When you're least expecting it

You know that saying about how when you're least expecting something you should expect it? It is sooooooo true. Like today for example if you're standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change and thinking about where to duck for shelter if any more of the drops you'd just felt started falling on you and you absentmindedly walked into Petit Bateau and saw the cutest underwear you'd seen in a long time. You probably would not have been expecting that. But there it was.

We really don't have time to get into why it took so long for the bikini cut to catch on in the European market but let's just say that we know women who never buy their underwear in Spain so finding these was a major revelation.

You may not have been expecting to buy underwear today, but do it anyway - the Petit Bateau Super Fin Coton collection culotte is too good to pass up (and check out the matching tank tops because we were not expecting to love the set, but here we are, loving it.)

Petit Bateau
Mallorca 270
tel 93 272 0362

Rambla Cataluña 89
tel 93 488 3736

Diagonal 3
tel 93 356 0469

Thanks H&M, you made my day

Jeans rock our worlds like no other piece of clothing we can think of and their acceptance as work-place attire in the creative or fashion-related or freelance worlds (for the non pjs on the couch set,) may have a lot to do with why these are more and more attractive as career options (well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.)

One experience that doesn’t always rock is when you have to buy new ones. Fit, wash and well, mostly fit, can be stress producing, and the market over saturation makes you feel that you should leave no stone unturned in your pursuit of the perfect fit. But by the time you’ve done that you could be out of the jean-wearing demographic.

So let us help you narrow your search parameters. Go to H&M. You’ll find the Sqin for the daring set, the Wide for the fashion set, Original and Lucky for just plain old jeans wearers and then styles that come and go like the Now, wide trouser-cut dark dark wash with metallic stitching. Lots of stores have lots of cuts, you’re saying, what’s so special about H&M? Have you ever tried on 6 pairs of jeans and had them all look good, we say back. Go to H&M – they’ll make your day.

H&M

tel for all stores: 901 120 084

Badalona
Carrer del Mar 31 – 33
m – sat 10 – 20:30

Barcelona
C.C. Diagonal Mar
Av. Diagonal 3
m – sat 10 – 22

C.C. Glòries
Av. Diagonal 208
m – sat 10 – 22

C.C. La Maquinista
Cuitat de L’Assumpció s/n
m – sat 10 – 22

C.C. Maremagnum
Moll de Españya s/n
m – sat 10 – 22

Carrer Portaferrisa 16
m – sat 10 – 22

Passeig de Gràcia 9
m – sat 10 – 21

Hospitalet
Avinguda Gran Vía 75-97
m – sat 10 – 22

Yummi gummi?

Just when you thought you’d seen it all, the scary crazy world of gummi candies comes up with something so outlandish that it stops you dead in your tracks.

They’ve come a long way from the days when gummi worms were innovative. Gummi flan may be more or less culturally relevant, gummi brains might make you squeamish and gummi hot peppers might make you think twice but you can’t help but wonder about the mind that created the gummi croissant.

We’ve only seen them at one candy shop – could they be a collector’s item?

Check out the Peter’s sweet shops:
Ronda General Mitre 108
Pedralbes Centre – Diagonal 609-615
Manila 45
Plaça Artós 11
Asturies 26
Marqués de Sentmenat 48
Centre Comercial Eroski de Cornellà de Llobregat

Recessionary Measures

Everyone’s feeling the crunch and the newspapers have nothing on us – anyone who goes to the grocery store knows that inflation is killer and the recession is a reality. So if your family can’t kick the Actimel habit in spite of the dent it puts in your food budget, check out Mercadona’s version for a whole lot less (like 1,19€ per six-pack – wow!)

Easter Eggs

It’s Good Friday so you’re out of luck if you were thinking of shopping in Barcelona today. But any child getting ready to celebrate Easter knows that chocolate eggs are in the works and here they’re dreaming of the soon-to-be-delivered mona, the Easter treat that got it’s start as a bread with hard boiled eggs on top (one for each year of the child’s age.)

The evolution from bread to chocolate still life featuring the latest cartoon characters and current football heroes isn’t quite clear but Cacao Sampaka, the innovative chocolate temple has put out a brochure about the making of chocolate eggs to replace the mega egg they used to make (and then invite people to break with hammers the day before Easter.) Master chocolatiers at Escribà get a lot of press around this time of year, but every bakery here has its own masterpiece. Makes for great window shopping!

Is nothing sacred anymore?

You have to fall in love with buñuelos de cuaresma – they’re little fried doughs infused with anise and covered in sugar crystals. You also have to wonder what something so good and so not austere (especially in the cholesterol department,) has to do with Lent.

They glisten in bakery windows everywhere on Wednesdays and Fridays and you see people in the street eating them out of greasy little bags and wiping their hands on their pants (they thought you weren’t looking.) And it used to be that they were only around during Lent (hence the name, because otherwise they would have to be called buñuelos of something else.)

But lots of people must have fallen in love with them indeed because now many places have them all year round. But what if we get tired of them? What if we forget that they mark the passing of the year during that long and terrible stretch between Epiphany and Easter when there are no holidays? Too much of a good thing might just be too much in this case! (Sorry Mae.)

All in the Family

Elena Comella and her cousin Gonzalo are the fifth generation of Comellas working in the family retail business. When the founder died his widow emptied the store and turned it over to her son with the injunction to start anew. The changes from one generation to the next since then may not have been as dramatic, but each one has certainly left its mark.

Elena started working in the family business at 17 (officially that is, because she’d spent lots of school vacations helping out where she could) to open the first E4G store. The family was smart – when they saw that the daughters of their customers needed a place to shop, they opened up that concept. Now there are five. When the opportunity to open a shop in the Barcelona airport arose, she got everyone onboard and went for it. Now there are five of those too. And even amidst jean mania (and yes, Elena says we’re getting over it) they stood by their chic reputation, developing E4G as a laboratory for edgier brands like Miu Miu, Philip Lim and Anne Demeulemeestier rather than chasing the young customer.

Now you’d never guess from her stylish frame or delightfully attentive manner that she’s the hard-working mother of 4, travelling the globe in search of new and beautiful things that will live up to the family name.

Of course besides the three Gonzalo Comella catering to the serious shopper who can appreciate D-Squared, Marc Jacobs, Nina Ricci, Diane Von Furstenberg and company, five E4G, five Airport shops where they can cater to capriccios and the franchises of D&G and Emporio Armani in Cataluña, they’re planning for the future, but it’s too early to spill the beans about their new projects. The fancy labels in their gorgeous stores all over Barcelona may be a far cry from the stockings and undergarments their great great grandfather sold when he moved to Barcelona from Vic to hock his wares, but their work ethic and commitment to their customers must look a lot like what it took to get the whole thing going in 1870.

Gonzalo Comella
Via Augusta 2
tel 93 416 1516
m-sat 10:30 - 20:30

Capitá Arenas 3-5
tel 93 280 6525
m-sat 10:30 - 20:30

Passeig de Gràcia 6
tel 93 412 6600
m-sat 10:30 - 21:00

The Expert's Favorites - New section

Do you love those features in magazines that show what a famous person carries in their bag or where they shop? Are you just plain curious about other people? In that nosy yet admiring spirit we decided that from time to time we would consult experts, of one kind or another, about where they like to shop in Barcelona.

José Antonio Millán, author of the hilarious yet poignant Quasibolo, as well as 21 other works, pioneer at the crossroads of new technologies and linguistics, man of innumerable interests and innate curiosity, graciously accepted the invitation to be the inaugural guest shopper.

1) His favorite stores:

Casa Gispert – “The store with nuts that’s next to Santa Maria del Mar, down a little street. It has a coffee roaster and smells like almonds and olive oil too… I like the drawers, the burlap sacks, the jars where they keep things. It’s a trip back in time.”
c/Sombreres 23
tel 93 319 7535

Caelum – “The Sweet shop (and tea room) specializing in sweets made by nuns, near Banys Nous: just reading the names of the sweets is a voyage: piononos (named for the Pope Pio IX) de Santa Fe, yemas (egg yolks preserved in sugar) de Santa Teresa. And if you try them …”
c/ de la Palla 8
tel 302 6993


“Jordi Casademunt’s butchers stall at the Sarria Market. Not only is it a pleasure (warning, not for vegetarians) to see him cut the meat, but he is also capable of reconstructing the genealogy of each steer he sells, including age, place of birth, where it was raised and even where it was eventually butchered.”
Mercat de Sarrià
Stall 18-19
tel 93 205 2253

2) Where he takes people from out of town:

“I show them both the nut shop and that sweet shop that I just mentioned but a stroll through the Boqueria is obligatory…”

3) What he misses in Barcelona:

“In general I lament the disappearance of many stores, generally substituted by anonymous and vulgar franchises. Official propaganda speaks of “Barcelona: the best shop in the world,” but a multitude of traditional shops are being lost.”

Let them eat Bread & Butter

Every six months hoards of the hip and trendy from all over come to shop in Barcelona. Not in stores though – that too, but their mission is buy buy buy or sell sell sell at the biggest streetwear trade show around.

The great thing is that the city fills up with chic boys and girls who speak a ton of languages and are happy to stand in the immense lines for food and bathrooms (word to the wise – thank you B&B for setting up a luxe ladies only bathroom trailer, you did your best.)
Besides being on the look out for the next big thing (will it be shuttershades?), there is plenty of entertainment to be had, from the circus wannabes at the entrance to the hilarious guys in the oversized sweats, to the newest re-incarnation of CBGB to the adorable uniforms for all the entrance staffers, it was a laugh-a-minute and it was
exhausting. See you in July.

Stay Home and Read a Book

January is the perfect month to curl up at home with tea and a book – you won’t spend money on silly sale items and you won’t catch the flu, according to one of those cheesy free newspapers. If you saw the picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover of El País the other day, you know why the book should be Inés García-Albi’s Nosotras que contamos (Plaza & Janés.)

Including Carmen de Burgos, aka Colombine, who became a journalist in1901 in part to support her daughter and María Eugenia Alberdi who turned a crafts magazine into a magazine for women coming of age in the post-Franco era, Nosotras que contamos narrates the history of Spain in the last century through the anecdotes of the women who fought their way to being allowed to report it.

While the book started as a collection of interviews, the author found the women’s stories so compelling that she kept going, using over 50 interviews to complete the picture of women in Spanish journalism in the last century. García-Albi, an experienced journalist (and my friend, but that's got nothing to do with anything,) who’s worked with El País and Canal + among others, says that even she reads the newspaper differently after writing the book. That’s why, when you see a picture of a crazy lady on the front page of a newspaper, you have to ask yourself just who put that picture there.

Postcards from a Sale

The roscón is gone, the Premio Nadal has been given and today you’re finally starting your diet. That can only mean one thing – today is January 7th. Finally the holidays are over (except for school children who traditionally have this last day off to play with the toys the kings brought yesterday) and today the sales start. Some stores started marking down surreptitiously a few weeks ago (Biscuit and Kalma in the Bulevard Rosa to name a couple,) and many offer early discounts to the customers on their mailing list, but now the signs are up and it’s official.

From the looks of things, it’s a pretty quiet start – no pushing or shoving at opening time. The 30%-50%-Final markdown scale that stores used to follow hasn’t held for the past few years, especially since so many use “Up to 50% off” signs now, but we’ll soon know how well the sales are going, or how quickly stores are getting rid of their overstock, when we see how quickly they go to second markdowns.
For now a few notes:
Nicest sale window goes to L’Occitane, who even at sale time wants to make things pretty.

Bally seems to have closed up shop on Passeig de Gràcia for the New Year.

The biggest crowds were to be found at Camper, who had no sale signage at all.

How weird is it to see Hello Kitty in the window of Furest? Is nothing sacred?

New Year’s Resolutions and Gift-Giving

You found the new cell phone you’ve been dying for under the Christmas tree but it hasn’t changed your life. Your father-in-law doesn’t love you more because you gave him a new television (well he did, but it didn’t last long.) You’ve resolved to buy less junk in 2008.

Then you’re ready for Ann Leonard’s video, “The Story of Stuff” about the problems inherent in the materials economy. Its fun – all the theory is disguised in easy explanations and there are even some fascinating facts to make you think (one to pique your interest: 1% of all products sold in the U.S. are in use 6 months after purchase, i.e., the other 99% is already trash!)

Why are you reading about this in a blog about shopping? I found it in Shifting Careers, Marci Alboher’s blog at the New York Times, when I was looking for something to offer as an antidote to the shopping hangover we all get at this time of year so that you know that we know that no matter where you shop you can’t buy happiness.

10 Secret Santas for around 10€

Did you see that Happy Pills lists “Secret Santas with no imagination” as a treatable malady? Can’t be too dire of course because the recommended treatment is candy to lift the spirits, but still, what pressure –come up with a cute present on a budget or you could be a cause of depression.

Here are some hints to help out.

1) Muji introductory pack
A pack of their ubiquitous semi-transparent pens for 6,75 and two pocket-sized lined notebooks for 1,50€ each will be a hit for any list-making friends or colleagues.
Muji – Rambla de Catalunya, 81
L’Illa. Avinguda Diagonal, 545 - 565

2) Dr. Hauschka Travel Kit
Dr. Hauschka is always followed in print by, “the cult brand,” so these kits for face or body are an introduction for the uninitiated. The aluminum box and little tubes make a great looking present and the all natural creams and unguents are apt for all skin types. Give someone a glow for 9,96€.
Farmacia Coliseum – Balmes, 18 (esq. Gran Via)



3) Sweets for the sweet
Papabubble has plenty of options for a sweet tooth. Their large glass jar full of beautiful handmade hard candy is 9€, and a test tube full of mini candy is 8€, as is a shiny candy ring.
Papabubble – Ample, 28

4) A rose by any other name
If you’d like to brighten someone’s day, or their table at Christmas, Au nom de la rose has your number. A dozen European roses are 11€ (just a tiny bit over budget,) and so are two single roses in zinc tubs or mini-baskets. Make sure to ask for a gift bag and rose petals.
Au nom de la rose – Valencia, 203
Ganduxer, 26

5) Baby it’s cold out there
It looks like this winter will be a doozy, so anyone would be glad to receive Cacao Sampaka’s chocolate shavings prepared to make Spanish-style hot chocolate (it’ll only set you back 6,30€). Add a liter of Granja Can Bordoi’s fresh milk from Biospace for 1,37€. You’ll have enough left over for a pretty gift bag – give the perfect excuse to stay in on a cold afternoon.
Cacao Sampaka – Consell de Cent, 292
Ferran, 43-45
Biospace – Valencia, 186

6) Easy come easy go
Does your little elf cry at sappy movies? Give El hilo de la vida (Serge Bloch and Davide Cali, Ediciones B), a beautiful illustrated book about all the waiting and hoping that makes up our lives. You’ll find it at La Central for 9,95€.
La Central – Mallorca, 186
La Central del Raval – Elisabets, 6

7) The little man on the traffic sign
Did you ever wonder what he does on days off? Quasibolo, José Antonio Millán’s biography of this, one of the best known symbols in the world, uses real images from signs or street art from all over the world. Look into Quasibolo 2.0, where the story continues or the Farsi translation soon from Caravan. Only in Spanish, but a picture paints a thousand words, so... Try La Central.

8) Jack Sprat’s Wife
Remember, the one who could eat no lean? At Vilaviniteca you’ll find Tastet de Berga (a hard cured pork sausage) for 11,60€/k and Sobrasada de Ferradura (either spicy or not,) for 17,50€/k. With one of each you should have something left over for a baguette to make the snack complete.
Vilaviniteca – Agullers, 9

9) Japanese Jewels
At Nunoya you’ll find little wallets handmade from kimono scraps for 8€ to 10€. It’s a one of a kind thing.
Nunoya – Banys Nous, 20

10) A taste of their own medicine:
If nothing else convinces you, give Happy Pills’ large bottle of mixed candy (choose from gummy bears, gumballs, lollipops, etc,) as preventive medicine against the holiday blues and “Secret Santas with No Imagination”. At least you’ll show you’ve got a sense of humor and comes in right under budget at 9€.
Happy Pills - Arcs 6

Mommy Baby

Everybody is doing children’s clothes these days – from D&G to Marni to Converse. Brands want to cash in on all the yummy mummies out there who want their little ones to look just as yummy. Really, if mummy and baby are equally yummy, why shouldn’t they wear the same outfit? (And no, we’re not talking about t-shirts with fuzzy teddy bears for mummy.) Here are a few brands that pull it of without making either generation look ridiculous.

Comptoir des Cotonniers, with their Mother/Daughter ad campaign, shows us how good, and appropriate, their styles look on all generations from Grandmommy to her four-year-old granddaughter. Their children’s styles, adapted from their adult collection, include empire-style tie front dresses in jersey, tunic-y blouses in prints or white on white embroidery, skirts with pleats or big pockets with ribbon ties at the waist, and jeans. And you know what, they’re really cute for the little ones even if you’re too shy to go the matching route.

Zadig & Voltaire makes their skinny jeans, printed blouses and sweatshirts adorned with raw-edged skull and crossbones appliqués, and their adorable ballet flats, in little sizes if that’s more your style. Don’t forget, here you can find things for Daddy too, in the same color groups and materials as the rest of the family.

Last, a story, just so you don’t think it’s a French thing. Late August. Granvía Sur Mall shortly after stores open. I whiz into Zara to check out the collection before hitting H&M. Those two women rifling through the sweater display at the front of the children’s section look familiar. “Olivia,” I call out, “caught red handed.” She’d gotten back from vacation the night before and having received word from a friend about the great professor cardigans in brights that she’d gotten for herself and her daughters, Olivia called her sister and there they were, H&M bag already in hand. In the girl’s section you’ll find tunics like the black velvet – add a polka-dot turtleneck for fun, or their seersucker stripe in blue, pink or beige. Besides the cardigans, there are all-cotton turtleneck sweaters with puffed sleeves and these little capelet-cardigans. Venturing into the boy’s section you’ll find unlined corduroy blazers worth digging for. And here, there’s always a small price to pay for big style.


Comptoir de Cotonniers:
Diagonal 580
tel. 93 414 4654
Consejo de Ciento 302
tel. 93 467 2874

Zadig & Voltaire:
606 Avda. Diagonal
tel. 93 209 22 15
M-F: 10:30 - 20:30
Sat. 11 - 20:00