Letter from Paris: June 26, 2024 News Digest

President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the extension of the metro line 14 on Monday. Completely automated, the line now extends from Saint-Denis Pleyel to Orly airport south of the city. This is especially great news for travelers to the airport, who can now take the 14 from the Olympiades station in just 16 minutes (ticket price to Orly is €11.50, included with Navigo pass). The new extension includes seven new stations across Paris, Val-de-Marne and Essonne.

The Pont d’Iéna has closed to motorized traffic every Sunday in June, offering pedestrians and cyclists a chance to bask in the views of the Eiffel Tower, the Trocadéro and the Champ-de-Mars. The last Sunday to take advantage of this opportunity will be June 30th, from 11 am to 6 pm.

The Eiffel Tower has hiked ticket prices by 20 percent in order to offset maintenance costs. One of the world’s most visited monuments, the tower welcomed 6.3 million visitors in 2023 — the highest number since 2015. As reported by France 24, “the increase comes just weeks before the opening of the 2024 Olympics and after months of tensions between the Iron Lady’s management company and Paris City Hall over the revenues generated by this symbol of the City of Light.” The adult ticket price is now €35.

Labor disputes led to a closure in February, and costly tasks such as repainting have been delayed. To quote France 24: “SETE, a public company that is 99-percent owned by the city of Paris, is struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. The Tower closed for several months, leading to a fourfold drop in revenue in 2020, when the site took in €25 million compared to €99 million the year before. The shortfall reached €113 million for the years 2020 to 2022, according to estimates by Paris City Hall.”

Fashion Week brought some wow-worthy menswear shows to Paris— many of them Olympic themed. Held at the Palais de Tokyo, Rick Owens highlighted gymnastics in his spring/summer 2025 show, with students and staff from Paris fashion colleges acting as the models. To quote The Guardian: “[Owens] included what he called a “gymnast bouquet” – a steel structure featuring three gymnasts holding poses, carried by nine young men in shorts and vests.”

Pharrell Williams, the menswear designer for Louis Vuitton, celebrated “the beauty of humans and their skin in a star-studded menswear showcase at the headquarters of U.N. cultural agency UNESCO”— to quote the Associated Press. “Models wearing garb in all the hues of human flesh paraded around a giant globe on grass patterned in Vuitton’s signature Damier check, creating a visual symphony of diversity.” Pharrell called it an “homage to human beings.”

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Vogue World: Paris 2024 took over the prestigious Place Vendôme, turning the historic square into a giant catwalk, complete with appearances by top models and a performance by Bad Bunny. To quote the magazine: “It was a collision of fashion and sports — reflecting the overarching theme of the night, set around the Place Vendôme’s Colonne Vendôme.” The sporty show highlighted a century of French fashion, decade by decade.

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Weeks of rain have affected the Seine’s water quality, calling into question whether it will be clean enough for Olympics swimming events. The downpours also caused a delay in an Opening Ceremony rehearsal, because of the fast river flow (five times faster than the normal summer flow). Some 90 barges will be used to carry Olympic teams down the river on July 26 for the talked-about Ceremony. Meanwhile construction is nearly complete on the temporary Olympics venues at Concorde, Invalides, the Eiffel Tower, and the Trocadéro.