Contrary to what some think, Instagram isn’t just about people taking snapshots of their food. In the case of Tal Spiegel (below), a 34-year-old pastry chef living in Paris, it’s about taking pictures of his food as well as his shoes.
On his page, Desserted in Paris, he posts pictures of himself holding pieces of pâtisserie, whose bright colours invariably match the shoes he is wearing. White and brown two-tone brogues peek out from beneath a chocolate eclair.
A pair of lemon-yellow loafers perfectly matches a handful of macarons. At Christmas, a little pâtisserie Santa Hat is offset by red and white-chequed Vans.
This surprising but simple formula has proved wildly popular. Spiegel has more than 114,000 followers. Each of his posts receives thousands of likes and dozens of comments. A book based on his account, Pâtisseries de Paris, has just been released. It includes a guide to Paris’s best pâtisserie, as well as a selection of his most popular images.
“People are a little surprised,” he says, “but the reaction has been very positive. I think it’s down to the unexpected connection I make between fashion and food. It gives people a new perspective on fashion and food, and explores the textures and colours, the unexpected points of connection between the desserts and the shoes. It also offers a new view of the city itself, using just pâtisserie, the pavement and the shoes.”
Born in Tel Aviv, Spiegel trained and worked there as a graphic designer while maintaining a keen amateur interest in pastry. “But after nearly 10 years as a graphic designer I decided to go to Paris to study pâtisserie. I studied at the Ferrandi School of Culinary Arts (a legendary French pâtisserie academy), which was really cool,” he said. Over the course of his study, and subsequent employment at some of Paris’s leading pâtisseries, such as Gérard Mulot in Saint Germain, Spiegel developed an intimate knowledge of the city’s desserts.
“As a graphic designer, I’ve always liked bright colours, as you can tell. I was out one day and took a picture and noticed the pastry was the same colour as my shoes. At the start I only had about 500 followers. They liked it, though it wasn’t a big thing. I didn’t take a picture every day at first, but then it built, and after two or three months it started to take off.”
Having arrived in Paris with 15 pairs of shoes, Spiegel says he now has around 200, and can’t pick a favourite. He left a full-time job in a pâtisserie to focus on the book, which kind of “took over [my] life, in a good way”. He now works with local shoe designers, and changes his colours according to the season. He has taken the concept on the road: in Jerusalem, he worked with Israeli designers and local pâtissiers.
In addition to his pâtisserie work, Spiegel has won consultancy and lecturing gigs off the back of his social media. “Whatever I do, I’m going to have one foot in the kitchen and one foot outside in the street. I’ve found a good balance of the things I like.” His just desserts, you might say.
Pâtisseries de Paris by Tal Spiegel is published by Marabout at £18. It is available now
