The weather has been great for Nour Hammour, the shearling and leather jacket label that recently opened its first showroom here. The sun was shining all week in Paris. Daffodils bloomed. Temperatures hovered in the low 60s. It seemed as if the entire Paris Fashion Week population wouldn’t be caught dead without a leather jacket. If you checked the tag, you’d find that many were Nour Hammour.
A week earlier, as the northeastern United States was getting over a record-setting blizzard and women fortified themselves in shearling coats and hats, sightings of Nour Hammour’s best-selling Sima coat were seemingly ubiquitous from Vail, Colo., to New York.
A perfect storm of weather conditions and outerwear trends have driven business gangbusters for the label’s co-founders, Nour Hammour and Erin Conry Webb. “We’ve doubled every year since 2023,” Ms. Hammour said. She and Ms. Conry Webb started the company in 2013 in Ms. Hammour’s parents’ apartment on Avenue Foch, selling made-to-measure bomber jackets by appointment only. Slowly and steadily, they began introducing their own designs. With the renewed fervor for leather and the look of fur and shearling, the collection (around $1,400 to $4,000) took off, outgrowing the family living room.
“It really came to a head last year when we were like, ‘Wow, we cannot do this anymore. It’s a residential building,’” Ms. Hammour said.
In September, they moved to a salon-like showroom and store in the Triangle d’Or. Designed by Camille Vergnes, the second-floor space recreates the intimacy of its original home on Avenue Foch. A Jansen sofa set under a Fortuny chandelier made with 32 silk lanterns and windows framed with moiré curtains. Initially, Ms. Hammour and Ms. Conry Webb intended to keep the space by appointment only, booking up to 14 appointments a day, no more than two clients at a time. But now, walk-ins are welcome.
“We were getting so many calls, it was unbearable,” Ms. Hammour said. “We are very much open to the public.”
The Designer’s Shoe Designer
Nina Christen opened her first Christen store this week. Located near Place Vendôme, the store is a strikingly stripped out shrine to raw concrete and footwear.
Ms. Christen is responsible for some of the most influential shoes of the last decade through her work for Phoebe Philo at Céline, Daniel Lee at Bottega Veneta and Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen at the Row. Last year, Jonathan Anderson hired her as creative director of shoes at Dior, where she has been creating quirky takes on pretty shoes, including rosette pumps and floral brocade T-straps with square toes. An expert at translating the vision of other designers into viral shoes that have been known to repulse before they enchant, she is completely free to express her own aesthetic at Christen.
“It’s exactly what I wanted,” Ms. Christen said at the store’s opening party last week. She and the artist Azadeh Shladovsky designed a monument of minimalism that feels more aligned to the Rick Owens universe than to Mr. Anderson’s. Instead of plush couches and chairs, clients can sit on a concrete basin that acts as a bench. Shoes, including Ms. Christen’s signature fur-lined booties and pointy croc pumps, were displayed on the floor. A preview of new styles included shearling flip-flops and slippers covered in gold-sequined fringe.
Going Optimal in Paris
Around the corner from Christen is Zoi Health, a luxury longevity clinic co-founded by Ms. Christen’s business partner, Paul Dupuy. They met when Ms. Christen designed the kimono robes and slippers Zoi members wear for their annual four-hour comprehensive checkups.
Zoi does not look like a doctor’s office. The Zen-like sprawl of blond wood and granite fixtures looks as if the Aman got into preventive health. Members spend their appointment in a private suite equipped with a bathroom, shower, Modernist Asian daybed and mid-appointment meal designed by Alain Ducasse. Scans check cardiovascular, pulmonary health, bone health and more. A blood panel checks 140 biomarkers.
“In the U.S., you guys have quite a lot of companies that are doing blood tests now,” Mr. Dupuy said. “In France, it’s very unusual to do 140 markers.” After you’re scanned and drained, members can decompress with a cold plunge, sauna, steam room or hot tub. “The idea was to make the place as little hospital-like as possible,” he said.
Wondering why anyone in France, a country renowned for its government-subsidized universal health care, would pay 3,600 euros (about $4,195) a year for Zoi? Mr. Dupuy said it was a matter of switching from curative to preventive care. “If we see a tumor in your lung, the French government will pay for it. But if you look healthy, they won’t pay for a scan,” he said.
Mr. Dupuy, a serial entrepreneur who owns several Michelin-starred sushi restaurants in Paris and New York, started Zoi in 2022 with Ismaël Emelien, a former communications adviser to President Emmanuel Macron. Their investors are impressive: Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of Moderna, and Xavier Niel, the French telecom billionaire and partner of Delphine Arnault, among others. Jérôme Salomon, the Anthony Fauci of France, recently joined Zoi as chief medical and science officer.
Alas, even that kind of money muscle can’t bypass France’s strict restrictions on peptides and hormones. You can get a broth by Mr. Ducasse, but you can’t get your CJC-1295 and Ipamorelin at Zoi.
Sant Ambroeus Arrives
Is it sad or comforting to go halfway around the world just to eat at the same restaurant you go to all the time at home? Sant Ambroeus, the fashion canteen with multiple locations in New York, opened its first restaurant in Paris in December. The fashion crowd wasted no time descending on the 80-seat restaurant located in Saint-Germain-des-Prés near Lipp and Cafe de Flore. The décor is slightly darker and moodier than the restaurant’s New York locations, but the menu is virtually the same.
At a fashion week dinner (one of several at Sant Ambroeus) for the label Giuliva Heritage, hosted by Plum Sykes and the Substacker Becky Malinsky, the stylist Sarah de Mavaleix praised Sant Ambroeus Paris for its speedy and efficient “American service,” she said. “They refill your water.”
One to Watch
Betsy Johnson, the British stylist and designer of Uniform, is not to be confused with the American designer Betsey Johnson, famed for her ’80s prom dresses and love of cartwheels. The edgy under-30 fashion crowd turned out for Betsy without the e’s first runway collection. The tight lineup of jersey basics — polos, T-shirts, sweats and leggings — refashioned into shrunken, twisted and deconstructed body-con silhouettes had nice control. A promising start for a Paris newbie.
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