When I did an image search for “Self Service” just now, all of these French salad bar vendors came up, which look nifty (and can be yours for 3,700 euros!), but I didn’t come here to talk to you about salad bars. I actually wanted to mention Self Service the magazine, which I have worked on for the last three issues as copy editor, and which you can find at newsagents while supplies last. (Self Service is produced biannually, and the next issue, which I did not work on, will come out in October.)
Current cover looks like this:
Interviews with Jeff Koons, Stella McCartney, Jason Schwartzman, Diane von Furstenberg, Katie Grand, Stephanie Savage, David Blaine, Dana Thomas, Emmauelle de Noirmont, Floriane de Saint Pierre, and Gilles and Daniela Andrier. Enjoy!
More photos after the jump.
A challenge from the lovely Badaude, illustrator and writer extraordinaire with a talent for navigating the vagaries of French it-girl fashion (see above and also here). She imagined a 21st century night with her favorite Parisian artists of any era, and invited a few other bloggers to do the same.
So who would be my guests?
Colette -- Because I’m leaving for vacation today, and Judith Thurman’s Colette bio Secrets of the Flesh, which I found at Abbey bookstore recently, is in the reading pile. (Taking the book on my trip was prévu, but Lauren’s recent twitter link to this review cinched the deal.)
Romy Schneider – A star yes, but an artist too. Although my favorite period for her acting was around the César and Rosalie time, in my fantasy I would like her to be about the age she was in this Will McBride book: 25. Conscious of ditching her “Sissi” image and showing her sensual, strong, and vulnerable facets, when these photos were taken she was recently jilted by Alain Delon. It would give us something to talk about. (Some more great shots of Romy on this site -- I love the session from 1974 (not safe for work) and the “Romy in Chanel” album.
Edna St. Vincent Millay – The flame-haired American poet was only a short term Paris resident but oh, I’d like her to meet me just after the night her husband Eugen jumped into the Seine to save a drowning woman (while wearing a tuxedo).
Location? I first thought of the classic, book filled, centrally located Le Fumoir, but it’s too fashionable for what I have in mind. No, I’d prefer the low key L’Autre Café for this encounter. I love the ambiance in the morning with the breeze coming in the big windows and the regulars sitting quietly with their papers, and all the morning sounds of the city waking up outside the cafe. We could meet for a café creme, talk about the night’s adventures, then stay for lunch and a carafe of wine.
(Another option? Because why limit ones fantaisies, right? We meet in the late afternoon at the 104, then walk down to the Place Sainte-Marthe for a drink on the square.)
Apropos of Le Select, the setting of Badaude’s fabulous new header for Maitresse (which inspired this fantasy challenge), here’s a photo taken from the inside of my friend Alex’s apartment – he used to live right on top of the cafe, if you can believe it.
The End, by Matthew Rose
American artist in Paris, Matthew Rose, writes, creates penetrating collages, and runs a first-rate printing press. Here with his new project: A Book About Death. Contribute!
A BOOK ABOUT DEATH : 1000-PLUS ARTISTS CONTRIBUTE 500 POST CARDS EACH TO CREATE AN UNBOUND BOOK ABOUT DEATH. AN HOMAGE TO RAY JOHNSON, A CELEBRATION OF EMILY HARVEY, AN GLOBAL EXPLORATION OF DEATH. EXHIBITION AT THE EMILY HARVEY FOUNDATION GALLERY IN NEW YORK CITY. OPENING: THURSDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2009. EXHIBITION: 10 - 22 SEPTEMBER 2009.
Je vous présent the Spring issue of Chicago Fashion.
Pages 28/29: Interview with designer Soo Choi about her closet. If one must tell the story of a person through their stuff, having a subject as forthcoming and réfléchi as Soo is what you long for.
Pages 14/15: Short items on jewelry designer Temple St. Claire, perilously high heels, and the similarities between today’s runway and the styles of the 1930s.
Pages 30/31: Interview with the fabulous Graham Thompson of Optimo Hats (who recently designed the hats for Public Enemies). I had so much fun poking around his shop and seeing the weighty and timeworn hat-making machinery.
Pages 34/35: I asked five local designers to imagine looks for Michelle Obama.
The Département Féminin newsletter on Ann Demeulemeester is out, and AIEEE!! (I squealed in French when I saw the photos) -- it is just perfect that this is national poetry month, non?
Author Didier Decoin, center, with his publisher and editor
On a clam chowdery Wednesday morning a few weeks ago, I went to Les Deux Magots to discuss Didier Decoin’s new novel with him and a half dozen other bloggers over breakfast. I feel very grateful that this blog, which I essentially have allowed to be overrun with weeds, still brings such cool experiences into my life.
Decoin, a member of the Académie Goncourt and best known for his prize winning John L’Enfer, wrote his new book for Grasset’s collection, “Ceci n’est pas un fait divers.” (A “fait divers” being a short news item, often of little importance.) The result: Est-ce ainsi que les femmes meurent? is a literary dramatization of the real life murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens in the 1960s. (You may remember her story from Psych 101 -- it led to the coining of the term “bystander effect.” A few dozen people in her apartment building heard and saw things while she died a slow death by stabbing. Nobody called the police.) Decoin makes the story into something larger, about personal responsibility, free will, psychopathy, and in a way, America.
Decoin explained to us that the assassin, Winston Moseley, a serial killer who had killed two other women, fascinated him because he’s not a “constant” assassin. This guy is like a werewolf. A family man with an upstanding job, he occasionally drives off to kill a girl in the middle of the night.
And Decoin was always fascinated by America, which he loves and brings to life with vivid effect. Here’s a wonderful paragraph, mixing the gory with the mundane:
L’odeur du sang, une odeur qui rappelait celle du cuivre, n’avait pas encore eu le temps de dominer les émanations qui flottaient ici comme dans la plupart des lieux fréquentés par la middle class américaine – papier kraft un peu chaud, caoutchouc, citronelle synthétique, pain de mie, ozone, nougat, mélangez en agitant bien, respirez, vous etes à New York.
I liked Decoin’s descriptions of American smells throughout the book. I even told him as much at breakfast. And he made that French hand motion, a repeated swiveling downward from the wrist, and said, “Oh la, mais ca c’est un grand compliment."(I suppose, being the only American there, I was something of an American odor authority.)
To summarize: great book, and very good book if you read French but it's not your first language and you want a challenge. It’s fairly straightforward and a page-turner -- I read it in two nights. If you don’t pick it up in a bookstore, look for it in the cinema someday. The rights have been sold for a French film.