There is nostalgia and then there is Paris

Nostalgia - as in the Mad Men episode "The Wheel" not the 17th century medical condition - is on the rise again, especially in connection with Paris. And looking through Instagram Feeds and Tiktok videos these days conjures a specific aesthetic: Hausmannian architecture, women in striped shirts and berets (usually red or black), vintage glamour, and people leisurely sipping coffee at sidewalk cafés seemingly engrossed in philosophical debates. 

This "idea" of Paris has practically become in institution, like cheese, strikes, and Serge Gainsbourg. You don’t live in Paris without tripping over a memory - but only some of them are yours.  Most of them, belong to someone else - someone with a camera around their neck, a Godard quote in their Instagram bio, and a lifelong belief that Paris peaked sometime between Piaf and the Pompidou.

Patrice Higonnet, the Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History, offers a perspective on this phenomenon:  Between the mid-18th century and the mid-20th century, Paris gave birth to a series of myths that people all around the globe embraced - no matter how fabulous or exalted. These myths changed every decade or so. Sometimes Paris was the capital of the modern self, sometimes of revolution, of misery, of crime, of science, or of alienation. 

And came, what Higonnet calls phantasmagoria, which has more in common with modern advertising - a kind of illusion or self-delusion that makes Paris - even today - the a place of elegance, style, and sophistication as well as the capital of world nostalgia. 

And boy does the phantasmagoria industry work. Around 50 Million tourists explore the City of Light every year. No wonder, Paris was named the world's most powerful city destination. In 2022 alone  travel and tourism generated 19.6 billion Euros in revenue (a 134 % increase compared to 2021 btw). 

The illusion of Paris is part of the economy - and a hightly profitable one. 

Walk down Rue des Martyrs or sip a matcha latte on the terrace of Le Select in Montparnasse, and you’ll hear it: the quiet thrum of ghosts. Hemingway, Chanel (Coco Chanel that is), Camus, even Amélie (fictional, sure, but try telling that to the more enthusiastic tourists with bangs and red lipstick).

But if you ask a Parisian—a real one, who still has a carte Navigo and a deep, abiding skepticism of optimism—what they think of all this nostalgia for their home, you might get a raised eyebrow and a shrug. They are not allergic to a mostly imageined past; they may just frown upon it, when it starts performing.

Midnight in Paris? Lovely film - Tom Hiddelston's portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald was nuanced, complex, and left a lasting impression in spite of the limited screen time. Chef's kiss. And the critics agreed, he embodied the right blend of elegance and subtle melancholy (wink, wink). But that film is Golden Age cosplay for the bourgeois disillusioned. It treats Paris like a themed escape room: Hemingway behind door number one, Zelda Fitzgerald swirling absinthe in the next. Charming? Utterly. Real? Please.

The actual, real life Parisians are the custodians of a city that has been fetishized to within an inch of its cobblestones. Dior resurrects Bar jackets (originally introduced in 1947 as part of the "New Look") Cafés charge 10 euros for a flan (or more) and call it heritage. And don’t get me started on Rue Crémieux, where the locals have literally begged influencers to go find another pastel wall to ruin.

Yet, the nostalgia persists, and not just from the Americans or the Brits with their edited reels and breathless prose. It's also the Germans, the Belgians, and the Dutch. Watch a Parisienne—a real one, who wears Hermès with sneakers and quotes Virginie Despentes, not Colette—walk past the Seine on a grey March evening. There’s reverence in the glance. Maybe even longing.

However, her nostalgia may not be about what was. It’s about what could have been. And Paris, in its infinite layers of beauty and contradiction, is the perfect screen for these kinds of projections. We remember Montmartre as it is in old photos, not as the overcrowded Disneyland it’s become. We sigh for Left Bank intellectualism even as we send emails from Le Marais on our MacBooks.

Nobody is immune to nostalgia. But les Parisiens are wary of it.

Still, it sells. Louis Vuitton knows. Netflix knows. Even the French government knows—try watching a tourism ad without Edith Piaf in the background. The past, packaged in monochrome with a spritz of Chanel No. 5.

But underneath the branding, there’s another Paris. One that defies retro filters. It’s the Paris of the RATP worker who knows the exact second the train will be late. The feminist collectives tagging slogans in Pigalle at night. The students chain-smoking outside Tolbiac while dissecting Judith Butler. This is their city too.

So when you go to Paris and feel that ache, that tug of something you swear you remember but never lived— that’s nostalgia and phantasmagoria and marketing. 

And as for Parisians? They keep walking. Between shadows and scaffolding. Between memory and movement. Between what Paris was, and what they and you might make of it.

Bienvenue à Paris. 

P.S.: In case you want to see another side of Paris, here is the book for you. For those hoping to peel back the postcard layers and see the city in its imperfect, oddball, utterly lovable truth, read Don’t Be a Tourist in Paris by Vanessa Grall, aka Messy Nessy. It’s not nostalgia—it’s curiosity with a Metro pass.