Music Makes the People Come to Colette
By
February 25, 2011
Attention, shoppers! Pricey rack browsing has its surprises, at least for those in Paris who happen to find themselves at Colette for its Music Box live sets. Yesterday, Busy P (alias Pedro Winter) and DJ Mehdi of Ed Banger recorded an afternoon sampling of the latest from Boombass (duo Cassius), Brodinski, Pilooski, and Sebastian. All were on hand to celebrate the release of the new Busy P and Mehdi compilation mix “Let The Children Techno,” a riotous mélange of electro, dupstep, fidget, and funk, with all but one track previously unreleased.
Colette’s downstairs Water Bar was packed with jeunesse dorée for a very old-school afternoon of Ricard mixed drinks and devastating raspberry, white chocolate, and green tea brownies. (They came from Paris’s newest brassiere, Nanashi, in the 10th arrondissement, where Kaori Endo mixes Japanese bento box and European fare.) Elliott Novak, an Ed Banger on hand, says the big change with this LP is in its diversity. “There’s lots of funk in there, but it’s still very true to Pedro and Mehdi’s electro, dancefloor sound.” The mix of live music and delicate merchandise could have created a bull-in-a-china shop scenario. But after experimenting with a few upstairs musical moments last year, Colette is now set to go live monthly in the Water Bar—far away from all those dresses, sneakers, books and electronic gadgets.
“Yeah, it’s true, the crowd for this is very young,” says Colette’s Sarah Lerfel, “And it’s surprising because it’s the afternoon and nobody’s really dancing yet. It’s just a chance to get together.” The next day the store held one of its regular Cooklettes: the chance for a table of 12 to learn how to make the Madeleine cakes immortalized by Proust. And for Paris Fashion Week, which kicks off next week, Colette will play host to London designer Carri Munden of Casette Playa and her latest Ken X collection, inspired by her love affair with Barbie’s beau Ken of and American designer Jeremy Scott. He’ll be showing off his debut arm candy for Swatch.
