About Us
Push open the door at 729 Royal Street and the city softens.
Outside: the heat, the brass bands, the carriages going by on cobblestone. Inside: the smell of lavender from a stack of Provençal linens, the cool weight of a Laguiole knife in its presentation box, the muted rustle of tissue paper as something fragile is wrapped to go home with someone.
A woman behind the counter looks up. She smiles. Bonjour.
That's Sonia. She's been here since 2007.
She wasn't supposed to open a shop.
Sonia came to New Orleans as a French tour guide. For years she walked visitors down the streets of the Vieux Carré, pointing out the wrought iron, the hidden courtyards, the layers of French and Spanish and Creole that make this neighborhood unlike anywhere else in America. She knew every plaque, every corner, every story.
Then, in August 2005, the water came.
What happened to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is its own long story. What happened to Sonia is shorter: she stayed. And in 2007, in a city still finding its way back, she decided to give it something new. A small French boutique. On Royal Street. Two blocks from the river.
It opened with one quiet idea — that the things she loved about France were the same things people already loved about New Orleans. The craftsmanship. The slowness. The reverence for beautiful objects made by hand. That if you walked into the right small shop in Aix-en-Provence and the right small shop in the French Quarter, you'd feel exactly the same thing.
GEM de France is that right shop.
Everything here is chosen by Sonia. Personally. One by one.
The Provençal tablecloths come from the south of France — woven on jacquard looms in workshops that have been making them the same way for generations. They are heavy, soft, washable. They turn an ordinary Tuesday dinner into a memory.
The Laguiole knives are forged in the Aubrac highlands by the Dubost family, whose workshop has been in operation since 1920. They are not knives you replace. They are knives you pass down.
The Dubout cats — the goblets, the plates, the mugs — come from drawings by Albert Dubout, the French cartoonist who started making cats in the 1930s and never quite stopped. They will make you laugh out loud the first time you see them. Then you'll want them on your table.
There are absinthe fountains. Marseille soaps in linen-wrapped bars. Faience from Moustiers, painted in patterns three hundred years old. Le Petit Prince figurines. Little santons from Provence.
Nothing here is mass-produced. Nothing is here by accident. If Sonia carries it, she has held it in her hands, and she knows the person who made it.
Most days, you'll find her behind the counter.
She'll tell you the story of whatever you're looking at, in whichever language you prefer — French, English, sometimes Spanish if the afternoon is going that way. She'll ask where you're from. She'll remember you next time.
If you can't make it to Royal Street, we ship across the country. Every package leaves from 729 Royal Street, wrapped by hand, with a small note.
A little piece of France. A little piece of New Orleans.
The same thing, really.
We've been doing this since 2007. We hope you'll come find us.
GEM de France 729 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA 70116 Open daily, 10am – 6pm CST