A Different Stripe

If you love things French but have overdosed on the lavenders and yellows of Provence, a new store in South Pasadena offers the crisper, brighter, more linear designs of the country’s Basque region. Jean-Vier, which has 15 shops throughout France, has opened its first U.S. store, where you can find tablecloths with the seven brilliantly colored stripes that represent the seven Basque provinces. Jean-Vier also sells sheets of oilcloth-like coated linen in bold and summery designs. At the store, manager Pierre Louis Lacoste proudly demonstrates how water droplets stay on top of this miraculous material, which is also used by the French to protect cows from the sun. No part of the world could possibly have more dapper bovines.

-- Laurie Winer

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Jean-Vier, 950 Mission St., South Pasadena, (626) 381-9800. Tablecloths $80 to $223; coated linen $13 to $16 per foot