Shopping like Paris in Paris

My brother Chad and his wife Nicole visited last week, and Nicole and I went shopping on their last full day in Paris. I enlisted my personal shopper/friend Heather Price to give us the "Paris Hilton" treatment.

We started the day at the salon. Nicole got a chic new Parisian haircut and color, and the stylist straightened her naturally curly locks. I can't wait to see what it looks like curly!


Then we headed to lunch, where we met a fashion designer with her own boutique in the neighborhood. We headed to the high-end boutique for Nicole to try on some killer fashions. These are my favorites:

Doesn't she look long and lean? So sleek!

Killer legs in a killer tunic!
The sign behind her says it was Sales Time in Paris,
but it was still not cheap enough to make a purchase here.

Cute and unique jacket for work.

After the boutique, we headed to the really swanky neighborhood, George V. We went into Dior like we owned the place and selected a couple of evening gowns for Nicole to try on. Heather and I lounged on leather sofas with fur pillows and were oblivious to the fact that Nicole was in a hot, stuffy dressing room.

I thought she'd get the royal treatment (this was Dior after all) and have help getting into the gowns ... but NO! She struggled her slightly damp, sweaty body into a silk gown and proceeded to button the millions of little buttons by herself! She finally emerged looking stunning in an Ivory gown. They wouldn't let me take pictures, but here is a shot from the Dior collection.

Not Nicky, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that she
looked BETTER than this model. She seriously looked like a goddess!
Price tag: 10,500 Euros.

We still didn't know her dressing room plight, so we had her try the other gown. It wasn't too great, so I'm not even going to post any pictures.

Between the sweat, the silk and the buttons, we were at Dior far too long! Plus we'd stopped at a salon to pick up some hair product ... also taking forever. Anyway, by the time we finally got to the shopping area that was in our budget, the stores were getting ready to close. Yes, some stores actually closed at 6:45 p.m.!

We found a Cop.Copine shop open until 7:30. So we dove in (and I say "we" because I also found a couple of items). Nicole bought a beautiful white dress and gray belt. Since we were pressed for time and I was trying on my own clothes, I didn't get a photo of it. But here is the "official" photo from Cop.Copine:

Again, not Nicole. The dress actually looked a lot different on her.
For starters, no trashy jewelry or pouty red mouth.

We got home shortly before 8 p.m. My brother could not believe that we'd been gone for 11 hours and came back with one outfit. He kept saying, "I should be happy, but I can't believe you only bought one dress!"

Cost of Cop.Copine dress and belt: 65 Euros
Cost of Parisian shopping experience: Priceless (and way under budget!)