Paris All Deco’d Out
Published December 27, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment.
Henri Delage
“Maternité” (1924) by Chana Orlofo.
Not long after the release of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” blogs and message boards were ablaze with questions and pointers about the location of the magic staircase where Owen Wilson begins his communion with the Lost Generation. And quickly that gave way to Google maps and miniguides to the movie’s every filming location, from Deyrolle to Maxim’s.
Of course, Paris in the 1920s and ’30s has captured the imagination for many years, but lately the city’s Art Deco period has loomed especially large in the culture, from Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” to the book “Paris Between the Wars” by Gerard Durozoi and Vincent Bouvet.
So a traveler might naturally ask: Where’s the French national museum dedicated to Art Deco?
Continue reading “Paris All Deco’d Out” »
D.C.’s Dinnertime Diplomacy
Published November 27, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment.
Bettmann/Corbis
Jacqueline Kennedy at a gathering in December 1961.
Susan Mary Alsop would be shattered. A grand hostess of the nation’s capital in the 1960s, she transformed the Georgetown town house she shared with her husband, the columnist Joseph Alsop, into a Parisian-style salon for the elite, including President Kennedy himself.
She had learned to give great parties in Paris, where she lived as the young wife of an American diplomat. In Georgetown, she wore Balmain and Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent with Roger Vivier shoes. She entertained with French cut crystal, French porcelain, French sterling silver cutlery, French souffles and two French maids. When she married and moved in with Joe, she brought the contents of her French wine cave with her.
“For Susan Mary, entertainment was a job,” said Sophie-Caroline de Margerie, the French author of “American Lady,” a biography of Alsop in French that will be published by Penguin in English next year. “She felt that putting important men together — and it was always men — in congenial surroundings with a glass of whiskey would help them get to know each other. Conversation mattered. It was not an afterthought.”
Closin’ Up the Ritz
Published November 1, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone, via Getty Images
The Ritz Hotel in 1948
The marble fountain sang. The waiters moved with elegance and grace. The sun softened the sharp edges of the late October afternoon. The outdoor terrace at the Ritz was open for tea. It could have been perfect.
But the sandwiches were soggy and the scones chewy, and the linen napkins were ever so slightly a darker off-white than the tablecloths. In a town where the art of tea sipping has risen to the level of fine wine tasting, the waiter wasn’t quite sure which pot was jasmine, which was green. (And the bill for three people came to 132 euros – about $183.) On the way out, I noticed that the gladiolas jutting from the wall sconces were wilting, and some of the lampshades were crooked. The hand towels in the ladies’ room were soiled.
So it may not be a bad thing that the Ritz is closing sometime in early summer for a 27-month renovation. Mohamed al Fayed, its owner, has been talking about it for five years. But if he ever had any doubt, clarity came in the form of a brutal rebuff last May when the French tourism ministry left the Ritz off its inaugural list of French “palaces,” the classification for five-star hotels of special character.
Continue reading “Closin’ Up the Ritz” »
Wanna Know a Secret?
Published October 19, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment.
Conde Nast Archive/Corbis
Despite the economic crisis gripping Europe, there is one industry in France that is still going strong: the discovery, telling and selling of secrets. I confess to being a sucker for books about secrets, of which I have dozens, organized in three subject areas.
First come the current events’ secrets, with titles like, “Secret Notebooks of a Presidency” and “The Secret Stories of Miss France.” At the moment, the No. 1 nonfiction book in France is “La République des Mallettes” (The Briefcase Republic), an exposé by Pierre Péan about the suitcases of money delivered by African leaders to top French politicians.
Second are the volumes of travel secrets, most of them about Paris. I have books about the city’s secret churches, small museums, night life, gardens, places to kiss, reduce stress, drink tea. “Unexplored Paris” tells me where to find country streets, a beehive, a windmill, the last outdoor public urinal, a 17th-century Metro station. “The Hidden Side of Buttocks” shows me more backsides in French art than I will ever want to see.
The Louvre Less Traveled
Published September 28, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment.
Many visitors of the Louvre don’t know that the right hand of Winged Victory sits to the left of the massive sculpture. It’s these looked over pieces of art that are the subject of “Louvre: Secret et Insolite.
I long ago stopped counting how many times I’ve seen the Mona Lisa. The most visited work of art at the Louvre is, alas, at the top of the must-see list of every houseguest on a first visit to Paris.
Mona is surprisingly small (30 by 21 inches), dark and hard to see behind the barriers and bulletproof glass. After a while, she gets — dare I say it — boring. So do the Winged Victory of Samothrace (No. 2 in popularity) and Vénus de Milo (No. 3).
So over the years, I’ve come up with my own Louvre must-see list from the museum’s permanent collection of 35,000 paintings, sculptures, furnishings and objects. And I am always on the lookout for more hidden treasures, an exercise made easier with the publication two weeks ago of “Louvre: Secret et Insolite” (Louvre: Secret and Unusual) by Louvre Editions/Parigramme. People who don’t speak French need not shy away: the 119 works of art are illustrated with color photos.
Leg Work
Published September 9, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment.
Ullstein/Everett Collection.
Actress Brigitte Bardot shows off her legs in film director Roger Vadim’s “…And God Created Woman.”
September, the month when France makes its post-vacation “rentrée” and social, cultural and political life resumes, is also the month when women dress up again, exchanging loose summer garb and tropéziennes for form-fitting skirts and high heels.
So now is a good time to contemplate the female leg.
Continue reading “Leg Work” »
All the Tea in Paris
Published August 30, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment
Jugetsudo, a Japanese tea shop in Paris.
Megumi Ibusuki poured the cool liquid from an iron pot into a squat glass. She placed it, gently, on a square of striped raw silk set in a dark wood square tray. She urged me to sniff the aroma and observe the liquid’s color before I brought the glass to my lips. The liquid — the palest celadon — tasted like, well, Mount Fuji evanescence. I was sitting in a boutique on one of the chicest corners of Paris’s Sixth Arrondissement, at the bottom of the rue de Seine, across the street from Gérard Mulot, the luxury traiteur. But spiritually, I was in Japan.
Île de Ré Idyll
Published August 11, 2011
Sylvain Sonnet/Corbis
The bell tower in Ars-en-Ré on Île de Ré, France.
One August morning years ago, there was a knock on the door of the small, 19th-century stone house in Ars-en-Ré that my husband, Andy, and I had rented for vacation. There, alongside a bicycle laced with rust, stood a silver-haired man, elegantly dressed in a faded rose-colored linen shirt and long khaki Bermuda shorts. He had come looking for the owners, who were his — and our — friends from Paris. His name was Hubert.
“Monsieur, perhaps you don’t recognize me, but I’m your upstairs neighbor in our building in Paris,” Andy said.
Adventures in Vintage
Published June 27, 2011
Photographs by Gabriela Plump
Martine Chanin, the owner of Chine Machine.
The scarf, with its red border and lively pattern in olive, ocher and teal, stood out from the others in the 2-euro bin at the secondhand shop Chine Machine. I was there with Hannah Vinter, the 23-year-old daughter of a college friend, who was staying with us for a few days. Hannah was moving to Paris from London and had no money for such frivolities, so I offered her the scarf as a welcome-to-Paris gift.
“Five euros,” said Olivia Singer, the 23-year-old British shop manager, as I went to pay.
“But it was in the 2-euro bin!” I protested.
“The tag says 5 euros,” Olivia replied. “It’s worth it.”
The Curious Case of Pierre Loti
Published June 12, 2011From Elaine’s Lumière column for T Magazine’s The Moment
In Elaine Sciolino’s new travel column, Lumiere, the Times Paris correspondent and author of “La Seduction” shines a light on the people, places and peculiarities of France and beyond.
In 1891, when a seat opened up at the Académie Française, there was a fierce contest between two writers: Pierre Loti and Emile Zola. Loti, at the age of 41, won. Zola never made it into the exclusive club of “immortals.” And yet today, Zola remains one of France’s most-read and most-revered novelists; Loti is mostly forgotten.
Recent Comments