Rare books, post-punk vinyl, and caviar on chips: Anti Public Library rewrites the classics.
A not-so-quiet library where rare books, vinyl records, and art objects meet coffee, natural wine, and sake. Imagined in the Marais by Henri Alexander Levy.
“You had to do it yourself, and claim your freedom from convention, to the point of mocking good taste.” - Richard Hell
At 77 rue Charlot, in the Marais, you brush shoulders with cultured delinquency. You revise the classics out of order, a punk vinyl spinning on the turntable and a glass of sake in hand. Here, you play the bad influence—remorse is for other people.
Your ringleader? Henri Levy, founder of Enfants Riches Déprimés. A birth certificate of sorts, chosen to describe his own upbringing, one of extreme privilege. The brand was born in 2012, between Los Angeles and Paris, built on an embodied contradiction: punk for the wealthy, what he himself called nihilistic luxury. Exclusion is his raw material. What lingers is an image of uniformed kids, punk pins and cigarettes in hand, at a Swiss boarding school he was expelled from—and whose crest he later reclaimed for a sweatshirt.
If you want in on the gang, meet us at 77. There, you’ll find Hanuman Books, Wallace Berman's Semina, original pressings of noise and post-punk vinyl, and books that once belonged to Tom Verlaine. At the bar: sake, natural wines, and caviar served with potato chips. All while seated in a Charlotte Perriand chair. Old money gone wrong.
FOOTNOTES
Listen Blank Generation, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, 1977
Listen Kingdom Come, Tom Verlaine, 1979
Read Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F., Christiane F., Kai Hermann & Horst Rieck, 1978 - Note to sensitive readers: drug abuse, prostitution, sexual violence.
Art Cy Twombly
