DEDICATION
To my parents,
for giving me the world,
but especially Paris.
And to my husband and sons,
for sharing the journey.
EPIGRAPH
Paris isn’t for changing planes . . . It’s . . . It’s for changing your outlook. For throwing open the windows and letting in . . . letting in la vie en rose.
Sabrina Fairchild (played by Audrey Hepburn), Sabrina
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE: PARISIENNE
CHAPTER 1: FILLETTE
CHAPTER 2: JEUNE FILLE
CHAPTER 3: INGÉNUE
CHAPTER 4: MADEMOISELLE
CHAPTER 5: MADAME
CHAPTER 6: BONNE VIVANTE
CHAPTER 7: FEMME
CHAPTER 8: FEMME
CHAPTER 9: SUPERFEMME
CHAPTER 10: MAMAN
EPILOGUE: GRANDE DAME
A Note from the Author about the Font
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About the Author
Copyright
The author, aged five, in Paris. (Brian Lawrence)
PROLOGUE
PARISIENNE
parisienne nf girl or woman of Paris
Have you ever gone somewhere for the first time, yet felt like you’ve been there before? And had the notion not so much that a place belongs to you, but rather you belong to it? You turn a corner into a street on which you’ve never, ever set foot, but suddenly you feel more at home, more at ease, than you do anywhere else in the world.
The expression déjà vu — literally: ‘already seen’ — was coined by a French parapsychologist in the late nineteenth century, and many figured it was proof of past life until psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud came along and put it all down to repressed desires. Déjà vu is usually a fleeting sensation, a quick flick of the sixth-sense switch that makes your skin tingle and sets off a faint ringing of Twilight Zone-esque music in your mind.
I was twenty-one and studying in Paris for a few months when I experienced a different type of déjà vu. I came across a cobbled lane that took me through a kind of portal, into a parallel universe where this city suddenly, wonderfully felt like home. I wish I could say that I looked down at those cobblestones to see, perched upon them, a dainty duo of mint satin slippers adorned with diamond buckles, rather than my scuffed pair of chunky cherry Doc Martens. Hélas, I can’t confess to glittering visions of a past life as a seventeenth-century comtesse. But there was most definitely a sense that I had somehow lived this place before, or was meant to live it. It wasn’t an ephemeral or eerie feeling, more a heightened awareness and appreciation of this beautiful city. Perhaps Freud was right. I just really, desperately wanted to fulfil the fantasy of being a Parisienne.
I walked and walked that entire day, led not by a map but a more intuitive navigation system. I ended up on the hill of Montmartre, standing in front of the beacon that is the church of Sacré-Coeur, its cream Roman–Byzantine domes made from stone that whitens with time. I looked over the City of Light spread before me, its luminous limestone buildings and its whimsically slanted zinc roofs glinting in the setting sunshine. It was winter, yet Paris was basking in the glow of the magic hour, that brilliant time of day when the sun bursts forth for one last hurrah and soaks everything beneath it in syrupy gold.
And that’s when I experienced what was to become a common occurrence: what I call my Paris Syndrome. I find myself so overwhelmed by the city around me, I actually have to shut my eyes to it. Its dazzling beauty is literally blinding. My breath catches and my heart palpitates to the point where I am physically light-headed. Impressionist painter Claude Monet had the perfect description for his beloved city, ‘cet étourdissant Paris’. Giddy-fying. I know just what he meant.
I’ve always been a sucker for beautiful things. I did become a beauty editor, after all, and admiring aesthetics is a prerequisite of the job. My work has taken me many times to Paris, the undisputed global beauty capital — the city of light-reflecting foundation and lipstick.
I mean, of course, Paris and beauty: they just go together. Like a stripy top and a baguette, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Nutella and crêpes. The beauty industry could only blossom in a city that truly, madly, deeply appreciates beautiful things. How could perfumers not concoct the world’s most delicious parfums when their nostrils are continually tempted by the city’s culinary delights or markets piled high with peonies and roses? How could makeup artists and hair stylists not be inspired to create works of art when they can just pop into the Louvre for some classic inspiration?
Curiously, I haven’t yet got around to actually living in my spiritual home. Truth is, I cherish Paris as my getaway plan. Some people retreat to a health spa to recharge their physical and emotional batteries. I take myself to Paris to reset my spirits and renew my sense of purpose in life.
Paris, a place that is as much myth as reality, is indeed a city for the world’s dreamers, for yearning outsiders who inhabit the city in their hearts, and blur their own idealised vision of Paris with the real thing, looking longingly at it through a rose-tinted filter. And there’s nothing wrong with that: Parisian is a state of mind as much as place. Every woman has an inner Parisienne just waiting to wiggle out: how else to explain the shelves heaving with books on the secrets of dressing the Parisian part?
‘I think it’s all a big hoax,’ scoffs a friend of mine, a former Parisienne who lives down the road from me in Bondi Beach. ‘Sure, I guess Parisian women by and large dress elegantly, but in a really simple and sometimes boring way.’
I once asked her what I tend to incredulously ask every Parisian who has moved to Australia: ‘But why?’ Her answer was along the lines of all the others: ‘I feel a freedom here that I didn’t in France.’
The grass is always greener, as they say . . . which is even an expression in French. Although, I must note, the manicured lawns of Paris are literally greener than the sundried gardens of Australia.
‘No, seriously,’ my expatriate friend insisted. ‘I couldn’t even pour my own wine at a dinner party. I had to wait for a man to do it. I mean, that’s just ludicrous. You might wish to be Parisian. I am so happy I’m now Australian.’
The French, I’ve found, largely see Australia as an enviably casual and carefree place. They have been conditioned by centuries of etiquette, while non-Indigenous Australians have come from all corners of the globe, in a relatively short period of time, and social traditions are still in flux. We are young and free, as the song goes.
Australia was settled by the British in 1788, the year before the French Revolution began — a violent, blood-soaked time when France fought to forge a new identity as the land of liberty, equality and fraternity. To the French, Australia must have seemed like a blank slate, a fresh start.
Australia was actually almost French. Back in the eighteenth century, the French referred to the unknown expanse of land down south, partially mapped by the Dutch, as France Australe (Southern France) and set their sights and sails upon making that dream a reality. Enter Louis-Antoine de Bougainville who, in 1766, cast off on his frigate, La Boudeuse (which means ‘sulky girl’, a curious choice of name for a ship about to lug a crew of gnarly men across treacherous seas). On a stop in Rio de Janeiro, the expedition’s botanist delighted at the colourful flowering vine there, and did his career no harm by naming it after his commander.
Soon came a fun-filled stay in Tahiti, where the French sailors were ecstatic to find an island paradise of sensuous — and decidedly nonsulky — women. After they (most reluctantly) set off, it became apparent that the crew might have partied a little too hard. So Bougainville searched for land
that could provide fresh food, clean water and recuperative powers. At one point, he was close — fruit and wood were spotted floating past — but he decided against the riskiness of crossing the coral reef. Instead Bougainville spun north, leaving what was the east coast of France Australe free for a certain James Cook to chart and claim two years later.
For Australian lovers of all things French, the ‘what if?’ is almost too much to bear. So that’s why every time I see bougainvillea, I sigh a little.
I can’t help my Francophilia: it’s partly genetic. Family lore has it that a leaf on a distant branch of my mum’s genealogical tree bears the name Marcel Proust, the legendary author of the epic French novel In Search of Lost Time. One of the beau monde of the Belle Époque — the so-called ‘Beautiful Era’ of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Paris — Proust was considered a dandy dilettante who did nothing but eat chilled melon at the Ritz at midnight while hanging onto every fabulous word of his fashionable artist and courtesan friends. But there was much more to Marcel than met the eye. When not indulging in a whirl of wining and dining, he could be found bunkered down in his cork-lined cocoon of a bedroom on Boulevard Haussmann, scribbling his spidery thoughts into notebooks into the wee hours. With a nature that was surely on the obsessive-compulsive side of things, Marcel was driven by an urge to record and reflect on the Parisian world as he experienced and remembered it; to freeze a too-fleeting life through the act of writing. And so, seemingly out of the blue came this brick of a book, spanning seven volumes and 3000 pages.
In these days of sound bites and Snapchat, In Search seems rather impenetrable. I’m ashamed to say that I’m still only wading through volume two. But its relevance, for me, lies in the madeleine scene — a madeleine being the classic shell-shaped teacake that’s perfect for accompanying a pot of petal-infused tisane. In the first volume, Swann’s Way, the narrator nibbles on such a cake. The taste and scent trigger a gush of memory, sending him in a sensorial time capsule to his childhood, when he and his aunt would snack together. This leads to more memories still . . . pages and pages of them.
When you see the term ‘Proustian’ in a fragrance article, this is what the writer is referring to: how a certain smell can unexpectedly hurtle you back in time to past events and emotions. Science has shown us the mechanics behind this meshing of scent and sentiment: odour molecules waft to the back of the nasal cavity, prompting receptor cells to shoot a nerve impulse to the brain’s olfactory bulb, which is situated in the limbic system, and it’s here where we also experience emotion and emotional recall.
For example, whenever I smell roasted chestnuts, I’m five again, skipping through the sparkling Christmas markets of Paris.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to Paris. I used to wonder why I was so magnetically drawn to this city. Was there a deeper reason than the sheer prettiness? What was the plotline beneath the picture-perfect scenery? While strolling along the boulevards or swanning by the Seine, was I starring in my own personal romantic comedy, where I’d bump into the homme of my dreams? Or did Paris hold the key to understanding how to grow as a person, as a femme? Because this, after all, is a city that has been deeply infused with the spirit of so many of history’s most strong, sagacious, seductive women.
‘Paris est si beau!’ my teenage self once proclaimed to a taxi driver, as we turned a corner to see the Eiffel Tower suddenly loom into view.
‘Paris est belle!’ he corrected me. ‘Paris est une femme.’
I’ve since found out that Paris is actually historically and grammatically masculine. But, like Monsieur Taxi Driver, I refuse to believe it. All you need to do is look around you in Paris to know that this city can only be a woman. Witness the frilly balconies giving otherwise classic façades a seductive, curvy caress; the street lights as elaborate as vintage drop earrings; the statues of barely dressed nymphs that play peek-a-boo throughout the city’s parks. Even the Eiffel Tower, with its cold hard construction of black iron and bolts, appears lithe and lacy from afar, like a fishnet-clad leg kicking up to the sky.
Heck, the men too have feminine flair in Paris, thinking nothing of throwing a mint jumper over a baby-pink shirt, dining under a ceiling frescoed with chubby cupids who dance around roses, or sipping champagne out of delicately etched crystal flutes.
This city, so embracing of the feminine, is naturally welcoming to women — and make that women of all ages. I never feel old in Paris. Perhaps that’s one reason Paris never gets old for me.
When the road of life takes me back to Paris, it has often been when I’ve felt like I’m at some kind of a dead-end, or fork in the journey. I’m attempting to complete a chapter that has gone on too long, hoping to turn a page and begin a new phase, yet I’m unable to find the right words. And then I get lost in Paris’s streets once more, recalibrate my inner compass, and eventually find my new life direction.
Paris has guided me through my girlhood and trying teenage times. She has taken me from mademoiselle to madame, helped me embrace the ageing process, and taught me the true meaning of beauty. I have grown up in this city. From fille to femme.
CHAPTER 1
FILLETTE
fillette nf (little) girl
In which, at a young age, I learn the values of liberté, égalité . . . fémininité.
Parisians scurried past us on a rain-glossed Avenue des Champs-Élysées, hunkered down in thick woollen coats and nestled beneath berets, their layers of grey and beige echoing the hues of their mid-winter city. ‘Smile,’ pleaded Dad, his camera poised as I shivered in pose by a shop window. We seemed to be the only tourists around that day, as the world rushed by, and in a way time did come to a standstill, because the moment Dad was about to capture on film would soon take pride of place in our family’s gallery of iconography — those photos and paintings that capture the spirit of a clan, that tell its story to descendants.
I’m the first to admit I have a tendency to read too much into a situation, to search for signs and symbols that probably aren’t there, but over the years that photo came to acquire near-mythic status to me. When I look at the five-year-old girl I was that day, I see a head that’s shyly tilted down, yet eyes looking up with hope. As I’m standing at the intersection of hesitation and confidence, if I can take an analogy that far, the background seems somehow allegorical: for starters, there’s the grand ascending avenue, suggesting life’s journey to come, and there seems to be the promise of a happy ending, in the form of that glorious icon of Paris that is the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile.
The city’s triumphal arches were inspired by Ancient Rome, when such monuments commemorated victory in battle, and as such ignited pride and patriotism. My dad had another theory as to their power: surely such majesty literally lying at the end of the road encourages a city’s people to aim high?
Not much that my dad does is spontaneous. He’s methodical and considered almost to a fault. So I’ve sometimes wondered if he art-directed that day’s photo well ahead of time, as a kind of visualisation of his hopes and dreams for his only child. He was certainly chuffed enough with his artistic efforts to enlarge, frame and hang that photo in several places, including his office. ‘Oh, it’s the little Parisienne,’ his colleagues would invariably exclaim on meeting me in person. At the time, I didn’t really know what it signified to be à la parisienne, but I certainly liked the sound of it.
Most of my first Parisian memories faded, but enough remained suspended in a shimmering blur — like my souvenir snowdome, with its frenzy of glitter swirling around a miniature Notre-Dame and Eiffel Tower. For a girl living in the hazy humdrum of 1970s suburban Melbourne, Paris was a scintillating parallel universe, the place where everything shone, where every tilt of the head revealed a golden dome, glossy cherubs smiling down, or shutter-framed windows offering tantalising flashes into chandelier-lit salons. Paris was my City of Light, before I’d even heard the expression.
My dad might have been a newly converted Francophile, but it wa
s my mother who really made me fall for France. When I first realised, on that trip, that she was speaking a different language, one so lusciously melodious, she may as well have been chanting a magic spell. I looked up in awe at this glamorous woman, swathed in a floral scarf, her lips painted an exotic red, and suddenly saw a new side to my mother — the French one, no doubt. There and then, I signed up for lessons in Gallic chic, ones that would continue long after our holiday. Mum bought me Madeline books, took me to Jacques Tati films, and taught me how to eat everything from frogs’ legs to crème brûlée. That might all sound a little affected, but it was only natural — my mother being genetically predisposed to a passion for all things French.
Mum’s great-grandfather, Georges Armand Proust, was born in France, although the staunch royalist had to leave the republic after it was discovered that he had conspired in a plot supporting the pretender to the throne (le scandale!). I’ve often wondered what was on the minds of the luxury-loving Georges and his wife Berthe as they sailed into Sydney Cove, a cargo of French antique furniture and three young boys in tow, soon to set up a new life amid the dust and flies of this former convict colony. Although they must have managed to live well enough, because their taste for the finer things in life filtered down through the following generations. The Australian Prousts have long been brought up to believe that all good things come from Paris, or else very close by. They sniff at cars not marked Renault or Citroën, eat the stinkiest of cheese, and ensure their champagne is always the real thing. The Prousts, as my dad says only half-jokingly, are snobs.
My parents are like chalk and fromage, and they love Paris — and France — for different reasons. My mum was destined to take to it, of course; she studied French and committed herself to blitzing school and forging a formidable career, her reward for which would be the good life, complete with beautiful clothes, exquisite food and nights at the opera — and holidays to the place where such glamour originated. ‘One day, I’m going to go to Paris and treat myself to a Chanel jacket,’ she’d sometimes say, with a dreamy look in her eyes.
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