Lemon trees, orange trees, exuberant bouquets, cherry trees, peonies, brightly colored roses spring up in every corner of the center of the capital, despite the now winter temperatures.
In Les Halles, Charline is immortalized in front of the monumental red wisteria of Florida, which spreads over three angles and three floors. For this 41-year-old from Toulouse, the colored bait “gives a wild side, consistency and a desire to enter”.
Seated on the terrace at the Maison sauvage, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, under a mauve wisteria as abundant as it is artificial, Andréa Susini and Tiffany Luciani, two 28-year-old Corsican tourists, chose the place, via a specialized Instagram account , “because we like atypical decorations”, explains the first.
An effect on turnover
“Instagrammable”: in the City of Light, which is recovering pre-covid tourist numbers, the neologism is coming back insistently in the mouths of shopkeepers who have yielded to the charms of artificial flowers.
“From 600” followers “, we went to 12,000”, underlines Fabienne Mialane, the director of Le Chien qui fume, showing men who photograph the forest of carnations which invades its front, above real plants.
Traders are unanimous on the positive impact of these plastic decorations, to which they attribute an average increase of 30% in their turnover.
“People stop, take a picture and then come here,” confirms, in front of his multicolored bouquets, a regular at Bon Pêcheur, Benjamin Bréhin.
A concept imported from New York
At the origin of this fashion, the restaurant La Maison sauvage and a man, the florist Luc Deschamps, who were inspired by a hotel in New York and imported the concept in 2017.
The trend asserted itself as soon as the confinement imposed by the covid-19 pandemic was lifted and, since then, Luc Deschamps has felt “overwhelmed”.
“I have almost doubled my turnover for a year and a half”, sums up the 59-year-old artist who now receives three requests a day, for a minimum estimate of 5,000 euros.
If Ile-de-France currently concentrates 80% of its customers, establishments plan to join them in Metz, Saint-Étienne, Arcachon, Courchevel or Chartres…
Not unanimous
But its floral decorations are not unanimous.
Because if the large assembly branches come from chestnut and oak trees, his hydrangeas, roses or cherry trees are made of fabric and their stems of plastic. Imported from China.
A natural floral decoration “needs water, maintenance” and “lasts five days”, pleads Luc Deschamps, while his artificial decorations “last three, four years minimum, without any maintenance”.
Not enough to convince the trade assistant to the town hall of Paris, Olivia Polski, who “greatly prefers real vegetation to cut or plastic flowers”.
Coming from Rennes, Chloé, 38, also finds the facade of the Florida “too much”, with “too much plastic”.
“Not Allowed”
For the elected EELV Frédéric Badina-Serpette (EELV), it is more the “race with the most ornate façade” that poses a problem.
“As long as it was minor, it was not a subject”, recognizes Olivia Polski, but the multiplication of decorations will push the town hall to “look on a case-by-case basis if the traders have submitted files to the management of the town planning”.
In addition to the authorization of the joint ownership, the Architects of the buildings of France have their word to say in certain sectors, estimates Olivia Polski, for which these decorations are not, in the state, “not authorized”.
The mayor of Paris Center, Ariel Weil, is betting that this “fashion”, which goes “from the worst to the acceptable”, will not last “very long”. “Otherwise, we will see how to put an end to the ugliest” because “we cannot distort a facade, permanently, without a permit”, unchecks the elected PS.
Enough to boil the merchants who, between the pandemic, the ban on terrace heating and the energy crisis have invested thousands of euros in these decorations.
“The terraces, the Parisian bistros, it’s known all over the world and we don’t hurt anyone”, sighs Julien Valentin, the manager of Musset, recalling “that a huge part of Paris, of shops, lives thanks to to tourists”.
“After two years of covid, people are being prevented from working”, fulminates Fabienne Mialane, recalling that she pays the town hall 32,000 euros per year for terrace fees.