Bonjour from Le Perche
Wherein I share an update from four days in Normandy’s most charming region & an appreciation of my host, Alex Marshall
It’s just after 6 AM on Sunday morning in Bazincourt-sur-Epte, the tiny village in Normandy a little over an hour north of Paris. I landed here yesterday for a week-long stay at the Chateau du Saussard. I’m here courtesy of Reverie, a Nashville-based company specializing in French culinary retreats that’s owned and operated by the fabulous team of Julie Belcher and Lisa Donovan, one of my BFFs. More on those cats and this place next week.
This is not my first time in France. I studied in Paris in college and have since come back relatively frequently, for work during my fashion editor days, and more recently for fun.
This isn’t my first time in Normandy, either: I did some casual jaunts through the region when I was in school. But it is my first time experiencing it as an adult. And what a difference 33 years makes.
I landed at Charles de Gaulle last Tuesday morning and picked up my VW T-Roc SUV, and headed west, past Versailles, past Dreux, where I had been encouraged to stop for lunch at what was said to be a better than average Burger King, and then deep into the Normand countryside. My destination: Le Perche, the bucolic region that for the last few years has been home to my longtime friend, Alexandra Marshall.
Alex and I have known each other since 1996, when we were freelancing for the same indie entertainment magazine in New York. I was writing about music; Alex was reviewing films.
She eventually moved on from writing about entertainment to covering fashion and culture — based first in New York, then in Paris, and now in a very charming perch in Perche.
Alex is easily one of the coolest people I know. She’s also one of the smartest.
A hyper well-informed West Coast-born lefty intellectual, she can weigh in with conviction on philosophy, politics, pop culture and plenty of other topics that don’t begin with P in at least two languages (during the last US presidential election, she was an guest on national TV here, translating the shitshow that is American politics for a French audience). She’s high on my personal list of favorite writers: check out her new Substack, An American Who Fled Paris, or any of her work for WSJ, the Times, W, Air Mail, et al to see what I mean.
Intelligence isn’t the only thing that makes Alex distinctive. She has great style, both in dress and interiors. Her circa 1840 home is outfitted in a perfectly balanced mix of eras, textures, and colors set against the slightly rustic backdrop of her beautiful French stucco home, a former boy’s school that she gave a gut renovation before moving in in 2021.
She’s also a confident and effortless cook — she made dinner for us every night; delicious every time — and a reliable resource for excellent restaurants in a dozen international cities. All that and great taste in music, too.
Finally, Alex is a gracious and accommodating host who has been kind enough to let me crash with her on several trips to France.
The first time was in Paris in 2010, at her Montmartre apartment. It was my 40th birthday and I treated myself to five days in one of my favorite cities. I spent most of that time running around the city, doing my Libby thing, which translates to hitting up my usual circuit of flea markets and vintage stores (more on those in a few weeks). But it rained like mad on my actual birth day, so we both stayed put, ordered in Lebanese takeout, and had a Paul Rudd movie marathon. (Alex shares my deep, deep love of extremely ridiculous comedies, particularly those by Armando Iannucci. It’s one of my favorite things we share in common.) It was a perfect day.
The second visit was just last week. Alex’s place in Le Perche was my base for the first four days of the trip I’m on now.
To help you understand how wee many of the villages in the Perche region are, the directions she gave me to her home didn’t include an address, just instructions to look for the (one) church when I got to town and that her house was directly across the street. Voilà!
I was immediately charmed by her day to day life in the countryside and the community outside her door. This is the kind of place where — and this literally happened within an hour of my arrival — you open a window to the street (homes are built very close to the roads here) to start up a conversation or hand a jar of fresh jam to a neighbor walking by. In this particular case, it was Alex’s cat sitter/neighbor, Monique.
This is the bonus of camping out with a friend instead of staying in hotel: you get to enjoy the quotidian aspects of local life that you might miss out on in other set-ups. One of my favorite things I did with Alex on this trip was accompany her to the grocery store (she talks more about that below). I love looking at fresh produce and shelves of exotic French products (there is a sugar brand called Daddy which made me smile). And I love any place that sells 8.5 euro espadrilles.
When I was based chez Marshall, I spent a good chunk out of each day feeding my shopping jones, driving from village to village in search of brocantes, the French name for secondhand stores. In terms of quality, brocantes fall somewhere south of magasins d’antiquities (proper antique stores) and north of depots ventes (thrift stores). Pro tip: these are all good terms to use when you’re searching for shops on Google Maps.
Another sourcing tip: look for roadside signs advertising group markets. That’s the way I found out about a Saturday market in the town of Mottereau that was held on the grounds of a beautiful chateau. Vendors covered the front yard of the mansion, as well as a freestanding greenhouse that is at least 100 years old.
In terms of shopping, in my case, the journey really was the destination. Many of my attempts to thrift were thwarted by both timing (many stores are only open Friday through Sunday) and unreliable listings. If Google search results are unreliable in the states, they are downright fabrications in France. (I recommend calling ahead to avoid driving 30km out of your way only to find a ferme sign on the door of your target.)
But man — the vistas were stunning enough to make it all the driving worth it. I fell in love with the simple beauty of Perche — the narrow (and surprisingly well-maintained) roads that connect each town; the towering hedgerows obscuring grander homes; the fields dotted with cylindrical hay bales; and the tens of thousands of bouquets’ worth of roadside hollyhocks, poppies, Queen Anne’s lace, thistle, daisies, and roses of every color. So gorgeous. And of course, the architecture was incredible in both its style and consistency. I did a lot of gasping. And gawking.
What I didn’t do a lot of was buying. Four days of searching yielded three purchases: a collection of small art pottery vases (I have a vision for how I’m going to use them on a tablescape); a dark blue apron made from heavy linen that according to the salesperson was “tres ancien”; and a long silk dress in a mod butterfly print (see below). Still, I’d do it all again the same way just to be able to feel the delicious frisson of discovery that drives me to do this repeatedly.
I don’t need to buy every Louis Philipe mirror or monogrammed napkin (though I am dogged in my hunt for lines that read LC) or tiny framed painting or gorgeous little porcelain knickknack and/or paddywack to feel like all the kilometers and time were worth it. The experience is prize enough.
Three Things Alex Marshall Loves About Life in Le Perche
I asked Alex to share a few things she loves about living where she does after 15 years in Paris. Here’s what she said.
I moved to this neck of the woods a little over two years ago. It is a complete and total change from my previous life, lived entirely in big fancy cities.
In no particular order, here are three things I love about this place:
1) The forests. They’re all around me and they never sit still. At first it was the summer forest that got me, all green and canopied and screaming with birds but I’ve gotten to love it in winter too, when the bare branches blur out to a kind of dark purple grey when you see them in the distance.
2) My neighbors. People frequent each other in the countryside and I landed in clover in my village. I have made good close friends with very interesting people, from 73 to 3 years old. (I had no idea what to expect from here socially, and it was sweeter than I imagined.)
3) My ginormous supermarket, the small town known as Super U. Do you need gardening supplies? Artisanal butter? Cheap shitty butter? Fake leather pants? Grower champagne? Come on down.
Reminder: You can read Alex’s wonderful writing every damn week via her Substack.
The Best Costume for the Day
I found this fantastic butterfly printed silk party dress at the first secondhand store I visited — Brocante De Balines in Verneuil sur Avre. It isn’t in perfect condition — a condition that rarely stops me from buying something if I really, really love it and the flaw is relatively indiscernible, which was the case here. But it was inexpensive: 35 euro, which translates to just under $40 US. A steal.
One thing about road trip shopping, no matter the country, is that sometimes it’s hard to find a public restroom. I was shopping with a full bladder, which is not the best condition to be in when you’re trying on clothes. But there was no WC in this joint — or at least not one that the grumpy proprietor was willing to let me use. And there was no tabac — the bar/cafes that are my French go-tos for surreptitious bathroom visits — within 5 km. And my bladder was way too full to spend time trying-on.
So, after doing the old waistband-around-the-neck test, I bought the dress without putting it on first, fingers crossed.
I was a little nervous when I tried it on for the first time. But boom — it fits like it was made for me. When the thrift gods smile on you, a party is in order. So, consider this happy shot of me, taken in one of the parlors at Saussard, a visual celebration.
Coming Next Week
A diary of my week with Reverie. And more brocanting, bien sur.
What a fabulous find the butterfly dress is!
Libby you are too kind. You also have a true picking gene because NOBODY EVER GETS CLOTHES AT BALINES. Leave it to you. I'm only sorry we didn't wear our long dresses for another evening of salads and Avenue 5. XOXOXOO