En Face Opening - a trip to Paris in springtime

Posted by Dan on 11 September 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: cafe, croissants, retail, en face, paris, coaches

Tom likes getting up really early, which is as laudable as it is annoying when you have to get up at 5.30am on a Saturday to meet him cos he's not averse to an overnight coach to Paris. 

A passport, an e-ticket and a bag of goodies: back in March we received an order from Raul at EN FACE in the Oberkampf area of Paris, who wanted our clothes in his store before his official opening. So it was that the intrepid and larkish Thomas ventured across the channel on an overnight coach back in April, because at House of Billiam we like to make dreams happen.

We were of course way early, so stopped off for the mandatory coffee (Tom LOVES coffee) and French viennoiseries at the mandatory Parisian cafe. This turned into croque monsieurs and juice as the shear early-morningness of it all demanded a balancing of the energy books. 

Much pretentious café posturing and pouting later, we met up with Raul to hand over the hoodies and check out the store's last-minute, pre-opening cleaning session. If you're in Paris, head to the 11th arrondisement and visit En Face at 2 Rue Jacquard. As well as us, you'll find many other one-off items of clothing and trinkets, and the charming Raul, of course.

In fact, you can also now head there to buy our new House of Billiam Retail Bespoke range, as EN FACE now stock that too, but more of that to come in another post as well as info on the other stores that do so (Tom's been making some more early-morning trips sous la manche). Watch this space for details and all that.