The Paris Machine

Thursday 9 A.M. I’m working at Shakespeare and Company drawing an ad for their literary festival: the toits de Paris, the sky raining books.

"There should be something more in the picture, to show that it’s Paris."

"In the background, Notre Dame?"

"The Eiffel Tower."

"Not the Eiffel Tower," David, the festival director, groans. "I live in Paris and the Eiffel Tower is on everything. I hate the Eiffel Tower."

"But this is an ad for people who don't live in Paris."

"OK, never mind, It goes in..."

Thursday, 4pm: I’m being shot for a magazine in the cold on Pont Alexander III. It was sunny this morning. Now it looks like the sky is going to rain books. I am wearing a very small dress.

"Sit on the bridge," says the photographer. "T’as peur?"

"Un peu," I say, "Je glisse." And I do, in a silk dress on a painted iron balustrade.

"Stand on the bridge," says the photographer.

"I am."

"No, on the rail."

I do, on a concrete platform a foot square, in front of me an eight foot drop onto the stone steps going down to the Quai, behind me a twenty foot drop into the traffic lane that runs along the Seine.

"T’as peur. T’as froid? Cross one leg behind the other.  Now... smile!"

He giggles. I giggle back, automatically.

I think of Audrey Hepburn descending the Louvre staircase in Funny Face,  wearing a red dress, floating her stole like the winged victory behind her,  breaking into a smile for the first time in her modelling career,  with every step realising something about the power of glamour, or is it love?

After the shoot, the photographer gives me a lift, his motorbike roaring the wrong way up the bus lane. ("T'as peur?"). I think, if I die, at least it will be on the boulevard Saint Germain. He buys me a coffee, tells me, "I am making a book about the relations between men and women."

At 5am outside my window, there’s something going on by the banks of the Seine. I can hear an engine with a deep regular throb. Is it the Paris machine? And do they every turn it off?

Comments

[Jane]

Is there any way we can see the pictures you so harrowingly posed for?

[badaude]

They're going to be in French magazine, 'Be' (apparently the magazine 'for the now generation') soon. I'll let you know which issue...

[Iheartfashion]

Love this!

[Expat Stu]

I like the hint of romance in your drawing. Very appropriate.

[Rachel]

Love the poster - if only the festival had been taking place when I was in Paris two weeks ago! I did pop into Shakespeare & Co to see your drawings when I was there, though...

[badaude]

Sorry to have missed you!

[DBC Reed]

Great! They are putting you up on a pedestal in Paris.Now's the time to do a Coco and announce you are looking for a new perfume so getting some chemist to cut a deal on a new No 5, making you a fortune,without effort.Also you could make over for women some typically male attire like Coco did: suggest Teddy Boy drape jackets,snaffle ties etc.which have n't been "done" yet.

[badaude]

I think despite your protests, dbc, you're more interested in clothes than you'd like to admit...

[Coquette (Elisabeth)]

Oh, the ad is fantastic! So romantic. Reminds me of the floating Kelly bag at the end of Le Divorce (the film version).

[badaude]

- or, weirdly, that Sofia Coppola Dior ad with balloons that I didn't even like... (& thanks for the compliment!)

[Coquette (Elisabeth)]

Yes! After I commented I thought of the Dior ad too! :) Funny Paris and flying things seems to work well. Maybe it all came out of Le Ballon Rouge.

[DBC Reed]

Re above. I am really interested in fashion.I think I got a bit irked by all "the skinny French birds" recently,not because they were so thin ,which I tried to make out to score easy PC points ,but because I did n't think their clothes were anything to write home about.
Tell you the truth, I thought the exercise was a tad self-referential in the sense that it was ,in the skinny birds' case, referencing other fashionable women where I tend to like cross-referencing designers like Coco and my favourite Schiaparelli who referenced sportswear,Surrealism and God knows what.She had some amazingly coloured printed material (Are these copyrighted?).And she got somebody to prepare a scent which she then sold in Mae West shaped bottles.This is more like it!And lobster dresses .And shoe hats.Surely this tradition should Not Fade Away? ( Rock'n'roll names are de rigeur for new perfumes IMO. Am going to get some of my wife's Shalimar and cut it with cheap perfumes until I come up with a new ,wholly "original", recipe.Which I will call "Rockabilly".
Perhaps not on second thoughts.)

[badaude]

Oh Schiaparelli was fun though, if I have to choose, I'm in her enemy, Chanel's, camp preferring my surrealism hanging on the walls, not in my wardrobe. The lobster dress isn't such a good look on a rainy Thursday. Maybe that's the difference between observing a dress and actually having to wear it. But I'm glad you're admitting your interest in dress. As Elizabeth Bowen said, "it has a flowery head but deep roots in the passions. On the subject of dress almost no-one, for one reason or another, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do."

[badaude]

ps: and don't mess with your wife's perfumes. Really.