Paris for Dreamers

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Paris for Dreamers

Hi, I’m Katrina. After the launch I began to realise that I’m not alone, that there are countless other Paris dreamers out there. Because, yes, we’re dreamers.

Paris inspiration by Katrina Lawrence, author of THE PARISIAN CORSET (available 1st December 2026 in Australia and New Zealand; other countries to be announced ...). After working as a beauty journalist for many years, I took time off a few years ago to write my first book, Paris Dreaming: What the City of Light Taught Me About Life, Love & Lipstick. We see the world, particularly Paris, through pink-tinted glasses (la vie en rose, and all that). We’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve watched Sabrina and Funny Face and Midnight in Paris. We love the city in a way that borders on obsessive compulsive disorder — no visit is ever enough. It’s like we keep a little bit of Paris within — an inner Parisienne, let’s say. Alas, we can’t all be Parisiennes, and we can’t all up and move there. We have our own homeland and family and reality. So Paris remains the dream, the place we go to as often as possible in order to recharge our spirits, to colour our world. And when we’re there we want the dream Paris. And that inspired me to work on a new book, Paris for Dreamers: Whimsical Walks Through the City of Light’s Delights. It’s a collection of walks I love for the way in which they tell a story about Paris in a moment in time or through the eyes of past Parisians. They’re wanderings I’ve honed over the years, and I felt the need to share these with other like-minded souls. I know there are countless guides to Paris out there, but this one is for those who like to walk on a deeper level, passing through all sorts of portals of time, meeting fascinating characters and collecting titbits of trivia along the way. I’ve also launched a website, which I plan to grow in numerous ways. For now I’m offering personalised travel tips; simply order, answer the questions in the form at checkout, and I’ll make it my mission to deliver you travel advice as perfectly tailored as a Chanel couture jacket. You’ll also find oodles of information on our favourite city, all written with your dreamy needs in mind. I can’t wait to share this dream of a Parisian adventure with you. Kat x

11/10/2026

Today is International Day of the Girl. I usually post something hopeful on this day, but I’m finding it hard to find those words right now. The world seems so grim in so many ways, especially for women, and for girls looking at what’s ahead – mounting misogyny, threats to our bodily autonomy, seemingly ceaseless cases of assault and domestic violence, the unending scourge of child marriage, the ease and rise of deepfake nudes, a stubbornly persistent gender pay gap …

We deprive the world of so much when we don’t let every human being have the chance to follow their truest dreams, to be their boldest selves. That applies to boys too – the patriarchy is limiting for everyone, regardless of gender.

In 1954, Simone de Beauvoir wrote (in The Mandarins), ‘Girls are weighed down with restrictions, boys with demands – two equally harmful disciplines.’ All these decades later and it feels like too little has changed. It can be depressing to look back and see that so much of the past reverberates to this day – but history also shows us what humans have achieved, and what we could still achieve, if we let everyone be their most creative, authentic selves.

So, I’m going to end on a note of hope after all, because humans are amazing. Yes, we’re all too capable of cruelty and anger, but we can also produce so much wonder and beauty and love, and we must believe that will win out … one day 🙏

📷: Édouard Boubat, 1954

07/10/2026

THE PARISIAN CORSET, all dressed up in her final cover and almost ready for the world …

Thank you so much, Natasha Lester - Author, for your pinch-me-I’m-dreaming endorsement: ‘The perfect novel! … Exquisite storytelling, sublime characters, incredible research and a magical setting make this a novel everyone will want to lose themselves in.’

THE PARISIAN CORSET – inspired by the story of French Vogue during WWII and the mystery of an iconic fashion photograph – will be released in Australia and New Zealand on 1st December 2026, with other countries to follow …

30/09/2026

Next on my TBR pile: The Paris Prize by Tania Blanchard - a story spanning from the 1930s to the 1950s, from outback Australia to the Scottish Highlands to the couture salons of Paris, as farmer Maddy Rainforth endeavours to produce Merino wool that’s worthy of Christian Dior. It sounds so fascinating and fabulously sweeping! 🐑👗📖🤍

27/09/2026

Doing my bit to bring back the lost art of postcard writing 💌

24/09/2026

It has been twenty years since Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ – and since one of the most swoon-worthy Vogue fashion spreads ever: ‘Teen Queen’ by Annie Leibovitz starring Kirsten Dunst, who plays the movie’s titular lead role. This is my favourite photograph from the shoot, partly because it’s set in one of my favourite Parisian rooms at the Hôtel de Soubise, which is home to some of the prettiest examples of Rococo interior style. You’ll find this eighteenth-century mansion within the Archives nationales de France complex in the Marais. Spend time wandering around every exquisite room — you’ll come across many other historic and cultural gems such as paintings by François Boucher and the scrapbook of fabric swatches that Marie Antoinette consulted when deciding her wardrobe for the day 💖

23/09/2026

It's officially autumn/fall in Paris – cue curling up with a cup of velvety hot chocolate and an appropriately moody book. Does anyone have a recommendation for a mystery or thriller set in Paris? I love Cara Black’s Aimée Leduc series, and can’t wait to read John Grisham’s The French Illusion (released 29th September) 🍁📚🍂

15/09/2026

Agatha Christie was born on this day in 1890. For an author whose work is so associated with quaint English villages, Agatha was actually somewhat of a Francophile.

As a child, she holidayed with her family in Paris, Pau and Dinard, and in 1905 she was sent to the French capital once more for finishing school. During those two years, Agatha went to the theatre to marvel at Sarah Bernhardt, to the salon de théRumpelmayer’s (now Angelina) to savour Paris-Brest, and to the Palais Garnier to swoon over the opera. She painted scenes inspired by trips to the Louvre, practised the piano and fantasised about becoming a professional singer. This particular dream, however, was dashed when an expert deemed her voice lovely but weak. Fortunately for us, she discovered the creative outlet of writing.

One of Agatha’s earliest published novels, Murder on the Links (1923), is set in a fictional seaside town in Northern France. Biographer Laura Thompson notes that the book is ‘very French; not just in setting but in tone, which reeks of Gaston Leroux.’ Leroux’s most famous work, Phantom of the Opera, was published in 1909; Agatha had surely read it, especially given her outings to the Palais Garnier.

But hélas, Agatha did not end up writing a huge number of Parisian scenes. She occasionally visited the city to see her French publisher, and she travelled widely enough to collect inspiration for 1928’s The Mystery of the Blue Train, which steams through Paris en route to Nice. And if her journeys had remained centred on the continent, perhaps France might have featured more extensively in her future work, but after a traumatic divorce she gravitated eastwards for escapism.

A year after 1934’s Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha published Death in the Clouds, in which much action takes place in Paris. Cue a grumbling concierge, a Rue-Saint-Honoré antiques dealer and a clear-thinking detective. But sadly, Agatha did not literarily return to Paris, and so the other Parisian murder mysteries she might have devised must be stored in that wistful genre of Wishful Thinking.

10/09/2026

Paris might be a literary genre all of its own, but this year seems to be a particularly bumper one for books about, or set in, The City of Light. For more on what to add to your TBR pile, click the link below 🇫🇷📚❤️

https://www.katrinalawrenceauthor.com/journal/2026-paris-books

06/09/2026

What’s your literary pick on this Read a Book Day? I’ve almost finished the gorgeous new book by Christine Wells Author – The Lost Perfumes of Paris – and will then move on to The Renoir Girls by Catherine Ostler.

Also on my bedside table, in case you’re wondering, are a Ladurée candle, a miniature Winged Victory from the Louvre gift store, Guerlain Eau de Lit (a linen spray) – and that pretty little Eiffel trinket is actually a scented plaster from Mathilde M. 💓

01/09/2026

It’s la rentrée in Paris – the return to school or the office after summer break. And if you happen to be in town and putting off your own return to reality, a shop at Marin Montagut Paris might just soften the blow. Not only will you find the most whimsical souvenirs around, but also the sweetest desk decorations imaginable: hand-painted glasses for your pens and pencils, porcelain trinket trays for paper clips and pins, pretty cups and perfumed candles, and so many more treats that will make work that bit more pleasurable 💓🖥️💓

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Place Saint-Michel
Paris
75005

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https://parisfordreamers.com/, https://www.katrinalawrenceauthor.com/

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