by Kevin Kwan
I thought I knew some major shoppers in Goh Peik Lin and Araminta Lee, but I have never seen this level of spending in my entire life! The girls were like a plague of locusts, descending on every boutique and decimating everything in sight, while Colette breathlessly posted every purchase on social media. Swept up in all the excitement, I made my first high-fashion purchase—a pair of beautifully tailored navy slacks I found on the sale rack at Chloé that will go with everything. Needless to say, the sale rack is invisible to the other girls. For them, it’s next season’s looks or nothing.
Nick decided that he’d had enough after Chanel and took off to visit some taxidermy museum, but Carlton, who had the patience of Job, stayed and watched adoringly as Colette hoovered up every chic object. He won’t admit it, but you know it’s true love when a dude will go shopping for fifteen hours straight with a bunch of women and their mothers. Of course, Carlton was shopping up a storm too, but he was much quicker about it: While Mrs. Bing was having an existential crisis over whether to buy a €6.8 million ruby necklace at Bulgari or an €8.4 million canary diamond necklace across the street at Boucheron, Carlton ducked out quietly. Twenty minutes later he returned carrying ten shopping bags from Charvet, covertly handing me one. Back at the hotel, I opened it to find a tailored blouse that was pale pink with white stripes, in the softest cotton you can imagine. Carlton must have thought it would go perfectly with my new Chloé pants. What a sweetie!
Wednesday, June 19
Today was Couture Day. In the morning, we visited the ateliers of Bouchra Jarrar and Alexis Mabille for private fashion shows. At Bouchra, I witnessed something I’ve never seen in my life: women going into multiorgasmic frenzies over trousers. Apparently Bouchra’s ingeniously cut trousers are like the second coming of, well, your second coming. At the next atelier, Alexis actually appeared at the end of the fashion show and the girls suddenly transformed into frothing tweens at a One Direction concert, trying to impress him and one-up each other in ordering outfits. Nick even encouraged me to get something but I told him I’d rather save the €€€ for our bathroom refurbishment fund. “The bathroom is fully funded, okay. Now please pick out a dress!” Nick insisted. I looked at all the fantastical ball gowns and selected this beautifully structured black jacket that’s hand-painted with an ombré effect at the sleeves and tied together at the waist with the most elegant blue silk bow. It’s original yet classic, and it’s something I can wear until I’m a hundred.
When it was time for them to take my measurements, the vendeuse insisted on measuring every inch of my body. Apparently Nick told them that I needed the matching hand-painted trousers too! It was so fun to watch the artistry of these seamstresses in action—never in my life could I imagine that I’d ever own a couture outfit! I think of Mom, and the backbreaking long hours she had to work in the early years, but how she still found the time to alter the hand-me-downs that came from our cousins so that I’d always look decent at school. I need to get her something really special in Paris.
After an overly froufrou lunch at a restaurant on place des Vosges that cost more than my bonus last year (thank God Perrineum paid), Carlton and Nick headed off to Molsheim to visit the Bugatti car factory, while Mrs. Bing insisted on visiting the Hermès boutique on rue de Sèvres. (BTW, her feet didn’t seem to hurt anymore, even after seventy-two hours of nonstop pavement pounding.) I’ve never understood the fascination with Hermès, but I had to admit the store was pretty cool—it’s set in the Hôtel Lutetia’s former indoor pool, with all the merchandise scattered around different levels of the vast atrium. Perrineum was indignant that the store wouldn’t close to the public for her and decided to boycott the place. She then proceeded to walk around making disparaging remarks about the other Asian shoppers. “Don’t you feel self-conscious trying to shop around these people?” she said to me. “Do you have something against rich Asians?” I joked. “These people aren’t rich—they’re just Henrys!” Perrineum scoffed. “What are Henrys?” She gave me a withering look. “You’re an economist—don’t you know what HENRY stands for?” I racked my brains, but I still didn’t have a clue. Perrineum finally spat it out: “High Earners, Not Rich Yet.”
Thursday, June 20
Nick and I decided to take a break from shopping today and do something cultural instead. As we were sneaking out early in the morning to visit the Musée Gustave Moreau, we ran into Colette in the elevator. She insisted that we join her for the special breakfast she had planned for everyone at the Jardin du Luxembourg. Since the garden is one of my favorite discoveries from our last trip, I happily agreed.
It was so lovely in the morning—nothing but chic mothers pushing their babies around in prams, dapper old men reading the morning paper, and the plumpest, most contented-looking pigeons I’ve ever seen. We climbed the steps next to the Medici fountain and sat at a lovely outdoor café. Everyone got café crème or Dammann tea, and Colette ordered a dozen pains au chocolat. The waiters soon brought out twelve plates of pastries, but as I was about to bite into mine, Colette hissed, “Stop! Don’t eat that!” My coffee hadn’t quite kicked in yet, and before I could figure out what was going on, Colette jumped out of her chair and whispered to Roxanne, “Quick, quick! Do it now, while the waiters aren’t looking!” Roxanne opened up this big S&M-looking black leather satchel and took out a paper bag filled with pains au chocolat. The two women began frantically swapping out the pastries on everyone’s plates with the stuff from the bag, while Nick and Carlton laughed hysterically and this very proper-looking couple at the next table stared at us like we were crazy.
Colette declared, “Okay, now you can eat.” I took the first bite of my pain au chocolat, and it was amazing. Airy, flaky, buttery, oozing rich bittersweet chocolate. Colette explained: “These pains au chocolat are from Gérard Mulot. They are my favorite, but the problem is they don’t have a sit-down café there. And I can only eat my pain au chocolat while sipping a good cup of tea. But the decent tea places don’t have pain au chocolat as good as this, and of course they won’t allow you to bring anything in from another bakery. So the only way to solve this quandary was to resort to a switcheroo. But isn’t this perfect? Now we get to enjoy the best morning tea, with the best pains au chocolat, in the best park in the world.” Carlton shook his head and said, “You’re raving bonkers, Colette!” And then he consumed his chocolate croissant in two bites.
In the afternoon, some of the girls went to a private shopping party at L’Eclaireur while Nick and I accompanied Stephanie and her mother to the Kraemer Gallery. Nick knew of this antiques dealer and wanted to see it. He jokingly called it “the billionaire’s IKEA,” but when we got there I realized he wasn’t kidding—it was a palatial mansion by the Parc Monceau filled with the most astounding furniture and objets. Every piece was museum quality and seemed to have once been owned by a king or queen. Mrs. Shi, this mousy woman who until now hadn’t joined in the fashion frenzy, suddenly transformed into one of those QVC shopping addicts and started buying up the place like a whirling dervish. Nick stood on the sidelines, chatting with Monsieur Kraemer, and after a few minutes the man ducked away. He soon returned bearing one of their historical ledgers and, much to Nick’s delight, showed us some old receipts for purchases made by Nick’s great-grandfather in the early 1900s!
Friday, June 21
Guess who showed up in Paris today? Richie Yang. Obviously he just couldn’t bear to miss out on the action. He even tried to stay at the Shangri-La, but with all the suites booked by our party, he ended up “making do” with the penthouse at the Mandarin Oriental. He came by the Shangri-La bearing baskets of expensive-looking fruit from Hédiard—all for Colette’s mother. Meanwhile, Carlton conveniently announced that he was offered an incredible vintage sports car and had to go meet with the owner somewhere outside of Paris. I offered to accompany him, but he mumbled some quick excuses and rushed off alone. I’m not sure if I buy his excuses—it’s so strange that he would run off like t
his. Why would he flee the match just as his chief competitor entered the ring?
In the evening, Richie insisted on inviting everyone to “the most exclusive restaurant in Paris. You’ve practically got to kill someone to get a reservation,” he said. The restaurant was inexplicably decorated like a corporate boardroom, and Richie arranged for all of us to have the chef’s tasting menu—the “Amusements and Tantalizations in Sixteen Movements.” Despite how unappetizing this sounded, the food turned out to be quite spectacular and inventive, especially the artichoke-and-white-truffle soup and the razor clams in a sweet garlic sabayon, but I could see that Mrs. Bing and the aunties weren’t half as thrilled. Colette’s grandmother looked especially puzzled by the seafood “raw-cooked in cold steam,” the startlingly colored foams, and the artfully composed dwarf vegetables, and kept asking her daughter, “Why are they giving us all the vegetable scraps? Is it because we’re Chinese?” Mrs. Bing replied, “No, everyone gets the same dishes. Look how many French people are eating here—this place must be very authentic.”
After the meal, the elders headed back to the hotel while Pied Piper Richie announced that he was taking us to some ultra-exclusive club started by the director David Lynch. “I’ve been a member since day one,” he boasted. Nick and I begged off and took a lovely evening stroll along the Seine. Arriving back at the hotel, we passed Mrs. Bing, who was standing at the door of her suite talking furtively to a Chinese maid from housekeeping. Catching my eye, she beckoned us over excitedly. “Rachel, Rachel, look what this nice maid gave me!” In her hand was a white plastic trash bag filled with dozens of bottles of the hotel’s Bulgari bath gel, shampoo, and conditioner. “Do you want some? She can get more!” I told her that Nick and I used our own shampoos and didn’t touch the hotel toiletries. “Can I have yours, then? And the shower caps too?” Mrs. Bing asked eagerly. We gathered up all our toiletries and headed back to her suite. She came to the door and acted like a junkie who had just been handed free premium-grade heroin. “Aiyah! I should have been asking you to collect these bottles for me all week long! Wait a minute, don’t go away!” She returned with a bag containing five plastic bottles of water. “Here, take some water! We boil it fresh every day in the electric kettle so we don’t have to pay for the hotel’s bottled water!” Nick was desperately trying to maintain a straight face when Grandma Bing came to the door and said, “Lai Di, why don’t you invite them in?”
We entered her massive suite and discovered Auntie Pan Di, Mrs. Shi, and Mrs. Wen huddled over a large portable hot pot in the dining room. On the floor was a huge Louis Vuitton trunk filled with packets of ramen in all kinds of flavors. “Shrimp and pork ramen?” Auntie Pan Di asked, stirring a big batch of noodles with a pair of chopsticks. Mrs. Bing whispered conspiratorially, “Don’t tell Colette, but we do this every night! We’re so much happier eating ramen than all this fancy French food!” Mrs. Wen said, “Aiyah, I’ve had constipation every single day from all this cheese we’ve been forced to eat.” I asked them why they didn’t just go downstairs to Shang Palace, the hotel’s Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant, for dinner. Mrs. Shi, who earlier today bought an antique clock*2 for €4.2 million at the Kraemer Gallery after looking at it for less than three minutes, exclaimed, “We tried going there after that awful French dinner, but all the dishes were so expensive we walked out! Twenty-five euros for fried rice? Tai leiren le!”*3
Saturday, June 22
Colette knocked on our door at the crack of dawn and woke us up. Had we seen Carlton? Had he called? Apparently he didn’t return to the hotel last night, and he wasn’t answering his phone. Colette seemed worried, but Nick didn’t think there was anything to worry about. “He’ll turn up. Sometimes it takes a while to negotiate with these car collectors—he’s probably still in the middle of doing his deal.” In the meantime, Richie invited everyone over to his penthouse suite for sunset cocktails on the roof terrace. “A little party in Colette’s honor,” he called it. While the girls spent the afternoon getting spa treatments, Nick and I took a blissful nap on the grass at the Parc Monceau.
In the early evening, we arrived to Richie’s party at the Mandarin Oriental only to find that the security men posted by the VIP elevator wouldn’t let us through—our names were apparently “not on the list.” After a phone call to Colette, we managed to clear things up and were whisked to the roof terrace, where we discovered that this wasn’t just a “little cocktail party” for our group. The penthouse was packed with an extremely glam crowd and decorated like a high-tech product launch. Giant obelisk topiaries festooned with lights lined the parapet, an elaborate stage was set up on one end, and along one side of the terrace stood half a dozen celebrity chefs manning different food stations.
I immediately felt underdressed in my cornflower blue silk shirtdress and strappy sandals, especially when guest of honor Colette made an entrance wearing the enormous canary diamond necklace her mother had just bought and a stunning black strapless Stéphane Rolland gown with a long ruffled skirt that seemed to go on for miles and miles. Mrs. Bing, meanwhile, was virtually unrecognizable with her expertly painted face, her hair swept up into a beehive do, and the biggest set of sapphires set against a red Elie Saab cocktail dress with a plunging neckline.
But the biggest surprise of all—Carlton was there! He made no mention about being MIA for twenty-four hours and seemed his usual charming self. Turns out he knew plenty of people at the party—many friends from the London-Dubai-Shanghai party axis had flown in, and soon I was swept up in a frenzy of introductions. I met Sean and Anthony (two charming brothers who were DJing the party), an Arab prince Carlton knew from Stowe, some French countess who wouldn’t stop telling me how disgusted she was with U.S. foreign policy, and then things really got crazy when some famous Chinese pop star showed up. Little did I realize the night was about to get a whole lot crazier.
* * *
*1 Actually, it was Prince Roland Bonaparte, and he was Napoleon Bonaparte’s grandnephew (Rachel is still too hungover to get her facts straight).
*2 An exceptional Louis XV long-case clock by Jean-Pierre Latz, almost identical to the one made for Frederick the Great of Prussia at Neues Palais in Potsdam.
*3 Mandarin for “That’s insane.”
17
THE MANDARIN ORIENTAL
PARIS, FRANCE
Nick climbed the steps to the uppermost deck of the roof terrace, trying to find a quiet spot away from the crowd below. He didn’t particularly enjoy these raucous parties, and this affair seemed even more over the top than usual—every squillionaire within private-jet flying radius was here, and there were far too many outsize egos filling up the space.
A carefully planted row of Italian cypresses started shaking fitfully behind him, and Nick could hear some guy moaning, “Baby…baby…baby ohhh!” He turned around discreetly to leave, but Richie suddenly ducked out from behind the trees, tucking his shirt back into his trousers as a girl skulked off sheepishly in the other direction.
“Oh, it’s you,” Richie said unabashedly. “You having a good time?”
“The view’s terrific,” Nick said diplomatically.
“Isn’t it? If only these stupid Parisians would allow skyscrapers to be built in their city. The views would be unbelievable, and they’d make a killing selling them. Hey, you never saw me up here, okay?”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t see that girl, okay?”
“What girl?”
Richie grinned. “You’re A-plus on my list now. Hey, I’m sorry for that mix-up downstairs, but I can see why my security wouldn’t let you up. No offense, but you don’t exactly look like you’re dressed for this crowd.”
“My apologies—we were in a park all day and fell asleep. Rachel wanted to go back to the hotel to change, but I thought this party was just going to be drinks on a rooftop. If I knew you were going to be wearing a burgundy velvet smoking jacket, we would have
dressed up.”
“Rachel looks slammin’. Girls can get away with anything, but we guys have to make more of an effort, don’t we? You can only get away with dressing this casually if you’re flashing a Billionaire Wristband.”
“What’s that?”
Richie gestured to Nick’s wrist. “Your watch. I see you’re wearing a new Patek.”
“New? Actually, this watch was my grandfather’s.”*
“Nice, but you know Pateks are basically considered middle-class watches these days. It wouldn’t qualify as a Billionaire Wristband like mine. Here, check this out, my latest Richard Plumper Tourbillon,” Richie said, thrusting his wrist within several millimeters of Nick’s nose. “I’m a VIC—very important client—of Richard Plumper, and they let me buy it straight off the display at the Baselworld Watch Show. It’s not even going to be available till October.”
“Looks very impressive.”
“This Plumper’s got seventy-seven complications, and it’s made from a titanium-and-silicon compound that is spun in a centrifuge at such high speeds that it bonds on a molecular level.”
“Wow.”
“I could be wearing a T-shirt and torn jeans with my balls hanging out but still get into any of the hottest clubs or restaurants in the world just by sporting this. Every doorman and maître d’ is trained to spot a Richard Plumper from a mile away, and they all know it costs more than a yacht. That’s what I mean by Billionaire Wristband, heh heh!”
“Tell me, how exactly do you read the time on that?”
“See those two little spokes with the green stars at the tips?”
Nick squinted his eyes. “I think so…”
“When those green stars align with those gears on the cable-and-pulley system, that’s how you tell the hour and the minute. The gears are actually made of unclassified experimental metals that are intended for the next generation of spy drones.”