Cult Shop: a boutique window into Paris’s earlier

I preferred to have a shop that will make you desire, that transports you to a bygone Paris,” says Toulouse-born illustrator and designer Marin Montagut of his namesake boutique, which he opened very last June. Housed in a former tapestry workshop in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a stone’s toss from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the way of life shop, with its pine-environmentally friendly façade and striped awning, is a adore letter to the town.

The previous is a perennial source of inspiration for Montagut, who grew up in a relatives of antique dealers and artists, and employed to support movie-established decorator Christian Sapet in his antiques shop in the Saint-Ouen flea sector. It was here he achieved fashion doyenne Inès de la Fressange, with whom he co-wrote the coffee-table guide Maison: Parisian Stylish at Household, a window into the households of tastemakers together with Sézane founder Morgane Sézalory and Isabel Marant CEO Sophie Duruflé. “I have a large enthusiasm for flea markets,” states Montagut, who sourced all of the shop’s decor from antique traders. “I go every single weekend.”

Marin Montagut is divided into a few rooms, just about every lined with antique shelving and apothecary-model cabinets. Paris alone is a recurrent motif: the artist’s illustrations of the Jardin du Luxembourg’s inexperienced steel chairs and the shop’s “Rue Madame” street sign attribute on every little thing from recycled, mouth-blown glass vases (€125) and porcelain tableware (cups from €38), to cushions and silk scarves (€95). “Usually, there are a great deal of vacationers in the shop,” he says. “But I also see locals, for the reason that Parisians like their town.” 

Scented candles (€68) evoke some of Montagut’s favorite aromas: Sicilian orange blossom, the fireplaces of Paris, and tomato leaves (motivated by the vegetable yard in his country house in Normandy). Hollowed-out solution storage textbooks (€115) aspect Montagut’s hand-painted, tarot card-impressed covers: “I was inspired by the 18th century, when persons slice inside textbooks to make a tiny box in which to hold their solution issues – this kind of as jewelry or private letters,” he claims. 

Clustered on the walls of the shop’s middle space, dubbed the “boudoir”, is a collection of ornamental handpainted plates (€95), botanical wall hangings influenced by 18th-century engravings (€188) and porcelain ex-votos (€45) – modest tokens hung in holy destinations as an featuring of gratitude to a saint or divinity. These are 1 of the shop’s bestsellers, claims Montagut.

Lastly, concealed away in the back place is a smaller wood desk – a recreation of Montagut’s workspace in his Montmartre studio, which is strewn with paintbrushes and watercolours. It’s a more immersion into his charmingly anachronistic globe. “When you enter the retail outlet, it is like you’re travelling to the past of Paris. The smell of the household furniture, the creak of the floorboards – it is a uncommon, actual expertise at a time when just about every shop is the same.”