Pippa Middleton Takes Paris: Five Things to Know About Gun-Flashing, Party-Hopping, Man-Filled Stay

Royal in-law dominated the headlines with her recent trip to France; here's a list of highlights (or lowlights?) of her trip

By Gina Serpe Apr 18, 2012 8:40 PMTags
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Philippa Charlotte Middleton, you've got some serious explaining to do.

Starting with just how exactly she managed to inherit all of the family's fun-loving, party-hopping genes leaving big (serious) sis Kate Middleton with the burden of propriety.

Clearly securing her legacy as the Harry to Kate's Wills, Pippa Middleton made quite the media splash this week when she took Paris by storm, attending a spectacularly, well, spectacle-filled costume party, riding shotgun during the now infamous (fake) weapon brandishing, had her honor defended by nobility, and, if the tabloids are to be believed, got hot 'n' heavy with a French socialite.

Ooh la la! We may not know how she managed to do it all, but we do know what she managed to do—herewith, the five things you really need to know about Pippa's decadent stay in gay Paris:

1. Fight for Your Right to Party: Believe it or not, the point of Pippa's trip to France wasn't to cause an international incident, but simply to attend the 30th birthday party of French fashion entrepreneur the Viscount (or Vicomte, if you'd rather) Arthur de Soultrait. Leave it to the girl in charge of a magazine titled Party Pieces to know how to do it up right. And she did just that with the fashionisto—whose Vicomte A. clothing label is, incidentally, providing the ties for this year's French Olympic team—attending the costume party at the Theatre St. Germain decked out in her best 1800s finery alongside the most fiery of French society (some of whom saw fit to wear dog collars and burlesque outfits to the bash) and, of course, some hired dwarves. Uh, vive le celebration?

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2. What a Schmuck: Paris is for lovers. Even alleged ones. According to the always reliable British tabloids (ahem), Pippa made herself quite a comely friend while attending the party, and was reportedly spotted getting very cozy in a corner of the nightclub with Antoine de Tavernost. According to some anonymous but adamant observers, the duo was spotted getting kissy not long after meeting for the first time that night, and indeed were caught holding hands while exiting the soiree later that night morning. From there, they went to the nearby Le Schmuck restaurant, which is co-owned by Tavernost—himself the son of the chairman of one of France's biggest TV networks—and even later, the duo turned up together at Regine, another of the city's nightclubs.

3. Getting Gun-Shy: The trip may not have started with a bang, but it certainly threatened to end with one. The following day, just hours after attending the much-photographed bash, Pippa enjoyed a day out with Arthur de Soultrait, his dashing brother Marcy de Soultrait and a French lawyer by the name of Romain Robillard. While cruising around the city in Robillard's convertible Audi, the Gallic crew apparently got tired of the pursuant paparazzi and, in a now infamous attempt to scare the shutterbugs off, the driver whipped out an uncannily realistic-looking pistol, pointed it directly at the cameras and, well, the rest is tabloid history.

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4. To Oui or Not to Oui: That, actually, isn't the question. The question is what on Earth were they thinking? If nothing else, Pippa's inability to contain her smiling visage is a lesson in improper etiquette, to say nothing of her radio silence on the matter, even as critics called for her to be questioned, fined and even arrested for sitting idly by as her cohort—a lawyer who, ironically enough, serves as an advisor to Heckler & Koch, one of the world's leading small-arms manufacturers—pulled the weapon. That it ultimately turned out to be a toy gun seems to be neither here nor there and while the viscount has since come out apologizing for his friend's behavior and doing his best to distance the royal sister from blame in the incident, some damage was already done by his brother Marcy the night before, when he spoke to the Daily Mail and said that Pippa "thought it was funny" and believed the gun-brandishing to be "all a joke."

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5. We Are Not Amused: London calling isn't just a rallying cry—it's a harbinger of a particularly brutal tongue-lashing. While Buckingham Palace is staying as silent as the Middleton family and refusing to comment on the royal scandal—Pippa, after all, is not technically a member of the clan—the gossip columns have once again nobly stepped up to fill in any gaps in the scandalous narrative. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, of all places, both Kate and the queen were "horrified" over the gun stunt—with Kate supposedly delivering an earful to Pippa over the ringer—but the royal in-law reportedly got some solace from none other than Prince Harry. Harry reportedly phoned Pippa straight away and offered some advice on how to deflect the wave of bad press: being photographed at charity events in the immediate future was apparently his biggest piece of advice. Seeing as how we don't think paparazzi are going to stray from the Pippa beat for quite some time now, it shouldn't be long before we learn whether she's taken him up on it.