A button bonanza on Paris' fringe

PARIS — Her fingers ran over the smooth red buttons with flecks of gold and the wavy sea-green buttons and the black buttons with ridges that made them look like miniature fans. Yoshini Kondo admired them all -- buttons sewn in lots of 12 on yellowing cards, buttons in every color and size, buttons in Bakelite, casein, ceramic, shell, wood, even silk thread.

But did she need old buttons in her life?

Does anybody need old buttons, or, for that matter, rusted old keys or 1930s posters advertising butter or tarnished brass cheese knives lined up in threadbare velvet boxes?

Kondo, a 40-year-old tourist from Japan, had come to the puces (literally, "fleas") on the edge of Paris to poke around for old vases for her florist shop outside Tokyo, but she was distracted by the treasure-trove of the Button Man of France.

And yes, she had a purpose: "I'm making a dress, so I need some," said Kondo.

Eric Hebert has accumulated more old buttons than anyone in a country where people like to accumulate old things, and every weekend he sells them from his stall at the Puces de Vanves on the southern edge of the city.

It's one of the many flea markets on Paris' periphery, where they were born more than 100 years ago after ragpickers and junkmen were exiled for tax reasons beyond the city limits. Today, the most famous is the immense market in Saint-Ouen on the northern edge of Paris.

Saint-Ouen has everything. Except the Button Man, who prefers the more welcoming weekend market at Vanves.

Really, don't ask Hebert how many buttons he has boxed up in his basement, in a separate storage space and in a famous old button store in central Paris that just went out of business.

"Oh, please, no, don't ask me how many I have," Hebert said, closing his eyes and blowing air through his lips the way the French do when, really, there is just no answer.

As a boy, Hebert, who is now 42, collected stamps -- and other things. His mother was never allowed into his room because he was always dragging in new discoveries.

He grew up to be a businessman, but his passion was finding and selling all variety of treasures at flea markets.

Then one day he bought a carton of 1940s buttons from another brocanteur -- a person who earns a living selling at the puces and itinerant fairs that are an abiding habit of the French.

"It was the product that chose me," Hebert said.

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