Shop Profile: Les 3 Marches de Catherine B — The Editor's Edit

The shop's reputation among fashion editors is the kind of thing that sounds like myth-making until you step inside and see the racks for yourself. Two rails. Maybe forty pieces at any time. Chanel on the left, Hermès on the right, with YSL, Dior, and the occasional Alaïa filling the gaps. Everything is in condition that a museum would accept. Catherine B sources from private clients — Parisian women who have been buying couture for decades and have decided, reluctantly, to part with pieces they no longer wear. These are not consignment cast-offs. These are wardrobes being edited by someone who loved the clothes enough to store them properly for twenty years.

The Chanel selection is the headline act. Jackets from the mid-1980s through the early 2000s — the peak Lagerfeld years — with the chain-weighted hems, the silk camellia linings, the interlocking CC buttons that still close with a satisfying click. Prices start around €1,800 for a jacket and rise toward €5,000 for exceptional runway pieces. This is not cheap, but it is fair. The same jacket at a London or New York boutique would carry a 30% premium, and the condition would be less certain.

The Hermès selection is smaller but curated with the same ruthlessness. A Kelly Retourné in Box leather, black, circa 1990, might appear one month and be gone the next. Constance bags surface less often but reliably. What distinguishes Catherine B's Hermès edit is the accessories: silk scarves in designs that Hermès no longer produces, enamel bracelets from the 1970s, a CDC belt in natural leather with palladium hardware. These smaller pieces start at €300-600 and give you the same authentication guarantee as a €15,000 bag.

The shop's location in Saint-Germain matters. This is not the Palais-Royal, where the arcades create a museum-like hush. Saint-Germain is lived-in: students at Café de Flore, galleries on Rue de Seine, the rhythm of a neighbourhood that has been an intellectual crossroads since Sartre held court at Les Deux Magots. Catherine B's shop feels like it belongs here — serious but unpretentious, expensive but not showy. The woman herself is present most days, and she will tell you, without being asked, which collection a piece came from, which atelier constructed it, and why a particular detail — a button, a seam finish, a fabric weight — matters. She knows her clients by name and remembers what they bought three years ago. If a piece arrives that she thinks suits a specific client, she emails them before it hits the rack.

The buying experience is consultative. Catherine B does not pressure; she waits. She assumes you know what you are looking at, and if you do not, she will educate you without condescension. Ask her about a 1991 Chanel jacket, and she will tell you about the fabric mill in Lyon that wove the bouclé, the atelier on Rue Cambon that assembled it, and the runway show where it first appeared. This is not salesmanship. This is connoisseurship, and it is what separates the Palais-Royal specialists from the rest of the Paris vintage market.

If Didier Ludot is the archaeologist of Paris vintage, Catherine B is the editor. Her edit is smaller, more personal, more willing to say no to pieces that do not meet her standard. The result is a shop where you can walk in, spend twenty minutes, and leave with the single best version of whatever you were looking for — assuming it is there, and assuming someone else has not already claimed it.

Les 3 Marches de Catherine B, 1 Rue Guisarde, 75006 Paris. Open Tuesday-Saturday 11:00-19:00. +33 1 43 54 74 18.

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