Photo: Paul Mouginot for Crash Magazine

Everybody knows this beautiful, dark silhouette you often meet at Fashion Week, but Diane Pernet is more a businesswoman than an haute-couture widow. She started her career in New York as a costume designer and showed her talent and taste in numerous publications such as Elle or Vogue. Back in Paris, Diane became one of the earliest fashion bloggers by starting A Shaded View on Fashion (ASVOF) in 2005.

Lastly, as the founder and main curator of the festival A Shaded View on Fashion Film, she is a key actor in spreading the message that fashion is definitely linked with aesthetics and global trends, but should also convey a more intellectual and durable message. Paul Mouginot met her at the last fashion week in Paris and took her portrait. She kindly agreed to reveal us her favourite places in the French capital.

http://www.ashadedviewonfashion.com,

Les Deux Abeilles  189 rue de l’Universite 75007
This restaurant is a little jewel and serves as my favorite canteen. I love that it is open from morning till 7PM and that you can order anything on the menu all day. It is family run and the food is cooked with love. I’ve never been disappointed and have tried nearly everything on the menu.

And if you have a sweet tooth, watch out. I love the chestnut cake, which is only available in the winter, and the hot chocolate is made in the ancient way – it is simply the best. They also are kind enough to let photographers and filmmakers interview me there. You could say that my life passes by in this tea salon.

Toraya  10 rue St Florentin 75001

Toraya is one of the oldest Japanese patisseries in Japan and along with the sweets, it offers a limited but delicious selection of light lunches with vegetables, steamed rice, miso soupe, and on occasion fish, but mostly vegetarian. It is the only place where you can drink green tea hot chocolate as well as other traditional Japanese deserts.  When it is super hot in Paris nothing cools you off better than Kaki-Gori which has macha green tea syrup and red azuki beans. It’s divine.

Ragtime - 23 Rue De l’Echaudé 75006
I’ve known the owner Francoise Auget ever since I moved to Paris 22 years ago. She is an expert in haute couture and the XXeme century. This shop is a great resource for fashion designers as it is full of originality and little treasures. Everything is in perfect shape or she would not show it. It is a dangerous place for me to enter because I always fall in love with one piece or another.

photo by Diane Pernet

YEN  22 rue St Benoit 75006 Paris
Yen this is one of my favorite spots for Japanese food, I am there more often for dinner than for lunch and I prefer to sit upstairs where it is more calm. YEN is known for its freshly made soba noodles and you can watch them being made by the soba master in the window. It is hard to limit my favorite dishes to just a few but the fresh tofu with ginger and nasu no dengaku, grilled eggplant with red and white miso are standouts.  And any of the fish and of course the tempura soba and the deserts from AOKI are amazing.

Tuck Shop 13 rue Lucien Sampaix 75010
I love this place – a really cozy eatery serving vegetarian food.  It’s affordable and made with love especially its many sweets and famous Australian café. Tuck Shop is the name for a canteen in Australia and the three owners of the Tuck Shop hail from Down Under. If it was closer to home I would be there everyday.

Article: Paul Mouginot