Review by Christopher Bonnett
As the club Paris-Paris is no longer what it used to be due to problems with licensing, the owners decided to pull out and to buy another club instead : Le Régine.
This club used to be a very fancy club, men in suits, woman in fancy cocktail dresses and all drinks at 15 euros, this is no longer the case, as you will notice when you arrive at the club. Usually you will see a herd of hipsters, models and art-school Parisians in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia from the unremembered eighties queuing up to get into this club (Not my words, listen to LCD Soundsytem’s Losing My Edge)
The club has an excellent program, and has a consistently high standard of dj’s playing in a broad range of electronic music styles, some nights might start of with a live band before the dj’s take over. The weeks program for Régine is only publicized on Sunday evening on the website. The program is further illustrated by the artistic director Jean Nipon’s video where he tells you what’s going on in his club the coming week…usually an amusing little video.
Once through the door (more on accomplishing this below) a flight of stairs will take you down two stories to the actual club. The entire ceiling of the club is covered in mirrors and the rest of the interior has a bit of a retro feel to it which seems to work remarkably well with the clothing style of the crowd. The club has plenty of seats, so odds are you can sit down without ordering a bottle, but obviously this depends on how busy it is. The club has two bars so queues are usually not that long. They still serve the excellent fresh strawberry-champagne-vodka cocktail, definitively worth a try if you like your drinks sweet. The club doesn’t have a smoking room, so you will have to go outside for a smoke, or you try and find the unofficial smoking “kitchen” and hang with the locals.
Although Jean Nipon might tell you all to come to party in his club during his weekly video, they might not be welcoming you with open arms at the door. To maximize your chances to get into this club you better wear your hippest outfit, come accompanied if you are not a girl, or get yourself on the list (sometimes there will be a e-mail address published with some parties on the website). As in all clubs, getting in gets harder the more hyped the party is that night. Sometimes they are very reasonable, but don’t expect to stroll on in during one of the fashion weeks if you don’t act/look like you belong there. Drinks are no more expensive than other clubs in the area and the people are fun loving party people, so trying to get in might be worth a try, it was good enough for Kanye West…
Most evening there is no cover charge, but some Saturdays the will charge you 10 euros, this always clearly stated in the program.
Régine
49-51 Rue de Ponthieu, Paris 8
Metro, Franklin D Roosevelt, Saint Philippe du Roule
Tel : 01 43 59 21 13
http://www.leregine.com
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