Montpellier shopping

Can a style-shy male learn to apreciate shopping? For the benefit of passengers flying to Montpellier, our reluctant writer Anthony Peregrine takes a tour of the old town’s boutiques with a shopaholic

words by Anthony Peregrine
photography by Alexi Brunet

The campaign started at dawn. Well, 10.30am – which is as close to dawn as Fanny Jounenc gets on her days off. We were in the southern French city of Montpellier, where Fanny is studying for the higher echelons of accountancy. But we weren’t interested in that today. Nor were we primarily concerned with the city’s art, culture and indisputable historical beauty.

What we were interested in was shopping. “It’s a sort of culture, too,” insisted Fanny, 26. I couldn’t argue. In retail matters, I’m a complete amateur. I haven’t really been near shops since an epic trip in 1987, which has kept me looking debonair ever since.

Fanny, by contrast, is an expert – especially as regards her home town of Montpellier. That’s why I asked her to be my guide. As a regional centre of Mediterranean France, Montpellier is absolutely bursting with shops. We reckoned a tip or two would help ladies negotiate their way around the place – and help their male companions plot the shortest route before they could legitimately veer off for a nice cold beer.

Pausing only for Fanny to eat an apricot pastry in lieu of the breakfast she’d skipped, we were away – bounding across the vast Comédie square in the city centre. Trimmed with grand 18th-century buildings, the Comédie is pedestrianised (like most of Montpellier centre) and was now full, I’d say, of every pedestrian in France.

“Why aren’t all these people at work?” I asked, forging a passage a little testily. “Why aren’t we?” replied Fanny, unanswerably, as she dived down the side of the great theatre into the Rue des Etuves.

This was a pretty narrow thoroughfare, but things would get a lot narrower yet. Montpellier’s central layout hasn’t changed much since the Middle Ages. Streets are sinuous, snug and chuck you out into unexpected little squares with trees, fountains and churches. There’s a wrap-around sense of centuries to a shopping trip in Montpellier. Also some surprisingly nice smells. Fanny’s first stop was at Chabaud on Rue des Etuves where, in tight white premises, they pack herbs and other essences into all sorts of stuff – soaps, of course, and also sprays to keep the house odoriferous, others to perk up the cooking, plus candles, drinks, sweets, you name it.

“We do spa treatments, too,” said the pretty owner, pointing to an upstairs room. This brought me up short. I’d never been anywhere that sold both sweets and massages. “Ladies only,” she smiled, putting a stop to a wandering mind.

“Excellent spot,” announced Fanny, as we continued down the street to Le Vitrail to study santons. Fanny’s from the South of France, so likes these Provençal clay figurines. They’re part of her culture. Frankly, I’m not so sure – but, if you think your lounge needs a rural scene with nine-inch shepherds and two-inch sheep, this is the place to buy it.

Once I’d dragged my guide past Bouquet de Chocolats, one of the city’s better chocolateries, we dived deeper into the historico-warren for more serious research. Along a street barely wide enough for two normal people (or eight supermodels), we came to Abyss, base to Montpellier’s leading fashion designer, Véronique Rougé (see panel, right). She’s a favourite of Fanny’s – and must have a pretty good general reputation, too, because you’d never find her by chance. The Rue de la Charrue is far too tiny. As Fanny pointed out: “Any passing trade would have to come sideways.”

From there we dodged to the Grand Rue Jean Moulin, the main road through the city when travellers used carts, and still a key shopping axis. Fanny favoured ALDA, where they supply younger ladies with classy jeans, fluffy lined cardigans, plus the sort of gear any girl would require if we were sending her up to the front line.

And, if she needed an accompanying cap or beret, she would only have to cross the street to Bérénice, the city’s leading chapellerie. That’s what the French call a hat shop. Bérénice had hundreds. Fanny immediately went for a multi-coloured rain hat, but I was still astonished by the abundance. “I though hats were, well, old hat,” I said. Fanny and shop manageress Dominique Larrieux looked at me as if I really didn’t get out enough.

“No, hats are very, very fashionable,” said Dominique. “They’re a way of personalising your look. Wear a hat and you identify differently with society.” I tried on a €38 trilby and found her words were true. I was suddenly identifying with society as a bookie’s runner. But her really astonishing revelation was that parasols are coming back. “We can’t keep up with demand,” she said. “It’s the Asiatic ladies. They like to cover themselves.”

All women like to cover themselves, of course – but more or less. And it’s the less which is in the ascendant up the road at Aux Lilas Blancs. Long experience has taught me that there are two ways to accompany a woman searching for lingerie. The first is to go into the shop with her, stare at the ceiling (so as not to be accused of ogling the flimsies) and so crash into a rail of garter belts, ending with several hanging from your ears. The other is to stand outside and wait, and look like a lonely pervert. I chose the second and had time to draw several pitying glances before Fanny finally emerged with heaven-knows-what in a bag. “I couldn’t resist it,” she said. “I never can.”

Across the Rue de la Loge – a wider avenue – shopping was safer, and funkier. The Rue de l’Aiguillerie had all the ethnic beads ’n’ organic outlets anyone could possibly need. Fanny bobbed into Arsenic, which offered a fine range of costume jewellery and an excellent collection of those pointy things for the well-pierced person.

She then indulged me by letting me roam around Pomme de Reinette, a fantastic maze of a toyshop recalling the days before children’s entertainment was all wired to a screen. I’d have come out with several vintage Citroëns and a Napoleonic army of toy soldiers, but my guide’s indulgence didn’t stretch that far.

The aroma of coffee now drew us up the tiny Rue de Carbonnerie to Au Petit Grain, where they roast their own and are particularly proud of their contacts with Ethiopian hillsides. You may buy by the cup to drink there or by the packet to take home, then top your order up from their decent supply of regional wines.

Thus fortified, we skirted the impressive Préfecture into the stately Rue Foch, home to posh-end retailing. Designer shops (agnès b and similar) gathered as at an elegant reception, so confident of their clientele that several hadn’t put price tags on the ensembles in the window. “Not my sort of district at all,” said Fanny.

So we plunged back into the labyrinth of older streets. Fanny led me along the lovely, lively Rue de l’Ancien Courrier. Small, bright shops clamoured for attention from within venerable stone vaults – so many shops that I was now losing the will to live. Women are tougher. Directed by some in-built feminine mechanism, Fanny studied and dismissed them all… until we got to A Cause des Garçons, where the prevalent peasant look gained her approval.

“No real peasant could afford these prices,” I said. “Who wants to look like a real peasant?” she replied. And then, by another stroke of feminine magic, she was done with clothes shops. Now she indulged me again. We could go looking for wine. I was all but skipping as we cut into the nearby Rue de l’Argenterie where Aux Grands Vins de France is to wine as real bookshops are to books. You browse, you mull, you chat with blokes who know what they’re talking about – and there’s no hanging about outside changing rooms.

“I’d go for the Pic St Loup red,” said Fanny, after a minute or two. “Whoa!” I said. “You’ve been fantastic – but you owe me [here I checked my watch] five hours and 37 minutes.” I still came out with the Pic St Loup, of course.

chic & unique

Tragic but true: an attractive fashion designer doesn’t half help a man develop an interest in fashion design – and Véronique Rougé (below), creator of Abyss, is very attractive indeed. So I listened hard as, in her small shop down the very small Rue de la Charrue, 38-year-old Véronique talked about her clothes. They appeared as clever and good-looking as she was.

“Variations on the kimono probably made my name,” she said. “But I’m also inspired by traditional costumes from Africa, Mexico and Russia.” She held up a lovely flowing dress made from silk scarves, then a red silk item which made me jolly glad I hadn’t brought my wife. She wouldn’t have left the shop without it.

“I like to design things which can adapt to all situations – from daywear to a sexy evening dress – with a simple change of the way it’s tied,” said Véronique. “It works for everyone.”

She limits each series – so I guess that’s reflected in the price, then? Not really. The scarf dress was €141. “I don’t think that’s too expensive for such a unique item, do you?” Véronique smiled. Of course I didn’t.

Food stops

Full-scale shopping needs fuelling. For lunch, Fanny heads to the Bouchon St Roch (above right), which spills out onto Rue du Plan d’Agde, just down from the St Roch church in the old centre. Menus start at €12,50 but the €17 one is worth the extra.

Take mid-morning or afternoon drinks on a café terrace on the Comédie, watching the spectacle of Montpellier life rolling past.

If you’re looking for food specialities, Pinto on Rue de l’Argenterie is the best-stocked delicatessen in town. Try the Délice-des-Trois-Graces – dark chocolate with a spicy gingerbread taste.