From the monthly archives: July 2010
Lots of ideas for a lovely French-themed party at Celebrations at Home!
We were in Normandy (home of Camembert!) this month, and everywhere we went we saw this poster for an exhibit on dairy traditions at the Musée du terroir normand. The poster just made us happy. Exhibit info: Traditions Laitières Musée Du Terroir.
McChrystal, the Rolling Stone piece said, resented playing the diplomat, though that’s part of the job. He also hated going to posh Parisian restaurants with candles on the table. Well, suck it up, general.
After being banned in the mountain country and many parts of the world for almost a century, absinthe, famously associated with bohemian fin-de-siècle artists, is making a comeback in the land of its birth, five years after being legalized by Swiss authorities.
via Swisster
Perhaps no time better exemplifies the glitz and glamour of this small sliver of Mediterranean coastline—Cannes, Monaco, Saint-Tropez—than the 1950s and 60s.
Series of photos at The Daily Beast.
In latest news, the eight pigs tattooed with Louis Vuitton logoes and other Walt Disney characters — highly controversial works of art by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye — has been banned by the organisers of SHContemporary, the city’s largest contemporary art fair.
via Shanghaiist, merci @mailecannon
Magnifique ! Series of photos of high-fashion models floating around Paris in Melvin Sokolsky’s Bubble Series, which appeared in Harper’s magazine in 1963.
via Boing Boing
Incredible video of Marguerite Duras reading from L’Amant long before the film was ever made. It was the iconic Jeanne Moreau who narrated the movie when it was made years later by director Jean-Jacques Annaud (without the collaboration of Duras).
via La Règle du jeu
Looking attractive, at any age, is just what Frenchwomen do, especially the urban ones. For Parisiennes, maintaining their image is as natural as tying a perfect scarf or wearing stilettos on cobblestone streets. Beauty is a tradition handed down from generation to generation.
via NYTimes.com
The revolution of 1789 has burned the notion of equality deep into the French psyche and a proud Parisian finds it abhorrently degrading to act subserviently.
via BBC News
A 14-year-old French girl won the international doodle contest, which was open to kids between four and 17. Grand prize included having her doodle displayed on July 11th and getting a free trip to South Africa.
via Presse-Citron
Greed, ambition, a president, a beauty empire heiress, a con man, secret envelopes filled with cash, recording devices planted by domestics, Nazis, collaborationists, and more… All you could ever want in a French political/high society scandal. The whole mess explained clearly and succinctly in this Telegraph article.
*the French version of “for Dummies” book [...]
