Hi All,
I wanted to share that if your desire is to shop for clothing in Paris, a great time to schedule your trip is the week immediately following Fashion Week. All fashion (clothes/shoes/accessories) retail stores had enormous sales. I will be taking this into account for some future trip!
Also, we stayed in Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6e) which is where many of the fashion houses are located, so we saw the large exodus of fashionistas the day after we arrived.
There are some sort of legal restrictions around 'sales'. My understanding is that they are twice a year. When our daughter was expecting a baby, so this would have been 14 years ago, I was looking at adorable baby clothes at Bon Marche that were crazy expensive. So I dithered and then one day I dropped by again and the outfits were 50% off -- genuine savings on merchandise that was actually regular and not 'sale ' merchandise -- so I bought them.
Not sure what the rules now are, but during those sales periods actual merchandise was truly deeply discounted.
Janet is right — it still is real merchandise, nicely discounted (and discounted even more if it doesn’t sell during the first and/or second markdowns!), but I don’t think it’s because it was the week after Fashion Week. The sales (or Les Soldes, as they are in French) take place twice a year: January and June. The government sets the dates; they always start on a Wednesday for some reason, and usually last something like six weeks. Dates may vary between Paris and the provinces. So you can just google “soldes d’été 2025 » or « soldes d’hiver 2025 » sometime this fall and find the dates (hint, the January dates are already set - for Paris they will start January 8 and run through February 11. But in a few other departements, they will start on January 2. I think they haven’t set the dates yet for next summer’s soldes, although one website (unofficial) gives some dates.
I picked up two items *soldées * this past week. One was 20 percent off (for a high-quality item); one was 50 percent off. It’s also the time when I can for example look at clothing from brands I like that are usually too expensive.
To be more specific, the sales do coincide with the Haute Couture shows (end of January and end of June/beginning of July, depending on the fashion calendar), not Pret-a-Porter, which is ready to wear, what most people think of as "Fashion Week" - regular Fashion Week in Paris is end of Feb/beginning of March and end of September/beginning of October.
