La Coquette

Soirée Faber Castell

My presence at the party was in no way mandatory.  Denis was invited to work there, drawing guests at the anniversary party of Faber Castell, an art supply company that has been around for 250 years (in other words, about as long as the last time I blogged).  But I tagged along as a curious spectator.  I'm happy I did for a few reasons:

1. Watching people make art with old fashioned things like pencils and paint is fun.  Denis used pastel, which gets all over your hands. We didn’t think to bring baby wipes, so when people shook hands with Denis, they got a hint of pastel smudge as well. I liked that the person walked away with a bit of the debris from the project on their hands. Since most of us work on computers, with our outputs dematerialized, and since the point of the evening was celebrating these lovely art products, it seemed to be a cool upshot.  250 years is a long time and I hope the company is around much longer, but you never know.  Maybe in the distant or near future people won’t use art supplies at all but will do everything on a computer, even drawing and painting.     

2. It was held at the German ambassador's house.  Entering this sumptuous hotel particulier, the Hotel Beauharnais, is like entering some old fashioned royal kingdom, combined with a sort of Candyland feeling that comes from the lapidary rooms of different colors. Denis stood in the Baron Von Bismark room under a portrait of Louis 18^th while he worked.

  

 The drop dead looks of the Hotel Beaharnais are certainly enhanced by what’s behind it: a large garden overlooking the Seine.  The garden gives off some nice grassy odors (this party took place months ago, when it was warm) and the Seine gives super bright light that moves on the walls every time a péniche passes, casting a carnival feeling over the room.  I couldn’t capture the garden at night, but at the end of the evening we snapped a couple of cheesy, posed shots, which give you an idea of the décor. 

3. It was the chance to meet some interesting people.  Unexpectedly, the party’s hosts came in at the tail end to have their portraits made: The German Ambassador Reinhard Schäfers! The count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell!  Denis drew them and got a good likeness, I thought.  The ambassador said something to Denis like “My wife will frame this!” which is a perfectly lovely response. But also impressively diplomatic. And then for some reason, a Tom Swifty popped into my head: “My wife will frame this!” the ambassador said artfully. 

If you don't like Tom Swifties, then please don't judge me -- it is an illness.

Next time I will tell you about the cake.

Fair Trade

A friend called me "reclusive" recently (I'm writing my thesis!), but I did make it out Wednesday night to the book swap party at Le Carmen** – a new literary event in Paris where you bring a book to exchange with a stranger.

I liked the idea of walking up to unknowns at a party and saying “Whatcha got?” referring to the books in their hand. But I could quickly see was that most people 1. loved their books and conveyed to you that they didn’t actually want to trade, regardless of what you were holding, 2. felt so so about their books but thought they would have value on the market (but people are so particular about their taste, especially at a literary party, so they can’t help belying how they really feel in the pitch).*

Except for one young woman. She pitched me Marcel Pagnol’s Le Chateau de ma mère. Not only did she love the book, but she is from the south of France and felt very “attachée” and “touchée” by the book’s regionalism.  Her eyes shined.  I said “Oh, I don’t really feel like taking a book that’s about hunting.”  (She hold told me there was a bit of "la chasse" in it and mimed firing a gun.) After a certain point the party became about coming up with plausible rejections.  I myself had recently been rejected by a girl who had Love in the Time of Cholera (clearly didn’t want to part with it) with a smooth “Oh, your story is about love?  I don’t feel like reading another love story.”

Maybe I rejected the Pagnol girl partly because it is easy to reject someone after your own book has just been rejected. Maybe I wasn’t dying to read her Pagnol.  Maybe my mind was dulled by the heat and drink, the hipsters hemming me in on all sides.  But she loved her book and was willing to give it to me.  She told me how wonderful it was with shining eyes.  I broke the exchange.

All day yesterday I felt guilty about the girl with her Pagnol! 

* I avoided the issue in a way. I was giving away something that I loved but that was superfluous: I had another copy at home.   It was Oulipian writer Hervé Le Tellier’s Enough About Love (recently translated into English).

**   “The venue (22, rue de Douai; 33-1-45-26-50-00; www.Le-carmen.fr) is a 19th-century private mansion once inhabited by Georges Bizet, where he supposedly wrote the opera of the same name.” 

Recently Read: Anne Marsella’s The Baby of Belleville

In Anne Marsella’s* warm and funny The Baby of Belleville, hierarchy is put to rest, making room for an all-inclusive Paris, a Paris where equal time is given to French feminist philosophers, aristocrats, plumbers, DJs, shepherdesses and kung fu experts.  Here, you’ll see Paris at an oblique angle. And yet at the same time her stories seem uncanny in their familiarity, as stories of love and motherhood often are. 

What I really like about her books (I also recommend her novel Remedy, where the protagonist works in the fashion world), are her unusual heroines.  Intelligent, good-in-their-skin but still self-doubting.  Never doubting, however, their bodies. Marsella writes women who take belly dancing lessons without self deprecation: an antidote to chick lit. Her protagonists also have an uncanny ability to read the needs of other humans, and especially artists. In The Baby of Belleville, the protagonist Jane hires a plumber who turns out to be a talented creator. He makes a fantastical, mosaic toilet for her, asking 200 euros for his work.  As Jane retrieves the money she feels tears coming on, “The truth was, I was being pulled by two contrasting emotions – the tragedy of spending two hundred euros on a toilet and the unforgivable slight of paying an artist so little for so much.” She sends him home with some Tupperware filled with osso bucco and risotto, remarking that “artists love to be fed Tupperware dinners, homemade meals they could heat up at their convenience, thus avoiding the creative drain of dinner socializing.” (123)

 Marsella contextualizes a very rich area of Paris in her novel, and being walked around the northeastern quartier evoked in The Baby of Belleville as if you live here is one of the great pleasures of the book.  Jane often walks past the “Communist Egg” (I will never manage to pass it without thinking of this name again) and meets fellow mothers at Café Cheri(e) (for a nursing group called “la leche league”) before going to Tati for discounted shopping when she feels like a pick-me-up.

 If you're a nut for sentences (one of my grad school professors is into Gary Lutz, and this Lutz essay forever changed the way I read), Marsella’s got some mind-blowing language going on in her books. Here’s just one lovely example:  "We peer out at the stretch of fields around us, the ubiquitous citrus trees coiffed in wooden trellises, the villages in the distance, the usual roadside eyesore" (277).  And I loved the description of Jane's baby’s first steps: “It is like watching Neil Armstrong softboot the moon, only better” (338).

Next I want to read her Patsy Boone, a departure for Marsella as it was written in French, mixing – no joke – precious 18^th century French literary language with modern parlance.  Her previous novel Remedy, about a woman working in fashion in Paris, had fun with fashion-ese – showing its strangeness – in a similar way.

Excerpt of The Baby of Belleville after the jump.

Pray for Japan

Olympia Le-Tan is working on brooches soon to be sold at colette.

Joanna at The Wellcome

If you’re in London this weekend, it’s the last chance to see Joanna’s amazing installation at the Wellcome.  It’s called The Art of Dying, and it’s beautiful.

 

Optimo Hats

 

Recently I've been working on web content and crafting newsletters* for Optimo Hats in Chicago (I've written about master hatmaker Graham Thompson before in Chicago magazine).  And the day has finally come: their new site has launched.

Gorgeous!  I especially love the videos that explain everything you ever wanted to know about great hats. Here’s a video about how Optimo came to be.  And a lovely gallery of their offerings with lush high res images and descriptions (this is where a good deal of my writing is). 

 I’ve been lucky this last year working with clients who are seriously into their craft (Louboutin shoes, JLR shirts, Optimo Hats).  Everything that is carefully handmade is fascinating for me to watch and learn about. 

Optimo hats are lifelong collectibles like Vuitton trunks or Cartier watches. They made the hats for the gangster film Public Enemies and it occurred to me recently that the world's best hatmaker making a hat for Johnny Depp must be the equivalent of when the Hermes people made a bag for Grace Kelly!

 

*collaborating on the text with Graham’s lovely wife Nina

photo credit on second photo: Anna Knott for Chicago magazine

"Le discours d’un roi" n’est pas "Discours du récit"

   

In the Paris 8 lit department, they're mad for Gérard Genette, so I’ve ended up reading Discours du récit for a few of my classes.  So much Genette love, addling my noodle, that when I saw this poster in the metro I thought for a split second it was the long awaited epic love story of narrative theory.

Bonne Année!

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

The happy new year card my boyfriend Denis sent out. The painting is his own. He's done trees that seem to be glowing in several paintings lately; he calls them "bougie" trees.

Dream Gift Guide #2, colette

Ideas from the colette newsletter...

Hugues Lawson-Body’s Jeunes Parisiens

Happy Socks! (Available here in the US.)

Discolette

Dream Gift Guide #1, Département Féminin

We’ll start with Départment Féminin, best edit of any luxury multimarque anywhere, and located in Toulouse. Luckily for us, they also have a website. I’ve talked about the founder Carole Benazet’s elegant home here before, as well as her store.

To cut to the chase, I believe that you, dear imaginary luxury fiend, could probably use some gloves. 

Images from the "Glove Theater" on the Département Féminin Facebook page.

You should also really have a Balenciaga City bag.  Clémence Poésy looks so darling with hers – when is that ever not enough of a reason?

And yet, the Celine Classic bag is so perfectly subtle, and you can't be a rockstar everyday can you? 

Warm up that credit card – I think you might need both of them.

And to top things off, so to speak, how about a Sarti scarf in khaki (or gray like Garance's)? The way the cashmere folds and billows around the neck – you’ll want to write a thank you letter to the nice goats who provided their woolly down!

Image: Garance Doré

Les Cad- OOH

Image: Behind the scenes of the Département Féminin Christmas newsletter.

What does an American give a French person for Christmas? An L.L. Bean boat bag, a J. Crew sweater, something by Pendleton – I know French people who leave room in their suitcases for Abercrombie & Fitch hoodies for all of their friends. I won’t talk about what French treats you should give an American, as the cool brands of perfumes and macarons tend to be well documented.

Instead I’d like to create a fantasy gift guide for a dear, imaginary luxury fiend… I work for some lovely luxury websites and this is the moment to share the things I drool over on a regular basis. 

Me, I don’t need anything.  (Except maybe plain, non-Honey Nut Cheerios – the French grocer’s most obvious lacuna.)

Red Loubi Slippers

These are my new Christian Louboutin shoes.  I translated an in-house documentary for them recently and they invited me to their private sale last night.  I was in and out in 30 minutes and, needless to say, I love what I wound up with. Afterwards my boyfriend asked what the shoes would go with and I said "black dress, black stockings!" to give him something concrete, but I was thinking "Duh, everything."

Nighthawks, or the French experiment with crepuscular shopping

 

When I saw the crowds on the Avenue Montaigne for Vogue Fashion Celebration Night this week, mostly young people in front of shops like Chanel and Gucci, where the usually discreet atmosphere was replaced by  music (with base!) and throbbing lights, I felt like even in France they are beginning to understand that late night shopping can be the answer for so many things.  (Did I really just say that?  Shopping is never the answer, kids.  Except for all those times that it really, really is.)

 The French take on the event seemed more rentrée-related than the American version in New York, Fashion’s Night Out, which was created by Anna Wintour to help the city’s retailers combat the crisis. Does la rentrée make you wanna get busy like Martha Stewart before a messy drawer of buttons?  Why not go shopping?  Does la rentrée, with its summertime death knell, make you want to open your veins?  Why not go shopping? 

I headed straight for Chloé because they were kind enough to put me on their list and while the rentrée makes me extremely happy, being stuck outside in this foire would have somewhat killed the buzz.

While I can easily spend hours just watching people, this party actually gave us something to do: they set up a photo booth which gave me rentrée-appropriate flashbacks to waiting to have a yearbook photo taken. Something terrifying and performative about watching those in front of you be shot, the sickening yet exhilarating feeling as your turn in the chair approaches.  Actress Ludivine Sagnier had her photo taken too, wearing a dress that my friend said resembled a table cloth in an Italian restaurant.  Before you read that as a cut, I have to say that he followed this up with a cheerful,  “It makes you want to draw all over her.”  One lady’s 3,000 euro dress is just another man’s blank canvas!  

The brand launched their new perfume Love back in June, at a party at Apicius which left me in a mushroom foam risotto haze from which I am just now emerging, so as a karmic thank you, I’ll take this opportunity to mention a few Chloé things that I love… 

Love the pants The commercial for the Love perfume, which features Raquel Zimmermann and was shot by Roman Coppola, effectively transmits that the Chloé lady is a femme qui travaille rather than a femme fatale.  In the campaign she wears the traditional Chloé pant, which was sort of the guest of honor at the party on Tuesday, and after a summer of floppy, now-faded dresses, don’t you just long to be in those soigné pants?! There was a cool video wall outside the Chloé store Tuesday night where they were showing the pants video.  (Is it too much lovin' to say I love the music in the pants video?  I really love it.) 

Love the comment My friend is not a fashion person and these are the best kinds of people to take to fashion parties. He approvingly noted that the Chloé pant is flowy and not bandage tight at the ankle like “what all the girls in the metro are wearing.” (Very pointu.)  He compared one jacket hanging in the store to something Queen Elizabeth II might wear (also unfortunately, very pointu).  But most entertaining was the bizarre link he saw between the much shot look 11 of this season and something that is in a Saint Germain des Pres gallery window right now for the Africain art fair "Parcours des Monde."

Love the André You can currently bid on a pair of classic Chloé jeans customized by artist André.  Proceeds go to AIDES.  (I've always sort of had a thing for him.)  

Images: First two photos by Stéphane Feugère, rest by me.

State of the Art

 Jeanne and Marie Line with Penelope Fillon at the May 8th opening

It takes a fairy godmother to get Cinderella to the ball, but my aunt got Penelope Fillon, wife of France’s Prime Minister -- not too shabby either!  Madame Fillon is the marraine (godmother) of the gallery.  What gallery you ask? 

 Galerie d’art des Forges. 

 My aunt, Marie Line Fourmont, is a painter.  For over 15 years she has been running a gallery connected to her home, where visitors come to capture some of the farmhouse charm and lovely still life paintings.  Now, Marie Line has just opened a larger art gallery in the tiny Viré-en-Champagne in the Sarthe (a village of 200 inhabitants). 

While the gallery will feature male and female artists from around France, my aunt specifically wanted a godmother for the space. 

My aunt laid the tile for the gallery herself.  My cousin Jeanne handled all the press and will manage the gallery.  This is what I mean when I say there are some pretty incredible women in my family.  And I haven’t even talked about the catering by my cousin Louise. 

 Reportage on local tv (you can see the farmhouse at the beginning and my cousin Jeanne and Marie Line are both interviewed).

 A sampling of my aunt’s work.

  Photo credit: Yann Ralec

Oh hi, it's fashion week again.

They should start serving CC stamped peanuts at the Chanel shows.  What hoopla!  The invite had a sketch by Karl of a polar bear, and then the set included a couple of whopping icebergs (imported from Sweden).  Karl’s Dr. Zhivago princesses walked on the sop of the iceberg’s melt, trailing long coats and making a wake with their fur boots.  While the icebergs were real, the fur apparently was fake.  At the end Karl minced around to “Say Captain, Say Wot”!   I thought that was a riot. (I suppose I should say: wot a riot.)

Afterwards, I headed up to Paris 8 at Saint Denis for a littérature comparée class.  I haven’t mentioned this previously on the blog, but I’m working on a master’s degree in literature.  We were studying travel diaries (récits de voyages) and Levi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques.  How did Tristes Tropiques change the field of the travel diary in 1955?  By postulating the death of exoticism, the end of travel, and the deconstruction of otherness – all this without abolishing the possibility of the travel diary.  The first line is “Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs.”  I came home from class to read Cathy Horyn’s review of the Chanel show:

“The Ice Hotel in Sweden provided inspiration. When asked backstage if he had ever visited the hotel, Mr. Lagerfeld, dressed in a Dior peacoat and bleached jeans with a vintage Cartier stickpin in his black tie, shivered and said no.”

Chanel F10 Finale from coquette on Vimeo.

Lily Allen at Chanel SS10

Chanel S10, Lily Allen
envoyé par Efourmont. - Regardez plus de courts métrages.

La Mode, La Mode

Let’s not bury the lead.  My big scoop of the day is that I met Dries Van Noten’s dog.  He’s an Airedale Terrier, and his name is Harry.  (Sadly I did not meet Dries, but if I ever do, I’ve got my icebreaker.)

Lindsay Lohan's first show as “creative director” of storied French house Emanuel Ungaro was today.  WWD called it an embarrassment.  I can see how people feel their intelligence is insulted by the choice.  But I don’t think the clothes were as embarrassing as they could have been.  (Change the neon color palette in the first looks to upmarket beiges and greys, and how is it different from all those other bandage dresses on the runway?  Who was expecting originality?)

The newsworthy moment for me is that Lohan was crying when she took her bow.  I could almost hear the creaking around me, as Botoxed eyebrows raised like curtains. It seemed sad.  Maybe she doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to do things that mean something to her anymore.

I could write a whole post about the strange things I ate today in an effort to avoid crumbling to curb level with the pigeons. I walked and rode the metro to six different show locations – I was always starving.  Luckily, in Paris, there are always pastries at hand. I have never had so many pastries in one day in my life.

The Tuileries / Louvre / Place Vendome were swarming with "people" as the French say.  (Saw Erin Fetherston in Lanvin sunglasses, and then minutes later, the Rodarte sisters on rue Saint-Honoré.)  Hoofing it from the Louvre to Place Vendome for Dries, I looked up and saw this:

I wish I could have zoomed in to hear their conversation and see who they were, but alas my Robert Altman powers were useless, so we can only imagine what was happening up there.  So cinematic.  
 

Over in the 17th, at Givenchy, I was completely mesmerized by the Lycée Carnot, a venue I’ve always loved, and the shiny locks of Margherita Missoni, who was en face (in the red and black skirt in the photo below).  I tried to get a video that captured the splendor of both things, but in the end my video is terrible, since the show took place as dusk fell.  I will admit that with all my camera fiddling, I realized how good the clothes were only at the end.  This is the problem with recording, you end up not watching with your own eyes. 

But what an exciting collection.  I talked to some very happy retailers leaving the show. 

Givenchy S10
envoyé par Efourmont. - Films courts et animations.

Beigbeder does stand-up

Prix de Flore-winning author Frédéric Beigbeder may have a second calling as a film comedian.  I see him in a Judd Apatow boy-man type role, with a dose of French swagger. Last night was Paris’s first Literary Death Match, a throw-down organized by Opium magazine where authors read their work in competition before a live audience and jury.  It started late because Beigbeder had gone temporarily missing, and then we were all shocked (and maybe not so shocked), when Beigbeder got up and announced that he had forgotten to bring his book; he was too drunk to compete; and anyway, he wouldn’t compete against a woman.  Especially one as beautiful as Max Monnehay. 

Beigbeder does stand-up
envoyé par Efourmont. - Futurs lauréats du Sundance.

Translation:

I’m sorry I forgot my book, but anyway you can find it sort of everywhere right now.  So, I’m absolutely not going to fight against Max Monnehay; who I don’t know; who I met just a moment ago, and… she is very beautiful.  And I think it would be too bad to have a falling out before we even get to know each other.  Don’t you think?  Bonsoir. (Girl from audience hands Beigbeder a copy of his latest book.)  Incredible!  They’re going to think this is a set up.  (Taking off his jacket.)  They’re going to think I planned the whole thing, as if I were a sort of Machiavelli of modern times, as if, when turning around, it wasn’t at all planned what was written on my back.  (His shirt says “Zadig et Voltaire” a rock and roll French brand which I assume is named after Voltaire’s novel about Babylonian philosopher Zadig.  If there’s a joke here I don’t get it).  (Opening book.)  Well, okay, but wait my speech was better than this.

Everyone laughed, even if my female friends found his gallantry with Monnehay irksome, and also, typically French. Monnehay, who was arguably disadvantaged by age and experience, presumably signed on aware of her underdog role, and aware that the whole thing was a semi-spoof, and yet, hoping for some element of challenge.  Beigbeder was too busy attending to his performance to think that his stepping down would patronize her?

Still, it was a funny sort of vaudevillian vamp.  As jury member and writer David  Foenkinos pointed out, Beigbeder’s most magic talent may be that he can talk about absolutely nothing for eight minutes, and still entertain.

"Chacun ses people, hein?!"

I am really enjoying lovely Geraldine’s tweets from London fashion week.  But maybe you have to know how lucid and composed Geraldine generally is to feel tickled when she gets so emballé par Gwyneth Paltrow?  ("On attend Gwyneth. GWYNETH!!! (Chacun ses people, hein?!")  Nah. 

Also enjoying Lauren’s post about literary events in Paris this week. Tonight?  Literary Death Match!

Foreign Tongue

Vanina Marsot’s wonderful first novel, Foriegn Tongue, is about a French American woman translating an erotic novel in France.  As someone who grew up with both languages, Marsot has always been interested in the limitations and freedoms that are unique to either one.  She explained in a France 24 interview this week that the novel was a “fun playground for me to ruminate on those differences.”

A compulsive read for translation theorists, and French language lovers at any level, here's one of my favorite passages:

“How do you translate ‘séduire’?  In English, ‘to be seduced’ has a connotation of corruption, an inkling of something against one’s will or good intentions; ‘être séduit’ is closer to being beguiled.  ‘Elle a un grand besoin de séduire’ doesn’t mean she needs to seduce people but rather that she needs to be liked – and yet, while there is a notion of seduction that isn’t sexual, it isn’t nonsexual either.  ‘Légèreté means lightness, but in some contexts, it seems to describe an almost Zen-like state of serenity.  How do you say ‘lame,’ or ‘rude,’ or ‘confused’ in French?  Why is ‘violence’ in English so physical, whereas the French use it for emotions as well?  Why do French people believe in love at first sight, and we think it’s adolescent?”