So here we are saying Merci (les Bobos)

Aaah, the Bobos! This new species was first described in David Brooks' analysis of the new social elite, in a book aptly named "Bobos in Paradise, the new upper class and how they got here", that came out in 2000. In the not too distant future I'll write a rave review of this book, but in the meantime I'll just stick to the day's subject: a new shop, unique in its kind in France, called Merci. The link between this and the Bobos? Well, hang on a sec, let me explain.

The Bobos, named after a combination of "Bourgeois and Bohemian", are as contradictory as their name would indicate. To caricature them would be too easy, so here goes: the Bobos think that TV is terrible (mainstream propaganda and brain-washing programs) but have the latest 40inch flat screen in their living room. They have kitchens which "look like an aircraft hangar with plumbing", but leave cooking to the pros as they feast on raw fish and macrobiotic soya sprouts. They are enviromentally conscious and buy hemp shopping bags from famous designers, but have giant bathtubs with multi-jet massage sprays, 4x4s, and love to import strawberries from Peru in December, to go with the homemade granola sorbet they produced with the help of their eight door superfridge.

Needless to say that, ten years after the term was first coined, there are many variations on the theme, as explained in this excellent article, and the original expression used to describe a certain slice of American culture has been exported. Parisians are often accused of being Bobo: with a left wing mayor and full of '68 speeches about a new equalitiarian society, while thinking nothing of spending a fortune on rent, appearance, food and entertainement.

Though I myself could easily be described as a Bobo (I live in trendy central Paris, drink authentic prol drinks like pastis in fashionable bars, am left wing but still don't want my taxes pushed up), my heart shuddered today when I visited Merci, this new shop in the cool 11th arrondissement.

Merci is, unbelievably, France's first official charity shop but any ressemblance with the scruffy Oxfam outlets full of attic-dusted trinkets and dodgy clothes you would find in England ends there. Merci is a huge, 1500m² reconverted loft on three floors, full of light rom the ironwork glass ceiling and with split levels. the idea is that all the stuff is donated and the money made form sales is sent off to help women in Madagascar. It so happens I have a theory on why this is: Merci was opened by the Cohen family which among others founded Bonpoint where I worked for nearly a year a few years ago. Bonpoint is the ultimate in Bobo baby & childrens' clothes: beautiful, funky, trendy original outfits where a shirt goes for 60€ and a pair of trousers more than double that. For children. A lot of the stuff is made and/or embroidered in Madagascar so I magine they want to give something back.

Anyway, this place is just incredible: architecturally it borders on perfection and is full of varied things from second hand books (see pictures of it here) to clothes, there is a perfume workshop and two cafés, and a entire floor dedicated to furniture. But here's the catch: apart from a few scruffy second hand books, everything is tearjerkingly expensive. A T-shirt specially made by Isabel Marrant is 90€, a tin cup 6€, a scented candle 29€, an armchair 1200€, a plain glass plate of the type you would get 10 for a quid in a Shelter shop goes for 8€. This is expensive charity. And on a Saturday PM we got a good idea of who goes there: the Vuitton dressed, bicycle using Bobos of the Paris' fashionable areas. We bought 7 books and spent 17€, but in the queue ahead of us a guy spent over 200€ on a couple of T-shirts, and another chick 300€ on a bag.

True, they would spend that kind of money on the same stuff anyway, so they might as well do it here, between a cup of organic coffee and a fennel carpaccio, but it still seems to me that there is something tasteless about spending 1400€ on a crystal vase to save the poor destitute mothers of Madagascar. Boboism at its best?