After visiting Merci in Paris (awesome store by the way!) and bumping into the perfect lamp, we were shocked to hear that the lamp consisted of a string of party lights and as a consequence was really cheap. But Merci wouldn’t be Merci if it wasn’t still a little more expensive than back home. We bought our string lights at the Dutch store Kwantum. They sell the string lights with those ugly colored lamps, but after exchanging those for normal glass lamps we were really happy with the result. I combined two strings to give it a little more impact than just one. Total cost: €60,-.
—Edit: It looks like the Kwantum only sells string lights around spring and summer—