Dorothée Perret

A former editor at Purple magazine, Dorothée Perret was heading home to Paris from Los Angeles five years ago when she came up with the title for her then nascent biannual art publication, Paris, LA. “It seemed there was a spirit—a certain laid-back joie de vivre—that the people in both cities shared,” she explains. A native of Marseille, Perret instantly fell in love with L.A.’s beaches and mountains; after years of wanting to relocate, she and her husband, the American artist Oscar Tuazon, and their three children finally made the move this past January, settling into a rented house in Silver Lake. The timing was apt, as the French Embassy in the United States had just initiated “Ceci N’est Pas,” a series of Franco-Angeleno collaborations in the contemporary arts, presented around the city over a period of five months. The project gave Perret both an ideal introductory vantage point and fodder for her latest issue, which features work by many of the “Ceci” artists, including Cyprien Gaillard and Neïl Beloufa, another L.A.-based French expat. “That’s the thing about this town,” Perret says. “It’s like a small community of people exchanging ideas.”