Rouge Celedon

A good friend and neighbor of mine, Anne Devictor, manages a small home and fashion boutique on Reunion Island's west coast. It is called Rouge Celedon and it is the cat's meow. If you are familiar with the women's clothing store, Anthropologie, then you will have an idea of what this place is all about--except that it's the real thing.

The store is a small two room paradise filled with the most lovely kitch-chic things you'll find the world over. The owner, Mademoiselle Poisson, designs everything herself and gathers much of her inspiration from the small Indonesian island nation of Bali. Most of the goods are handmade there and shipped to La Reunion, currently the only place in the world where one can revel in the Rouge Celedon mark. The store is not "wired," and therefore all transactions are recorded in small spiral notebooks, receipts are handwritten, and you won't find any sku numbers or barcodes on the merchandise.

Anne needed some help leading up to Christmas and I agreed to sit in a small corner of her heavenly little store wrapping presents. I have worked in retail stores before and the most depressing aspect of large American corporations is the requirement to best sales from the year before. "Ok, we did $10,000 last year, let's make it $15,000 for this year!" the store manager would cry over a megaphone. Here the industry is an art form, the owner is intimately involved in the production and sales, and business transactions are friendly, not pressurized.

If you've ever seen the movie "Love Actually," there is a scene in a department store where Emma Thompson's husband (who's quasi having an affair) goes to a jewelry counter to buy his flame a necklace. He's rushed because he's afraid his wife will catch him, but the salesman takes his sweet time adding the most ridiculous flourishes to the gift wrapped package. This was essentially my job function: to add pompoms, ribbons, and garlands--all tasteful, of course!!--to the lovely little cadeaux customers had bought for their loved ones. I had to laugh when I was met with the occasional opposition, "No, please hold the pompom, I'm in a rush!"

I learned lots of new vocabulary, enjoyed the Christmas shopping season with an ocean view, and participated in the lazy lovely local business scene.