Paris Scene: What to Do In Between Couture Shows
Where to eat, shop and have a pampering pause in the French capital.
In real life shows are back for couture, but for those with some time to spare, here’s a taste of what’s new to see in the City of Light.
A bite of summer
In honor of the upcoming couture week, The Peninsula Paris hotel has teamed up with Gucci for an afternoon tea of bite-sized morsels, including wild strawberry pastries, sugared scones and a savory French toast with summer truffle. A trio of cocktails with names like 1921, Beloved or Blind for Love is also on the menu.
True to the welcoming temperament of late founder Azzedine Alaïa, the maison he founded has partnered with the Da Rosa delicatessen to open Café Alaïa in the leafy inner courtyard of its Rue de Marignan boutique. Expect pan-Mediterranean influences nodding to the legendary dinners Alaïa served to his nearest and dearest in his own kitchen.
Imagine Baanbeck as a Thai island landing smack in the center of Paris. This eatery nestled on the banks of the Seine, just a stone’s throw away from the IFM’s campus, is the work of former luxury and lifestyle PR Varasy Veopraseuth, who infuses his roots in the Isan region that straddles the border of Thailand and Laos into every aspect, from the menu to the artisanal tableware. — Lily Templeton
The Lobby at The Peninsula Paris
19 Avenue Kléber, 75116
Open Monday to Saturday, 3to 6 p.m. until July 11
Café Alaïa
5 Rue de Marignan, 75008
Open Monday to Saturday, noon to 7 p.m.
Baanbeck
2 Quai Henri IV, 75004
Open Tuesday to Saturday, for lunch and dinner
Rest easy
A boudoir imagined by designer Philippe Starck in an Art Deco building, 9Confidentiel is a new address to know for anyone who wants a chic home away from home in Paris. From in-room beauty treatments to the possibility of endless complementary soft drinks in the lobby for those quick work meetings, this 29-room hotel just hits the spot. — L.T.
Hotel 9Confidentiel
58 Rue du Roi de Sicile, 75004
Essential accessories
For the first solo outpost of her eponymous brand Cahu, stylist and art director Clémence Cahu chose a canal-adjacent corner in the trendy 10th arrondissement. A bright white interior offsets the brand’s rainbow range of Instagram friendly PVC shoppers, including a collaboration with Dakar-based contemporary label Koko, displayed on glass tables or stacked ceiling-high on shelves.
Lemaire has taken over a former medical office next to its Paris headquarters on Place des Vosges and transformed it into an elegant atelier devoted to accessories. Minimal decor from Francesca Torzo in soothing monochrome shades of cream and white offsets designs like the signature Croissant bag, shaped — you guessed it — like France’s favorite pastry. The store’s accessories-as-art aesthetic fits in perfectly with the surrounding galleries.
“Actualité,” the second chapter of Ukrainian fashion culture showcase Tripolar, will pop up just in time for couture, with Charlotte Chesnais as godmother and the support of the Isabel Marant Foundation. Spearheaded by Vogue Ukraine’s fashion director Vena Brykalin and independent creative director Sofiya Kvasha, the project aims to shine a spotlight on the country’s rich contemporary creative soul and pave the way for “afterward,” in the broadest sense. — Rhonda Richford and L.T.
Cahu
38 Rue Lucien Sampaix, 75010
Lemaire
11 Place des Vosges, 75004
Tripolar Pop-Up, to July 6
169 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006
White-glove treatment
For those after a pampering pause, Dior’s Cheval Blanc Paris spa has taken to the Seine River, on a luxurious boat. The two-hour cruise offers 60-minute face or body treatments to five passengers at a time in its four suites.
Prices range from 670 euros for the body massage to 750 euros for the face treatment and 1,500 euros for face or body care treatments for two people simultaneously. A Pilates session comes in at 150 euros.
The boat takes off from the Port Debilly, which faces the Eiffel Tower. — Jennifer Weil
Cheval Blanc Paris spa boat, through July 13
For reservations, contact: or +33 6 76 28 31 31diorspacruise@diormail.com
Art scene
Presented at the Al-Thani Collection in the Musée de la Marine, “Gulbenkian Revealed: In the Collector’s Private Realm” dives into the fascination of British Armenian businessman and philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian for craftsmanship, provenance and rarity through objects meant to be handled. A series of paintings and textiles complete this dive into the hands of a collector. — L.T.
“Gulbenkian Revealed: In the Collector’s Private Realm,” to Oct. 2
The Al–Thani Collection in the Hôtel de la Marine
2 Place de la Concorde, 75001
EU Sets First Rules to Regulate Cryptocurrencies
Agreement follows months of turmoil in the crypto market
European Union officials agreed on rules that would regulate the crypto market in the bloc, forcing platforms to seek authorization to operate and providing safeguards to users.
The agreement still needs to go through Brussels’ complex legal process and might not kick in until 2024. However, officials say it will make the EU the first broad region with common crypto-asset regulation in the world. Some countries have national legislation governing digital assets, but these would mark the first EU-wide rules.
While increasing the burden on crypto exchanges and issuers of cryptocurrencies, it will also make it easier for them to provide their services cross-border in the EU’s 27 member countries.
U.S. authorities are also grasping with supervision of the rapidly growing cryptocurrency industry. As of now, it is a patchwork system, with cryptocurrencies shoehorned into regulations for securities and commodities.
“The EU is [the] first to introduce comprehensive rules on crypto, I hope others will follow,” said European Commissioner for Financial Services Mairead McGuinness.
The EU agreement follows months of turmoil in the crypto market. In early May, stablecoin TerraUSD crashed, causing panic across the sector. Prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also tumbled. Lenders told customers they couldn’t take their money out, highlighting how unprotected investors are in a market that remains mostly unregulated.
Stablecoins are billed as the nonvolatile cousins of bitcoin, having values that are supposed to be pegged to $1.
Under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, or MiCA, agreed on late Thursday, investors will receive some protection. In a key feature, stablecoin issuers will have to maintain reserves that will cover for mass withdrawals and be based in the EU.
“This landmark regulation will put an end to the crypto wild west and confirms the EU’s role as a standard-setter for digital topics,” said Bruno Le Maire, France’s economy minister.
The collapsed TerraUSD wasn’t backed by hard-currency reserves, which meant holders weren’t guaranteed $1, the coin’s peg, even if its value plummeted.
Large stablecoins will also face a cap of about $200 million in transactions a day, European Parliament member Ernest Urtasun said in a Twitter thread laying out the plans.
Mr. Urtasun said for tokens without issuers, such as bitcoin, trading platforms will have to outline a coin’s technology and purpose, and be liable for any misleading information. They will also be obliged to lay out risks for consumers and obey rules on disclosure of inside information.
Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer at Circle Internet Financial Ltd., the issuer of USD Coin—a stablecoin backed by reserves—said that while the framework wasn’t perfect, he welcomed a “harmonized, comprehensive framework, across an entire region, that gives market participants regulatory clarity.”
The European Securities and Markets Authority will have powers to prohibit and restrict services provided by exchanges, and will be in charge of a register of noncompliant platforms.
Nonfungible tokens, known as NFTs, will be largely excluded from the framework. EU officials said the European Commission might come up with a separate proposal for these digital tokens, which prove ownership of digital assets like art, music and video.
The framework for now is poised to exclude decentralized finance, or DeFi, the umbrella term for financial services offered on public blockchains. This segment of the crypto universe has grown rapidly in the past two years. The recent decline in cryptocurrency valuations has sparked concerns about consumer protections, as some of these platforms have faced liquidity and stability issues.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde called in June for a second version of MiCA that regulates crypto-asset staking, where users lock up assets in return for higher yield, plus crypto lending and DeFi.
Rebecca Rettig, general counsel for crypto-lending platform Aave, said on Twitter that Aave plans to collaborate with policy makers as EU officials seek to broaden out regulation to govern DeFi platforms.
The commission proposed the MiCA framework in September 2020. It said it wants to foster innovation, while also providing strong protection for investors.
The framework must be approved by member states and the European Parliament before it begins an expected long process of writing guidelines and having the framework transposed to EU countries.
Sotheby’s CEO on Why the Art Market Is Soaring
From inflation to the rise of Asian collectors, Charles Stewart reveals the dynamics fueling robust auction sales
Amid London’s ongoing summer auction series, Sotheby’s Chief Executive Charles Stewart is taking stock of the global art market, and he likes what he sees.
On Wednesday, Sotheby’s sold $182 million worth of art over a couple hours in London, meeting the house’s expectations even though a few works by artists such as David Hockney and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner failed to find buyers. Top sales included Francis Bacon’s $53 million “Portrait of Lucian Freud” and Andy Warhol’s $16 million “Self Portrait.” Feverish bidding followed young upstarts like Flora Yukhnovich, whose smudgy Rococo-style painting, “Boucher’s Flesh,” sold to a bidder in Asia for $2.8 million—10 times its low estimate.
London’s sales mark the latest win for Mr. Stewart, who joined Sotheby’s after telecom titan Patrick Drahi bought the auction house for $3.7 billion three years ago. Mr. Stewart, who previously worked in telecom and banking, had barely made the rounds to meet his international team when the pandemic hit. Overnight, he had to cancel hundreds of in-person auctions and pivot the company to operate in a marketplace entirely online. The company took a hit in 2020, reporting $5.5 billion in sales, but it bounced back to $7.3 billion last year—a record-high for the 278-year-old company.
Today Mr. Stewart’s social media feed is peppered with celebrities, and his company is knocking out one record auction after the other amid a resurgent art market overall.
Mr. Stewart, a 52-year-old Connecticut native, said he applied lessons learned from the telecom industry to broaden access to Sotheby’s offerings by retooling its online auctions to be easier to find, livestream and click-to-bid. These moves are paying off now even as the world reopens.
“The art market is still really opaque, so we are trying to reduce barriers and allow more people to feel comfortable buying art from us,” he said. “I’m always going to be interested in extending our reach.”
Mr. Stewart recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal from the auction house’s office in Paris. Here are edited excerpts:
Despite the volatility in the broader financial markets, art sales are surging. How do you explain what’s happening in the art market right now?
We’re not impervious to global economic woes, but great material performs well, and we’ve had some strong pieces come to market. I think we’re also seeing the importance of the global nature of our business. We’ve had collectors from over 50 countries bid in our sales, and whenever we’ve noticed stress or anxiety coming from country X, sector Y, category Z, the bidding is so broad-based that it offsets these concerns. That keeps prices strong.
The market has also expanded to include people who are stepping in to bid at all levels, not just at the top. And I think there’s just more interest overall in owning tangible, physical objects at this point in time. In a world of volatility and uncertainty, people crave things that endure.
Is the market nearing a peak?
Art is probably more of a lagging indicator rather than a leading indicator of where the markets are. We don’t necessarily see dramatic corrections. When our market slows down, fewer things become available to sell, but anyone waiting around to get a 30% discount on a masterpiece may be disappointed and frustrated.
We’re kind of like the oceanfront property that everyone’s waiting for the right moment to buy, but there’s a lot of money waiting for that moment. As soon as the price for anything goes down even a little bit, people start to jump in. I see a similar dynamic in our brackets.
Inflation is high in the U.S., and yet that doesn’t appear to have dampened the art market. Why is that?
Art is priced globally, and people bid in whatever currency they use. You may own an object and think about it in dollars, but the bidders trying to win it might be thinking in euros or Swiss francs. Inflation can accompany currency weakness, but art is valued at a globally determined price, so it can be a good hedge against inflation made worse by currency weaknesses.
Cryptocurrencies are flatlining. What’s your outlook on NFT art?
Crypto has clearly repriced significantly, and that’s had implications for the NFT market. But I think people are starting to understand the difference between NFTs created by artists and those made for the collectible markets or for communities like the Bored Apes. Last year it was all sort of lumped together. Now, there’s some clear distinctions.
I also think there’s so much yet to be unlocked in terms of blockchain usage, and the day will come when the physical art we sell will somehow be recorded and supported by a token on the blockchain. It’ll be the standard because it has the potential to solve a number of long-standing issues around things like title, authenticity and provenance. It took the rise of NFT art to raise our own collective awareness to these possibilities.
Where else are you seeing growth and potential in your industry?
We bought a majority stake in our car auction partner, RM Sotheby’s, a few months ago because we see the power and the size of the collectible car market. It’s incredible.
Our luxury categories are also up significantly, more than 30% higher than last year. Even though we’re associated with the best masterpieces, 80% of our bidding goes to win objects under $25,000. Our clients aren’t just looking for the best Van Gogh—they’re buying things across 70 different categories in the 500 sales we hold each year, at all price ranges.
From sneakers to handbags to jewelry to wine and certainly collectible cars, collectors are thinking differently about these categories as well. Years ago, you’d buy a nice watch and you’d have it for your whole life. Now, you might sell it in three years because there are different ways to do that without much time or cost friction.
What parts of the world intrigue you now as potential art hubs?
Korea is an incredibly strong market, and even though we don’t host auctions there, we are paying attention to it. Hong Kong continues to be the hub despite its challenges, but we’re selling a lot to Japan, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Vietnam. China’s very important and obviously very large, but it’s not the only thing.
We are seeing bigger cultural ambitions across the Middle East, from the Emirates to Saudi Arabia. We’ve just opened a beautiful space in Cologne, Germany, and we have a gallery in Los Angeles. We have to engage people where they are and not wait for them to pass through New York, Paris or London.
Copper trades below $8,000 a tonne as recession fears take hold
World’s most important industrial metal had struck a record high above $10,600 earlier this year
Copper dropped below $8,000 a tonne for the first time in almost 18 months on Friday as mounting fears of recession weigh on the world’s most important industrial metal.
Widely regarded as a gauge of economic activity because of its use in everything from household appliances to electric vehicles, the metal fell as much 3 per cent to $7,959 a tonne, leaving it on course for its fourth consecutive weekly decline.
Other metals also opened the third quarter on a gloomy note, with nickel down 3 per cent and aluminium off 2 per cent despite data that showed a pick-up in factory activity in China, the world’s biggest consumer of raw materials.
“This suggests the market views the improvement as not enough to offset the potential slowdown in developed economies,” strategists at ANZ said in a report.
Concerns that demand will be crimped by central banks rapidly raising interest rates to curb inflation and, in turn, slowing economic growth, saw London Metal Exchange’s six main contracts register in the April to June period their worst quarter since the global financial crisis in 2008.
That was a marked change from conditions earlier in the year when copper traded at a record above $10,600 a tonne on the back of supply disruptions and booming demand as lockdown restrictions eased.
Before and during that period many generalist investors bought copper, believing that prices would be underpinned by a lack of new supply projects in the pipeline and rising demand from the electric vehicle industry and also from the makers of wind turbines and solar panels.
While that narrative is still expected to play out — albeit later in the decade — the prospect of a hard economic landing in the US and Europe has investors running scared.
In a report, Marex, a major commodities brokerage, said “money flows” were the main factor driving losses across the industrial metals landscape. That view was echoed by analysts.
“It is a sell-off by macro funds,” said Tom Price, head of commodities strategy at Liberum. “We are seeing a similar pullback across energy, metals and gold has gone below $1,800 an ounce. It’s across the board. People are withdrawing money from the sector.”
Despite the storm clouds gathering above the global economy, Colin Hamilton, commodities analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said copper market fundamentals were still healthy with the latest industry surveys pointing to end-user demand in developed markets remaining robust, for now.
Price agreed: “If I just look at trade flows, particularly into China, consumption rates, premium signals, inventory levels I would say this looks like a tight, balanced market. But that’s not what the price is telling you.”
Copper bulls are now pinning their hopes on China and a pick-up in demand as Covid-19 cases decline and policymakers look to boost economies through stimulus packages.
“There is always hope that China will save the day through a massive infrastructure stimulus package,” said Jean-Sébastien Jacques, former chief executive of Rio Tinto on LinkedIn. ”
“It has happened a few times in the past, but is hope a strategy? No must be the answer. In any case the timing of such a stimulus package is highly uncertain and would likely require some material debt increase at a local or provincial level.”
Research Calls
- Upgrades:
- Coupang (CPNG) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse; tgt lowered to $19
- First Republic Bank (FRC) upgraded to Overweight from Neutral at Atlantic Equities; tgt lowered to $188
- Sitio Royalties Corp. (STR) upgraded to Outperform from Sector Perform at RBC Capital Mkts; tgt raised to $43
- Downgrades:
- Duck Creek Technologies (DCT) downgraded to Mkt Perform from Mkt Outperform at JMP Securities
- Duck Creek Technologies (DCT) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities; tgt lowered to $16
- FedEx (FDX) downgraded to Hold from Buy at Berenberg; tgt lowered to $275
- Huntington Banc (HBAN) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $14.50
- Live Oak Bancshares (LOB) downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at JP Morgan; tgt lowered to $41
- Micron (MU) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities; tgt lowered to $62
- XPeng (XPEV) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Nomura; tgt lowered to $36.30
- ZIM Integrated Shipping (ZIM) downgraded to Underperform from Buy at BofA Securities; tgt lowered to $40
- Others:
- Alvotech (ALVO) initiated with a Hold at Deutsche Bank; tgt $10
- Comcast (CMCSA) initiated with an Outperform at Daiwa Securities; tgt $43
- Cousins Prop (CUZ) initiated with a Peer Perform at Wolfe Research
- Harley-Davidson (HOG) initiated with a Neutral at DA Davidson; tgt $35
- Paramount Global (PARA) initiated with a Neutral at Daiwa Securities; tgt $26
- VectivBio (VECT) initiated with an Overweight at Piper Sandler; tgt $23
Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
- MU -4.5%
Other news:
- KSS -16.4% (Franchise Group negotiations to acquire Kohl's Corporation have terminated; lowers Q2 sales outlook)
- CLDX -5.4% (presents interim data from Barzolvolimab Phase 1b Study)
- WDC -3.6% (in sympathy with MU earnings)
- ERJ -3.2% (signs agreement with Toyota do Brasil in order to run operations more efficiently)
- ATEX -2% (stock offering)
- ACRE -1.9% (files for $1.25 bln mixed securities shelf offering)
- PCT -1.5% (CEO to resign; current COO promoted to CEO)
- SAVE -1.2% (JBLU extends tender offer to SAVE to July 29)
- LULU -1% (files mixed securities shelf offering)
Analyst comments:
- DCT -3.5% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities; downgraded to Mkt Perform from Mkt Outperform at JMP Securities)
Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
- ACCD +2.7%
Other news:
- CYTK +8.7% (prices offering of of $450.0 mln of 3.50% convertible senior notes due 2027)
- XPEV +3.4% (June deliveries)
- NIO +2.9% (June deliveries)
- BITF +2.7% (provides June 2022 production and mining operations update)
- BCRX +2.6% (presents new data demonstrating consistently low attack rates among HAE patients after switching to ORLADEYO)
- LNN +2.3% (increases quarterly cash dividend to $0.34 per share from $0.33 per share)
- CWEN +1.9% (CFO to step down)
- LI +1.9% (June deliveries)
- SAIL +1% (shareholders approve pending acquisition by Thoma Bravo)
Analyst comments:
- CPNG +2% (upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse)