Naughty Paris

Tuesday starts off well enough at YOBA, a beautiful lingerie and toy boutique just off the Tuileries Gardens. The summer sales are still on, so it's hard not to do a little shopping while the model and photographer are at work.

Afterwards we go to another boutique, Phylea, which specializes in fantasy corsets and fetishwear. We get Nicole all laced up in a traditional corset and tell her not to pass out until we're done shooting. We shoot in the doorway and start drawing a small audience of bystanders. We also get her in a purple rubber dress, but after her cell phone rings in the changing room we have to wrap up as she zooms off to put out a fire back home (figurative, folks, calm down).



We all reconvene later at the Experimental Cocktail Club near Montorgueil, a stylish little design bar run by three young French gentlemen who do indeed have some fabulous cocktails! The Perfect Agave is the first cocktail with Tequila that I've ever liked (well, ever since that incident in Arizona in 1992....). I recruited some more friends to act as the "crowd", but there was already a real one there, so we had to artfully block them from view. Kirsten had half the bar sign model releases in the end anyway, just in case.

The model was sick of me always hiding behind the camera, so here I am, officially on break, drinking a Perrier (not very experimental, but it keeps me going!)

Afterwards Kirsten and I went to Le Paris-Paris to meet up with Nicolas Ullmann for the last Ullmann Cabarock of the season. We're not shooting the Paris-Paris, just picking up Nicolas so we can photograph him at Le Baron afterwards. It was absolutely packed, and Nicolas had a hard time pulling us into the door. Unfortunately we immediately lost him while he went back out to rescue more friends from the sidewalk crowd pushing against the velvet ropes.

Nicolas (left) singing at the final season Cabarock at Le Paris-Paris.

Le Baron is dark and red. And dark. And crowded and small and smoky. And it's one of the best parties in town! Butthe staff are not in a party mood since Nicolas has invited the entire crowd from Paris-Paris to come to Le Baron, which is a quarter of the size. They see Kirsten doing light tests with her huge camera and start freaking out. We explain what we're doing (and more importantly, that we're with Nicolas), but they seem intent on kicking us out. We're saved by Nicolas at the last moment, when one particularly angry gorilla looks as if he's about to rip Kirsten's camera right out of her hands.

We take a few quick snapshots and pray they'll work, thank Nicolas, and head back out into the night. Sick of the taxi search and hauling our bodies through the metro, I have wisely brought along my car for the evening. Miraculously, we found parking places directly across the street (the Parisians have already started leaving for summer vacation). It's 3am by the time I drop Kirsten off at the hotel. I tell her to be ready at 6am when I come back to pick her up for for the sunrise shots on the Champ de Mars.

To be continued...

I let everyone have Sunday off (including yours truly, who needed to do some market shopping), and on Monday we got off to a soggy start. We were supposed to meet in front of the Eiffel Tower at 6am for sunrise shooting. At 5am I wake up and hear rain on my roof. The model calls about wardrobe issues and I tell her to wait and see if the photographer wanted to risk getting her equipment wet...the word comes back at 5:30am: "Go back to bed, see you at lunch".

After a nice lunch at Palais Royal, where we deal with some of the necessary paperwork (model releases, contracts, etc.), we head out in the rain to another shoot with personal stylist/shopping consultant Jacqueline Sablayrolles of La Mode-Le Club. We go to the wrong address (there are two) and our taxi already has left before we realized it, so we had to flag down another while calling the model to warn her of the change. Jacqueline has some dresses from the new collection of Fatima Guerrout (who's to shy to let us put her photo in the guide...isn't she cute though!) that we ooh and ahh over before setting up the shoot.

Fatima watching from the side:


Afterwards we have an unconfirmed shoot at a fetish club called Cris-et-Chuchotements, all the way on the other side of town. I knew they weren't open (that's why they were letting us take pics), but the contact person I had was not answering the phone and no one answered the door, so we had to abort that mission. It's not our day!

But we decide to take some photos around the Petit Palais when we see a promising sign:



Kirsten is determined to get the rainbow, even though the wind is blowing the rain right into her lense. (I actually did go and help hold the umbrella after shooting this pic!)



We then head over to Les Ombres for a late dinner shoot. The Eiffel Tower is usually visible through the glass and steel roof, but the rain was once again wreaking havoc. Kirsten manages to get out on the balcony to get some nice shots anyway. I have a Kir Royal and head home to feed my dogs.



And pray the next day goes more smoothly!

The crew slept in Saturday morning, then met up at Les Chandelles, one of the best-known echangiste (swinger) clubs in Paris. We have an appointment with the owner Valerie. We enter with our equipment at about 5pm and start setting up, even though, as happens, Valerie is neither there nor does her staff have any clue that we're supposed to be there. But we manage to explain what we're doing and the manager gives us carte blanche to shoot away (she did warn the other clientèle before we went downstairs). After wardrobe changes, the model does a little spin on the dance floor's pole. Lucky for us she's a natural! Then we do a few montage scenes around the club, careful not to get any of the clientèle in the shots. It's a beautiful club, much nicer than most of the places of this genre. Being the afternoon, there's only a handful of people (at the bar, not in the "back"), but they don't seem to mind watching our shoot.

I just know all of you are asking where MY photos are...unfortunately I can't publish those here...you'll just have to see the guide when it's finished!

Afterwards we head over to the Latin Quarter, where we pick up a friend who happens to be a tango dancer. We're all starving so we grab some crepes, the equivalent of French fast food, and taxi up to the Bistro Latin. It's actually pretty empty, and someone tells us everyone is dancing on the Seine. Paris Plage had just opened that day, so the crowd dancing on the quays at the foot of the Institut du Monde Arabe were bigger than normal. We started to walk, (and Kirsten kept stopping to shoot the sunset), but with everyone in heels, we soon changed to another taxi and made it to the Quai St-Bernard just as the sun was getting low.

Kirsten tried to keep up with our tango'ing couple amidst the swirl, but it wasn't easy!



Afterwards we meet another model and her beau at Le Fumoir for a nightcap. We look for a taxi along the quays, but by the time we reached the metro there were still no taxis free, so we metro'd home. La classe!

Day 3 starts early, at 10am. Luckily for our model, it only entails getting a massage in the best spa in town: the Four Seasons George V.

Kirsten (and our PR liaison at the hotel, Jean-Louis) wearing hygienic booties for the shots around the swimming pool.

We shoot some food images during lunch at Ginger, on the Rue de La Trémoille, then head out to our first "toy" store shoot at the Dollhouse, back in the Marais.

Kirsten demonstrates how she wants the model to use the leather flogger.

It's late afternoon, but there are still two more sessions with yet another model, first at the vintage photography gallery of erotic art, Au Bonheur du Jour, and then afternoon tea photos in the adorable lounge of the Hotel Daniel. Unfortunately we arrived a bit late and my contact had already gone home for the day. The photographer starts setting up anyway while I explain to a slightly bewildered-looking staff that we're just going to snap a few pics and be on our way.



As they say, sometimes it's better to apologize than to ask for permission. ;) We get some lovely shots (and I think the gentlemen guests at the other end of the tearoom were enjoying the view of our model's long legs) and wrapped up by 7pm. We were supposed to shoot another restaurant that evening at 10:30pm (because it isn't dark until then in Paris, and we need the shots to look like they're taken at dinner!) but everyone needs a break, so I let the team go home and get their beauty rest.

Next stop? One of the most famous swinger's clubs in Europe....stay tuned!

Day 2 started out with three very dehydrated, sleep deprived ladies in sunglasses. Luckily we're all young enough to bounce back by the time the shooting starts at the naughty perfume boutique, Etat Libre d'Orange, in the Marais. We had to improvise a bit to get some good perfume shots without actually spraying the model with the perfume (since we wouldn't have time to hose her down before the next session).

We can't resist a closeup of the model's shoes on the hot pink rug.

After lunch we shoot at L'Hotel in the St-Germain-des-Près district, a sultry Jacques Garcia designed boutique hotel. Aarathi arrives to help style the room photos. We have a beautifully exotic room for the shoot (the Marco Polo, I believe), and decide to go ahead and fill the tub so it can look like the model is about to get in. I should mention that all of the hotels we shoot are kindly letting us use the room for an hour or so. But we're not supposed to mess it up, so we're very careful to "leave no traces" at the end of the sessions. Between setting up, arranging and changing the photographic equipment, styling the models and then cleaning up behind ourselves, it soon becomes obvious why so many people are needed on fashion shoots!

Aarathi arranges the model's hair to look "natural".

We wrap up at L'Hotel and go for lunch at La Palette, just down the road. The model's boyfriend has arrived in Paris unexpectedly, so she won't be coming to the evening session at Chez Régine's. Luckily, I invited all of my girlfriends to participate in the shoot, which is for the weekly ladies' night, "Au Bonheur des Dames". How do you get your friends to come out and basically "work" for free? Free drinks, free food, free male entertainment....if only all my work was this easy!

The ladies waiting patiently for the show to begin.

What isn't easy is getting in, since there's a whole sea of women pressed up against the velvet rope at opening time. After talking our way past the doorman (with the help of the PR woman's email to me, which I thankfully remembered to print out and bring along....this is France, after all) our crew set up on the edge of the dance floor where the show takes place. And what a show!

"Zorro" shows the willing participant where to pull the zipper on his tight black pants...

At some point during the shooting, Kirsten lost a piece of her flash equipment, called a diaphragm, so I had to walk around asking the wait staff if they'd accidentally "cleaned up" a large white diaphragm...sometimes this job has its surreal moments. Despite the loss (I promised to bring some wax paper and scotch tape to the next shoot to improvise), it was another successful day of shooting. We got the photographer home earlier on Day 2, just after midnight!

Tune in tomorrow to see us shoot our first naughty toy boutique!

Our photographer Kirsten arrives from Toronto at 9am, and immediately has to change hotels because the "Double Deluxe" at the first one was too small to unpack all of her equipment. The team meets for lunch at Lapérouse, one of the restaurants in the guide, where Kirsten meets the production assistant Aarathi and one of the models, Nicole. After a light lunch, they get rolling with a few photos in Laperouse's famous "salons privées". The staff are brilliantly helpful. A good start!

Kisten (spotting a good angle to photograph), Nicole, Aarathi, and Joann at Lapérouse.

Next stop is the Murano Urban Resort, where we meet another model, Marcus, for photos in the bar and the Honeymoon suite. In the early afternoon the bar is almost empty, so we get full run of the place. The Honeymoon suite is a total trip (although it did take five of us to figure out how to get all of the random gadgets and colored lights to work), so it was no problem getting the models to have a little fun posing in the big round bed.



It's sporty work being a naughty photographer! Kirsten pretends she needs to lie down to take these photos. We order her a pot of coffee.



Kirsten gets to go home for a few hours' rest before the third and final session of Day 1, the Black Calavados (aka BC) bar and restaurant. Being almost completely black, it was quite a challenge to get the right shots. Thankfully the other restaurant guests were having such a rowdy time themselves that we didn't bother anyone with our entourage.



We head downstairs to the bar, and since it's still empty early in the evening we start taking more photos with our young models. But it does fill quickly, being such a tiny bar, so the manager eventually cuts us off, and we celebrate the end of a successful first day with a few bottles of Champagne. Kirsten is now jetlagged and buzzed, but she can't resist continuing to shoot on the sly.



We manage to get the mild-mannered party animal to bed by 2am. Come back tomorrow for Day 2!

Don't care to watch the "third place" World Cup Match this Saturday? Then grab your leather, latex and PVC and get thee to the Nuit Elastique, one of the city's most popular fetish nights. And as part of the Soldes fever that has taken over the city, you can even buy the tickets in advance at the Boutique Démonia (10 Cité Joly, 11th) for just €7 instead of €20. While you're there check out the videos, toys and sexy clothing on sale!

Check out the Clinique Cosmique at fashionista boutique Colette (213 Rue St-Honoré, 1st), where kitsch "sextrologers" Stella Starsky and Quinn Cox will read your horoscope on March 1-4 from 4-6pm at the Water Bar (downstairs) — gratuit — in English or fluent Franglais. The duo are authors of the book Sextrology: The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes. Be sure you know what time you were born!

The biggest fetish party in Paris, Nuit Dèmonia, takes place every December. Of course I had to go. Not just for research, but for the wardrobe. Because while “echangiste” sex clubs may be all about increasing your odds of getting lucky -- very lucky, even! -- fetish clubs are all about le look. I recruited a brave lady friend of mine (we’ll call her Lila) who was intrigued with the evening’s strict dress code: leather, latex, vinyl or uniform. Lila is the kind of Parisienne who has the perfect outfit for every event. But this was new for her. “What will I wear?” she asked in wonderment. I asked myself the same thing; remembering sadly that I had recently given away a leather miniskirt from my college days because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn it.

But never fear. This is Paris, after all! And of course I knew exactly where to “get kitted out”, as the Brits would say. There are two excellent boutiques on Rue Quincampoix (near the Pompidou Centre) selling fetish wear, corsets, uniforms, stilettos, and even accessories like whips, chains, and hand-cuffs. The little police uniforms were cute, but we already had our corsets, so we were looking for skirts. I found a cute little black vinyl skirt, not skin tight but shaped a bit like a cheerleader’s skirt. But I felt a little, well, naked. A pair of long black gloves would complete the outfit. But they had to be shiny (to match the skirt), and they had to fit my skinny little arms.

“We don’t sell latex,” said the shopkeeper at the largest fetish boutique on the street. She explained that it was too fragile and the outfits always got damaged and couldn’t be sold. Meanwhile, Lila is an Amazon, too tall for most Parisian clothes. Not finding anything she likes, we both cross the Boulevard Sébastopol to the goth boutiques of Les Halles.

Goth boutiques are not the most elegant places in the world (nor are they trying to be), but it’s a great place to find black vinyl skirts in every shape. Lila finds her bliss in a long, flowing skirt (straight out of Cruella DeVille’s closet). I try on the elbow-length vinyl gloves. I frown at the way they’re baggu around myupper arms. “You going to the Nuit Dèmonia tonight?” the heavily-pierced shopkeeper asks. I nod. We’re obviously not the only ones who waited until the last minute. I pass on the vinyl gloves, and resign myself to a trip to the Dèmonia boutique on the other side of town, where I knew I’d find latex gloves.

But on the way to the métro, the window displays along the Rue St-Denis caught my eye. If you know this street, you know that it’s best to ignore the tacky sex shop and sex show store fronts. But of course there they were: latex gloves, for sale in one of the “toys and videos” shops. These are not places for Good Girls. But in the interest of time, Lila and I give it a go. It’s hard to know how to act in a boutique surrounded by absurdly-sized silicone body parts and even the more absurd covers gracing the XXX-videos on the shelves. We focus on the gloves.

One pair are made of rubber, so thick that I could have used them to clean up toxic waste. Impossible to bend my fingers, though, so we move on to another pair that are just too long. Finally, we find a pair that I think might work. Keep in mind it’s December, I’m wearing eight layers of clothing that I need to mostly take off to get the gloves up to my elbows. The owner is smoking heavily as he talks to us, and maybe we rush a bit because we’re sure we’re going to pass out. He includes the silicone-spray in the bag with my purchase and we burst out of the shop into the fresh(ish) Parisian air.

Silicone spray is one of the necessary accessories when buying latex, because it’s what gives the latex its shine. Otherwise you’ll look like you’re wearing deflated balloons. It’s only when I get home I realize the bottle is mostly empty. Maybe it leaked, but maybe it came that way. No way I’m going back, though.

Getting ready for the evening, I apply a ton of talc powder so that I can get my gloves on, smooth the air bubbles out of the fingers. This takes almost twenty minutes. I apply the silicone and buff them up to a nice shine. In the métro on the way to meet Lila, I wonder if anyone notices the shiny black hand clutching the steel bar. Otherwise I’m completely covered by my winter layers, my stilettos in my backpack.



The gloves look awesome, like a second skin. I feel like Aeon Flux. Fetish nights are, after all, really just Halloween for adults. Who doesn’t love to dress up all sexy? But then I start to notice a funny feeling. Or rather, a lack thereof. By the time I reach Lila’s house, I have to rip the gloves off, terrified that the loss of circulation will make my fingers fall off.

We have a glass of wine, pose for some funny photos (that will never see the light of day if we have any say in it), and head off to La Loco. The flyers advertise a “changing room” so that no one has to arrive in their outfits. But it’s really just one huge room with a coat-check service, and everyone is in different corners assembling their outfits. The first two people Lila and I spot are a fat man and a dwarf. But more on the actual Nuit Dèmonia in another post. We peel off the layers hiding our tiny outfits, slide into our stilettos, and – rather too quickly – I attempt to put my gloves back on. But since they’ve been silicone’d, they’re now “fragile” (the words of the first boutique owner echoing in my head). I put in one hand, give a gentle pull, et voila. I now have a fingerless glove. Lila glances over in my direction as I curse ever-so-inelegantly.

“No one will notice,” she assures me. I glance out into the darkened club, have another look at the growing expanse of exposed skin in the dressing room, and suddenly don’t feel so naked in my skirt and corset. I rip off the gloves and toss them into the backpack with my sneakers.

My latex love affair got off to rocky start. But I’m not ready to give up just yet. I saw these amazing latex thigh highs at the Salon de la Lingerie. To be continued…

Are all of those chocolate hearts and sappy cards making you malade? *

Head over to OPA (9 rue Biscornet, 11th, M° Bastille or Ledru Rollin) for the Soirée Valentin Musiques Secrètes by Gutaï Records, featuring vintage porn film clips from the early 20th century accompanied by "mystical and orgasmic" improvised music. I can't imagine how this won't be a good laugh! February 14, 8pm-2am. No cover.

* Interesting note: "vomit" is the same in French and English (pronounced vo-mee' in French)