefronts instead of stalls), which has an excellent fromagerie and a number of cafes where you can enjoy a long lunch. I like La Sablaise, a fish monger and restaurant, for oysters and glass of crisp white.
During the week, I lug around a bulky (though beautiful - it’s Metier’s culty Private Eye) work bag. It holds my laptop, a book (I’m quite a cliche and am reading Adam Gopnick’s Paris to the Moon - the New Yorker writer’s book of essays on moving to Paris with his young son), a notebook and my French textbook, with compartments to tuck in my phone and wallet. And it all fits underneath the zipper - a feat! It is a constant source of compliments, but weekends aren’t for lugging, so I’m eyeing their Pendulum 30, which can be used as an easy crossbody and is stunning in that Nappa Cognac.
Last Sunday, with children’s velcro shoes as our mission, we walked to Le Bon Marche, and ended up spending a few hours at La Grande Épicerie, where you can eat dumplings or truffle pasta and buy eighteen types of smoked fish.
On the top floor is the children’s floor, with its toys and clothes and kids club (yes! with babysitting services if you need to run a quick errand). My daughter loves the Petit Sézane section, so we spend some time helping her pick out a winter coat (she wants pink; I want her in ecru. This one has a hidden leopard lining so it fulfilled her maximalist tendency.)
An aside - when I first walked by a Sézane store in New York years ago, I assumed that, like so many brands, their business proposition was packaging and selling French style to Americans. As if by putting on a Breton shirt, we will suddenly become interesting. In June, I ended up at a party at founder Morgane Sézalory’s former Left Bank apartment. The apartment, which was filled with her old furniture, mostly gorgeous vintage pieces that she’d picked up from flea markets, was stunning and quirky and warm. Later, on a deep internet dive, I learned she had started the brand by doing small vintage drops online, which stood out because she photographed them beautifully, capturing the magic of little details and light shining through the lace. As her business grew, she started designing pieces with that same femininity, leading to Sézane.
When I moved here, I also discovered I was mistaken about Sézane being a brand for Americans. In the U.S., people know it, of course, but in Paris, it’s a uniform. Sort of the French DÔEN, if you will. Walking through the 6th, you constantly see French women with Sézane bags dangling on their arms.
3 PM - A GENTLE AFTERNOON
When we lived in Los Angeles, Sundays were a whirlwind of kids birthday parties, backyard BBQs and beach days. If we were home, we were in the pool, usually with friends over, me fretting around making sure everyone had drinks and Ryan making pizza.
In Los Angeles, and its stressed-out frenemy New York, we were always doing. Sundays were for enjoyable things - brunch with friends and their kids, a beach day - but still doing, still allergic to inertia.
But in Paris, there’s little to do. Almost everything is closed on Sundays. If it’s warm out, we might walk to the Luxembourg gardens so my daughter can ride the carousel, but right now the air has a deceiving chill. So, we spend the afternoon lounging, without the nagging whisper of shame. I read one of the many books I’m in the middle of (last week, it was The Sense of an Ending), my daughter draws, my husband does something on his computer - what I have no idea, I don’t ask. We are in the same room, yet alone.
7 PM - FAMILY DINNER
This is where we get to enjoy the day’s market haul. I typically put out a few things for grazing: a cheese, olives, canned tuna, fresh bread, and whatever else we’ve picked up that looked interesting (all on their own plates. I’ve learned my lesson).
And then we cook. Last weekend, I made a miso soup with fresh udon, which my daughter stirred dutifully between bites of a smoky mozzarella tomato salad. Sometimes a friend or two will join us, our feet clad in cozy stolen slippers from the Sacher hotel.
9:30 PM - THE WIND DOWN
Back to a book or writing this Substack, cozy in bed. Eight Sleep on +4. We’ve accomplished very little in the day, yet all this lounging might yield something more elusive: a sleep score of 98.
PARIS BLACK BOOK 04 - For the Kitchen
Atelier Doma (17 Av. Ledru Rollin, 12th Arrondissement) - for fancy Japanese knives. You can also take a workshop here.
Compagnie Française des Poivres et des Epices (7 Rue de Furstemberg, 6th Arrondissement) - a jewel box on historic Place de Furstemberg that only sells proprietary spice blends. Even my Indian nanny loves their tandoori spice.
E. Dehillerin (18-20 Rue Coquillière, 1st Arrondissement) - the famous purveyor of copper pots and pans. Someday I will have eight tiny copper pots that I’ll use to serve velouté de champignons at a dinner party.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
objects of our affection: things we bought and cherished
This has been a long, weird year, and because I…
“We’re in August. It’s normal.”
Adding a truly Parisian fat-Sunday to my bucket list and c'est normal to my vocabulary.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. So wonderfully descriptive. Felt like I was there enjoying fat Sunday with you (but not during your moment of solitude).