La Coquette

The Most Elegant Home I've Ever Seen

 

... belongs to Carole Benazet of Département Féminin.

It was always a fantasy of mine, as a kid, that someday I would put on suits and go on business trips. Now, of course, nothing sounds more appalling.  A suit!  Can you imagine?  But I do pinch myself when I occasionally get to go on a work related voyage.  The owner of this remarkable store (whose website I work for), periodically shuttles me by TGV to Toulouse, where the shop is based.

Carole has one of the most elegant homes I’ve ever seen in person.  Would you believe a countess used to live there?  Of course you would!  The space is incredible, and she’s filled it with of gorgeous antiques, and frightfully chic contemporary pieces, not to mention the piles and piles of art books and magazines that I just devour. 

I would gladly empty out all the items in my home and pour in every objet of Carole’s if it were possible; it's that good.

My quick snaps surely don’t do justice -- it's all in the details you know -- but I hope you enjoy.  When I arrived in Toulouse last time, grimy from the train, I got to dip into the bath you see below, while listening to Zooey Deschanel sing this.  I felt entirely countess-like!  

Galerie à la ferme

Have I mentioned that my aunt, Marie-Line Fourmont, who has worked on the farm practically every day since she married my uncle, runs a gorgeous household, does the bookkeeping, cooks meals that would make you weep… is also a well respected painter?  She has just launched her website (with much help from my cousin Jeanne) which highlights tableaux that are available for purchase.  Marie-Line’s work gets all sorts of press and she exhibits in France and overseas.  During the summer, the driveway gravel crunches endlessly with cars coming to visit the gallery.

She’s having a special weekend where you can visit the farm and drink cocoa and and meets lots of other local artists on November 29 and 30 if you happen to be dans le coin. (Send an email to the address on the site for more info.) Unfortunately I’ll be in Chicago, as I am every year for this annual event.  But if you go, say hi to Caroline, Agathe, and Prune for me! (Respectively, these are a farm’s tortoise, cat, and golden retriever.)  And hi to all the cows!  And be sure to eat some rillettes!  Local specialty!

 

Oh(bama) la la

The day after the election, I had a divine lunch (potimarron soup and pavé de saumon) with Carole from Département Féminin at the newly opened Rose Bakery outpost in the Marais, and guess who was sitting in front?  Elodie, looking pretty as ever although wearing far too much black eyeliner.  I know you won't judge when I confess that I practically learned the spoken French language from her season of Star Academy, the magical winter when I first moved to France, and so I’m unable to disunite my warm, glowy, fan feelings.  Obama as President and Elodie as brunch companion.  It felt like Christmas. 

It’s been so long since people in France have told me America is a great country, but they’re doing it right now, everywhere I go. 

It’s beautiful how fast life can change. 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes

There’s this ironic, ahead of its time Serge Gainsbourg song, En relisant ta lettre, in which he coldly points out each grammatical error in a desperate letter from his lover. The song came to mind when reading about Sophie Calle’s installation at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Take Care of Yourself, where she invited 107 women to interpret a breakup email from her lover according to their professional expertise.  See the article on Calle in the recent, French-themed T Style.

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The subject of my newsletter for Département Féminin this month is Brooklynite Sophie Auster, daughter of Paul.  Smokey-eyed and beloved by the French, just like her Dad!

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I’m feeling poetic of late, and so I looked up the top 11 poems in the American literary canon, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on genius and youth (he mentions the poems at the bottom of page one).

 T. S. Eliot’s “Prufrock,” Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” William Carlos Williams’s “Red Wheelbarrow,” Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish,” Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” (note: with the often quoted "Every woman adores a fascist" line), Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” Frost’s “Mending Wall,” Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man,” and Williams’s “The Dance.”

How do you see the glass?

Emails I sent to my friend Cassi the other day:

"We should have dinner at Le Coin de Verre."

A few minutes later…

"I mean Le Pré Verre!"

And then, a few minutes later….

"I mean Le Verre Volé!"