If you have ever dreamed of travelling to France to shop for exquisite dolls but don’t know where to start we have the perfect podcast for you. Samy Odin director of the prestigious Paris doll museum La Musée de la Poupée for 25 years, joins Doll Podcast host Louisa Maxwell. Together they explore what makes a great collector travel experience: on Samy’s curated “learn and shop” doll tours of France that combines private collections, dealer visits, seminars, auctions, and top-tier shows.
This year's tour launches in December 2026 with an exclusive visit with miniature artist and collector Marguerite Courtois, known for museum-style historic scenes of daily life in one-twelfth scale and beyond.
Collectors then travel to Dinan, the medieval Breton town in northwestern France where Samy makes his home and the location of his shop Gallerie Samy Odin. Events will include a seminar about dolls and the French children’s magazine La Poupée Modèle. Launched in 1863 these monthly magazines are a detailed record of children’s play and dolls from the 1860’s to the 1920’s.The magazine serves as a time capsule of doll: patterns, paper dolls, miniature furnishings, and period-accurate ideas of what a child’s doll world should include.
The tour then moves toward Chartres for a high-energy auction experience at the Galerie de Chartres auction house. Collectors then attend one of Frances premiere doll shows “Chartres en Poupées” organised by organised by Véronique Derez and Vanessa Brunel, where expert international dealers will be displaying the perfect doll for your Christmas wish list.
Samy also reveals his next tour dates and locations for 2027 and we will be delighted to follow in his footsteps learning about the collections, auctions and doll shopping opportunities which make Europe the perfect destination for doll lovers.
