Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: Designing Women

Image via Wikipedia

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”  -- Gore Vidal

WORDS TO LIVE by--and even more important when one lives in a foreign land.  Think of Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation.  Sooner or later every expatariate feels lost--and must rediscover who she is and express herself in a meaningful way.  The women I'm about to present uncovered their entrepreneurial spirits and became designers.  They transformed their self-identities--their individual styles--into products that organically fit them as well as their new lives abroad. 

I'd like to point out that what these designing women did not do was put products on the market just to make a buck, which seems to be the name of the game throughout what has become our throwaway culture.  The high road of honesty, beauty, and principles--on every level--which also transcends into true style has been replaced with a mass superhighway of products that manipulate and push people's buttons.  A cheap thrill. 

Never forget: There is nothing more attractive--nothing more stylish or deeply, spiritually important--than authenticity.  I was knocked out by each one of these women for reasons you'll soon understand. 

Meet designers ...

1) Kasia Dietz

Kasia Dietz designs a line of one-of-a-kind, reversible handbags, totes, and clutches that are "made in Paris with love." 

Letter From Paris: Signs of Revolution

Living in the 20th Arrondissement gives the Lone Wolf and me a wider range of experience of Paris--of the multi-cultural Paris, the diverse Paris, the un-picture postcard Paris--that is a thriving part of the Paris whole.  Do we see more signs of revolution here?  I believe so...for this is the Paris where creative energy takes a fork in the cultural road and explodes in art and a less inhibited life.

Here are some signs of revolution that are going on in the wider world...

Jours of Our Lives: 12) THE SPIRITS OF BELLE ILE

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.  

 

THIS WAS THE day Jim had been waiting for. We were going to Belle-Ile-en-Mer, an island in the Atlantic off the Brittany Coast which was important for Matisse’s artistic development. Jim had been dying to get here, and to make it even better, we would land on Belle Ile on his birthday. He always hates his  birthday—but not this one.                                     

Everyone who knows the island has told us how beautiful it is, another French venue I’d never heard of until we were introduced by Monsieur Matisse. The day couldn’t be more perfect. The sky is clear and blue, and we drive onto the ferry at the seaside town of Quiberon. I don’t care how cold it is, I have to be on the top deck to look out at the sea and feel the ocean breeze. I love boats and ships and being on the water. I think it’s a great way to see any place where a body of water is the eau de vie. We bundled up. Some people moved down a deck, but not us.

As the ferry pulled into Le Palais, the capital of Belle Ile, the Citadelle Vauban loomed in front of us. Its massive walls have guarded Belle Ile for centuries.

Citadelle Vauban

 

Letter from Paris presents...Paris Fashion Report

 

By Contributing Editor Philippe Perisse de Montchenu, Fashion Reporter and Consultant

 

LA PETITE LECON DE MODE BY PIERRE BERGÉ 

 

 A month ago it was Haute Couture Fashion Week again. Couture? Did you say couture? What does it mean today, anyway?

Luckily, at the French Institute of Fashion (IFM), we had a conference with his Highness Pierre Bergé. He and Didier Grumbach are the two men who have built, from back stage, the Fashion Industry as we know it.

Letter From Paris: Chocolate and Jacques Genin

Mayan Chief & Chocolate, Image via Wikipedia

When The Cheese Princess and her sister, The Chocoholic, were in Paris for two weeks over Christmas, I knew that we needed to do some serious degusting of the great and powerful ambrosia of the cacao, the food of the gods. Oh, the paste from the seeds of the cacao that breathes us into its addictive magnificence, rolls us around in its luxury of smell and taste, and leaves us in its creaminess. Yes, we were going to experience and savor some extraordinary chocolate.

And so we did.

Paris is loaded with fine chocolate for its citizens and visitors to taste and hoard and bring as gifts to delight their hosts from near and far. Everyone has his or her favorite makers and shops (though how does one ever choose?) whether it's Patrick Roger, Michel Cluizel, Jean-Paul Hevin, La Maison du Chocolat, MIchel Chaudun, Pierre Hermé, Josephine Vannier, or many more. But I was going to take my darling daughters to the beautiful store of Jacques Genin, a self-described "rebel" in this country of tradition and conformity.

Image via Keldelice

Jours of Our Lives: 11) WHEN IT FEELS SO RIGHT

 

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and m oving to F rance. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.  

 

I’VE HAD A couple of breakdowns about the choices we’ve made, where we’ll end up. Second guessing and questioning how we’d gotten ourselves to the point where we are (and I don’t mean in France—I mean how stretched we are financially). Isn’t there some song lyric that says, “When it feels so right, how can it be wrong?” That sums it up.                

I arrived in picturesque Honfleur feeling like a wreck. We’d been here years before with Blair and Bret, savoring a lunch of fish under an awning by the harbor while it drizzled rain. The waiter flirted with Blair.  Today the sun was out, and the streets were semi-crowded with people. We looked for a hotel. We finally stopped at the L’Ecrin, which we’d been by several times. It called to me. When we walked in, a jovial French woman, Daniele, greeted us warmly. We explained what we’re doing—chasing Matisse—and she excitedly told us she had a friend who’d been one of Matisse’s models. She lived not far away. What luck! This was striking gold! Daniele immediately picked up the telephone and called Madame Mickels, handed the phone to Jim, and they made an appointment to meet the next day. The L’Ecrin is lovely, the kind of place I’m drawn to anyway, but of course, I now believe our finding it was meant to be.

Hotel L'Ecrin in Honfleur

 

Letter from Paris presents...Paris EyePhone

 

LE JOUR DE LA SAINT-VALENTIN

 

By Contributing Editor Mario C. Servin, iPhone Photographer and Traveling Economist

Before symbolizing romantic love, Saint Valentin's was long associated with fertility.  This picture of sweets from a Parisian confenctionery- La mere de Famille - laid out on a japanese enameled plate combines the symbols of both physical and romantic love.

Happy Valentines Day!!  With love from us to you...

 

iPhone photos by Mario C. Servin.

Letter From Paris: From Paris With Love

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Love makes the world go round.  It fills us up and tears us apart.  It heals us, squeezes us, and turns us inside out.  It is a noun oozing with verbs, and it's a verb exploding, sizzling, or simmering with emotion. 

Love takes our breath away.  It breaks our heart.  It makes us high as a kite.

Valentine's Day is coming, and I absolutely love it!  Not necessarily as a day for romance--but as a day to celebrate love and the people we love--our friends and family.  A day to think about love, to express our love, to feel our love.  To be our love.

And how do we do that here?  France is a country of beautiful unbending culture--and a people buttoned up--but Paris is a city of lovers kissing in parks, on street corners, or riding the metro.  Making eyes at a glass of champagne, a bottle of wine, a savory long meal, or some chocolates.

When we first came to France, Valentine's Day was hardly noticeable.  But these days the merchants have caught on to the commercial possibilities, and we're seeing more Valentines around Paris.  Here are some for you. 

From Paris with Love...

Jours of Our Lives: 10) EACH STEP I TAKE

Illustration by Elizabeth Cannon

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

 

IT’S HILARIOUS SEEING “The Simpsons” in France—Homer and Marge speaking French with Bart and Lisa, and better than Jim and I do. As irony would have it, we saw an episode in a hotel room in Rouen, in which the Simpsons somehow go back in time to 15^th-century France (since they were speaking Francais, I didn’t quite get how). But Lisa becomes Joan of Arc. And there we were in the city where Joan was burned at the stake.

The next morning we were off to Étretat, on the Normandy coast. We tried to listen to our French CD in the car, but it almost put us to sleep after our fine lunch. The most interesting village we passed through on the way was Fécamp, which has been a fishing port for centuries. It’s built on a hillside leading down to the harbor on the English Channel. Fishermen sailed first on schooners, and now trawlers, from here to Newfoundland to catch the cod in cold, fog, and bad seas. As is the case in such towns, where men have made their livings from the deep, many never returned—lost in icy waters. It’s one of those ways of life that is fascinating to me—the mysteries of oceans and the people who live by and from them.

At Étretat...the arch that many painters have painted

 

Letter From Paris presents...The Sound Hunter

Cover of Édith Piaf

 

PARISIAN STREET MUSIC

By Contributing Editor Des Coulam. Recording the street sounds of Paris attempting to capture that gratuitous, never-ending show for which no ticket is needed.

 

I AM ALWAYS ASTONISHED by the quality of the music to be found on the streets of Paris. Whether it's the classical musicians and opera singers to be found under the arches in the Place des Vosges, the jazz bands in St Germain des Prés, the street musicians in Montmartre, or the buskers in the Métro, street music fills the air of Paris.