I was sceptical about hiring a personal shopper abroad. It was partly suspicion that this is akin to paying someone to be your mate and partly the puritan in my head that said if I had to splurge on a temporary staff member, I should at least make it someone who would show me Delacroix in a new light. But shopping in a new city can be frustrating and overwhelming, and doing it with someone who has a comprehensive mental library, has done the editing for you and, where necessary, booked appointments makes it another experience entirely.

I’ve been to Paris hundreds of times, always for work, always in a hurry and never with much joy in the retail department. So I opted for Joelle Diderich, a fashion journalist who’s up to speed on trends and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the city. Diderich sends you a brief questionnaire beforehand, then takes you on a tailor-made tour by foot, metro, taxi or chauffeur-driven car.

First stop: Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, the gorgeous perfume shop at 21 Rue du Mont Thabor. Shunning the usual commercial formulae, Malle, nephew of film director Louis, asked some of the great noses to create perfumes they loved. This is scent with a difference. It is sprayed into glass booths, in which customers are invited to take in the aroma, uncontaminated by synthetic notes. Une Rose is the best rose scent I, or anyone who has since caught a whiff of it on me, has come across.

La Droguerie, a haberdashery on Rue du Jour, has a huge range and appalling service (“One of the problems in Paris is the rudeness,” says Diderich, who sees part of her role as a buffer). Le Bonheur des Dames, 8 Passage Verdeau, caters to the fashionable French pastime of embroidery and cross-stitch. Marché des Enfants Rouges, 39 Rue de Bretagne, is a lovely fruit-and-veg market with a great Japanese fast-food stall called Chez Taéko. Vintage-Paris, 97 Rue Vieille du Temple, had a good range of second-hand Chanel bags, although Didier Ludot, just along from Marc Jacobs in the Palais-Royal, is the benchmark for vintage.

I vaguely knew about Véronique Leroy, 10 Rue d’Alger, but had never visited her black jewel box with its cool, slightly kinky clothes. Other discoveries included Kabuki, 25 Rue Etienne Marcel, which has a great selection of designer shoes; the Maje chain, with cool, pared-down dresses, and David Mallet, the beyond-fashionable hairdresser who tends to his clients in a stylish apartment, 14 Rue Notre-Dame des Victoires.

In four hours we covered a lot of ground. We stopped at La Perle, 78 Rue Vieille du Temple, one of those inexplicably fashionable café haunts where everyone looks as though they’re posing for www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com, wolfed down chocolate almonds and tea at Comptoirs Richard, 45 Rue de Bretagne, and made amends with some reasonably priced organic beauty products from Canzi, a charming apothecary on Rue Ferdinand Duval, where you can also take seminars in skincare.

Joelle Diderich (www.boutiquepersonalshopping.com; 00 33 6 70 27 95 20): 400 euros (£280) for a half-day tour, or 600 euros for a full-day tour (including a one-hour lunch break), for up to five people

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