From
Ladurée in Paris to Paulette in San Francisco, macaron boxes is as important as the goodies inside. Christian Louboutin, shoe designer for stars with a long list of clienteles recently collaborated with none other than Ladurée to create three individual macaron boxes with Louboutin signature drawings. Available in September, I bet it'll be gone in a couple of days. Ladurée always work with other artists wordwide to unveiled a new box designs, sometimes they do a different theme for each season. 
Their doggy collection is also very popular, in particular the character
Fifi, there is even a bag with her on it that sells in
Ladurée. For a couple of Springs ago, Ladurée did a box just for the flowery season. I think anyone who buys one of Ladurée macaron in their carton boxes which does cost more will always keep their boxes for keepsake, how could you throw such a cute little thing! I can't wait to collect them...
Pierre Hermé used to work at Ladurée as a consultant and made way for modern flavours. Then he opened up his own macaron shop and suddenly he's the new macaron god. I red a review of his book, and the writer said there is only two type of macaron person, a Ladurée person or
Pierre Hermé person. Sadly...or interestingly....or dullingly...I am a
Ladurée lover. I stand for classics and Ladurée caramel au beurre salé is to die-for! nothing beats french butter.
What an ingenious thing to do, Sempé or in full Jean-Jacques Sempé, who is a very well-known french cartoonist actually did the illustrations of Pierre Hermé macaron boxes. One of his most recent popular exhibition was of Le Petit Nicolas, a small boy character he made that eventually catapulted him into a super cult-icon of french cartoon.
Of course between the two famous macaron giants, there is always a rift competition and
Pierre Hermé who has set up his own macaron shop in Tokyo for a few years, has also collaborated with Lipton to make some of his miniature cakes as freebies attached to Lipton everyday drinks! Call him a genious, or just plain marketing savvy. They come as keyrings, as you know Japanese girls love to decorate their mobile phones with cute little danggly sometimes sparkly things. Just makes me want to go to Tokyo even more now.
They sell them now in Ebay and I am itching to get them...but oh they are free when you buy Lipton drinks in Japan...They look pretty real don't they, ohh even the pink macaron with the rose petal, called
ispahan, looks so real...gosh and they're freeeeee.... I bet all those Jap girls are buying dozens of Lipton drinks just to get the key rings, I would...
Oh now I'm going to sleep knowing I'll dream of macaron in Japan. Yikes!
So partly it was boredom and the other half I was anxious to do a macaron box. I know I know...doesn't she has anything better to do? well I love macaron, and what better thing than to do a happy macaron box! I got my inspiration from Sydney over the weekend, we went to this cute-retro-art gallery/store at Darlinghurst and the owner, Gary McEwan is a proud gay artist and he does so by exhibiting a lot of well I'm sure you know what I mean. Surprise-surprise, he used to have a shop at Acland St, St Kilda for 20 years! but moved to Sydney after all the bad chain stores capitalises good ol' Acland.
I actually got the box cover/card from that store and I just did my own drawings inside. It's meant to be a pop-out kinda card but yeah I was rushing it towards the end. Good news to come towards the end of next week about my macarons coming out into the Melbourne stratosphere! It's gonna be BIG and I'm still keeping it as a secret (I hope so, though a few people already know so by my twittering) but will post details as soon as it's confirmed! Will do more of these cards when I have the time.... :) happy macaron day!
