On Valentine's Day, Loulou de la Falaise, a close friend of Yves Saint Laurent and his muse for nearly 30 years, opened her own two-floor boutique at 7 rue de Bourgogne. The house is built on her reputation as one of the great luxury-accessory designers, having worked for all those years as a main team member on Saint Laurent's couture and ready-to-wear collections.

“My dream has always been to have an English house in the heart of beautiful Paris,” says de la Falaise, who started her fashion career as a model for Vogue and went on to design wonderful prints for Halston in New York.

Partly inspired by her love of travel, the store features two huge gold and gossamer Chinese dragons in the street-level windows, standing guard over the wealth of exotic wonders inside: beautiful handbags with straps made from ceramic stones, braided on colorful cord; de la Falaise's beloved tambourin, a leather bag of red and marigold on a silk braided cord that can wrap around the waist or be slung over a shoulder; and the pièce de résistance, a small handbag appliquéd with a scene of a lark perched on a branch, warbling its beautiful, inaudible song.

But this is not just an accessories boutique. De la Falaise has stocked every floor with cardigans, chalk-stripe pantsuits and suede miniskirts, as well as one beautiful gauzy kimono-bolero jacket, ablaze with embroidery from the famous Paris firm Francois Lesage—perfect to go over everything from a long white evening column to a bikini.

Everything in the store is cut from the imagination of a woman who knows how to carry olive drab to the highest level of refinement, in a linen jacket or safari pants, as well as the riches of A Thousand and One Nights in beautifully crafted necklaces, some with precious shells from Tahiti, others with stones from India and Africa. Other luxe delights include a great soft, knotted pouch, reversible from metallic gold or copper to the natural suede; bangles carved from African woods; and strings of coral beads with large disks splashed with gold leaf. De la Falaise's black georgette silk shirts with white stars—or halters in the same print—are just right for evenings either easy or grand.

One of the best-dressed women in the world, de la Falaise has taken all the loves of her personal and professional lives and planted them in a shop as vibrant and surprising as a sudden rainbow at the end of a spring shower.

—André Leon Talley