This past weekend the three of us (plus babies!) met up in Paris to spend a day at Playtime, the international children’s trade show. We should have learned our lesson from last year because one day was simply not enough to browse the many, many wonderful brands. We spent the day rushing around from stand to stand, and still didn’t see everything we wanted to see…

We managed to squeeze in visits to some of our favourite brands:

• Bobo Choses – Another beautiful collection featuring musical instruments in a sweet ‘Lullaby’ theme
• Gray Label – We love the additions of the mustard yellow and the soft green colours. Emily Gray is one clever woman!
• Waddler – Cute new cotton pieces in addition to their fabulous alpaca wool collection.
• Aravore – We especially loved the new Fair Isle pieces. Adorable!
• Elfie – Thank goodness they’re still making that little Mouse Jumper – it’s a favourite in our house!
• Lalé – Perfection! We especially loved their new bed quilts.
• Nico Nico – There are some new little wool capes in the collection that we already have our sights set on!!
• Hucklebones – As always, a gorgeous and timeless collection. (They had a swan at their stand made of 800 sheets of paper – wow!)
• Bieq – So many handknitted baby hats. We’ll take them all please! : )
• Le Petit Lucas – The sweet designs on the bedding, the adorable decorations, and we just adore the new gnome featured on the jumpers and clothing. So cute!
• Apünktchen – Our favourite hats for babies, kids and even grown-ups.
• Tapete – Cute graphics as always.
• Macarons – They designed their own fabric! It doesn’t get more innovative than that.
• Very French Gangsters – We love the colourful new glasses straps to hold glasses on. (We want them for ourselves!)
• Collégien – A fun and colourful collection of slippers — such fun new designs.
• Miller – A perfectly on-trend collection. There was a pretty yellow dress which especially caught our eye.

We also made some wonderful new discoveries:

• Wool Fabrique – Gorgeous wool goodies! (We’ll write more about this later.)
• LEOCA Paris – We were really impressed with the warm colours, the innovative shapes, the playful but still classic designs of this great collection.
• 10is – Leather trainers in lovely muted tones. Cool!
• Bemini – Little knitted hats, scarves, mittens, jumpers, blankets and a clever, hooded nid d’ange blanket/sac.
• Emma Levine – We were especially impressed with the jackets and dresses – such beautiful, hand-dyed fabrics from Bali, offering a slightly vintage-like ethnic vibe.
• Boy + Girl – A brand out of LA, offering an eclectic collection, mixing fabrics and colours to offer something fresh and hip.
• Boob – A great maternity and nursing collection run by some awesome mamas (can we be friends, please?!).
• Titlee – A fabulous collection of jewellery (more to come later about it!).
• Tocoto Vintage – Maria has reviewed this beautiful collection here before, but it was so nice to see it in the flesh.
• Inspirations By La Giraffe –  We’ve seen this sweet jewellery at Elias & Grace before, but it was lovely to see it in full, and their stand was really beautifully decorated.

Phew! It was a busy, busy day! We really had so much fun talking to all the designers and seeing all the great new collections. What a wonderful business we’re in — so many friendly faces, so many inspiring people, so much creativity! We consider ourselves lucky to be a part of it all.

xx Courtney, Esther & Emilie