The gleaming black cars whisked us to the city in no time at all and deposited us at the Shangri-La Hotel, where Colette bought out all the rooms on the two top floors. The whole place had the feel of a private residence, precisely because it used to be the palace of Prince Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon’s grandson,^*1 and four years were spent painstakingly restoring it. Everything in our ginormous suite is done in splendid shades of cream and celadon, and there’s the prettiest dressing table with a three-way folding mirror that I took a million pictures of from every angle. Somewhere in Brooklyn, I know there’s a hipster carpenter/literary agent who can replicate it. I tried to get some shut-eye like Nick but I’m too excited, jet-lagged, and hungover at the same time. 11 hours on a plane + 1 genius Filipino bartender = bad combo

Monday, June 17

Woke up this morning to the sight of Nick’s cute naked butt silhouetted against a view of the Eiffel Tower and thought I was still dreaming. Then it finally hit me—we’re really in the City of Lights! While Nick spent the day poking around bookshops in the Latin Quarter, I joined the girls on their first big shopping expedition. In the motorcade of SUVs, I ended up in a car with Tiffany Yap, who gave me the lowdown on all the other girls: impeccably mannered Stephanie Shi hails from a top political family, and her mother’s family has huge mining and property holdings throughout the country. Adele Deng, who has had the same pageboy haircut since kindergarten, is the shopping mall and cinema heiress, and she’s married to the son of another party patriarch. Wen Pi Fang’s father is the Natural Gas King, and Perrineum Wang, whose chin, nose, and cheekbones are apparently rather new, also possesses the newest fortune. “Ten years ago her father started an e-commerce company in their living room, and now he’s China’s Bill Gates.” And Tiffany herself? “My family’s in beverages” was all the girl with the beguiling overbite would say. But guess what? All these girls work at P. J. Whitney Bank, and all have very impressive-sounding titles—Tiffany is an “Associate Managing Director—Private Client Group.” So it wasn’t a problem for all of you to take off at a moment’s notice and come to Paris? “Of course not,” Tiffany said.

We arrived at rue Saint-Honoré and everyone scattered to different boutiques. Adele and Pi Fang made a beeline for Balenciaga, Tiffany and Perrineum went mad for Mulberry, Mrs. Bing and the aunties glided toward Goyard, and Colette did Colette. I accompanied Stephanie into Moynat, a leather goods boutique that I’d never even heard of until today. The most exquisite Rejane clutch bag was calling my name, but there was no way I was shelling out €6,000 for a piece of leather—even if it’s from a cow that’s never known the existence of mosquitoes. Stephanie circled around the curved wall filled from floor to ceiling with bags, studying everything intently. Then she pointed out three handbags. “Would you like to see those three bags, mademoiselle?” the saleswoman asked. “No, I will take everything on that wall except those three,” Stephanie said, handing over her black palladium credit card. #OMFG #thisjustgotreal