For the love of pearls

 Style, February 1996

When I was 12, my mother presented me with my first pearls: a small pendant in the form of a tiny cluster of creamy white “grapes” topped with two gold leaves. Mesmerized by the iridescent luster of my first piece of fine jewelry, I immediately developed a fondness for pearls that has never faded. For me, they are the symbol of grace, elegance and beauty in its simplest state. Warm to the touch, tender to the eye, they do not sparkle, they glow. Continue reading “For the love of pearls”

Metz for the Holidays

 You needn’t leave the country to find the holiday bustle and cheery atmosphere of a traditional German Christmas market. Just go to the ex-German part of France. While the Alsatian markets are probably the best known, Strasbourg and Kaysersberg are a bit far for a rail weekend. But Metz, the capital of Lorraine, also has a Christmas market – and celebrates the official arrival of St. Nicolas in a big way. Continue reading “Metz for the Holidays”

Julia Child Returns to Paris

Julia Child, the American ambassador of French cooking, recently returned to Paris, where she received her formal culinary training at the Cordon Bleu in 1948. America has watched her on television for 32 years. Her signature closing, with her familiar voice bidding us “bon appétit” as she poured herself a glass of wine, sent a generation of us on our way with the confidence to prepare a perfect gourmet meal.

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Josephine Baker’s Hungry Heart

Think of Paris in the ’20s, and Josephine Baker clad in a belt of bananas and a few beads leaps to the mind’s eye: an exotic image of the legendary Josephine, who somehow managed to be not only a star of stage, screen and music hall, but also the recipient of the Croix de Guerre for her work in the French Resistance. What else do we know of her? Perhaps that she was as kind and talented as she was bad-tempered and ambitious; and that she was the adoptive mother of the “Rainbow Tribe,” a multiracial group of abandoned children that she amassed after the war.

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Wayne Shorter’s High Life

At recent Paris concerts Benny Golson, Geri Allen and Chico Freeman all identified the composer of numbers they’d just performed as “the great Wayne Shorter.” Given his historic role in contemporary music, the adjective is fully deserved. A longtime member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis’ extraordinary second quintet, saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter also took part in the classic Blue Note recording sessions and co-founded the rock-fusion band Weather Report with Joe Zawinul. Shorter was in Paris last month to promote an exceptional two-concert gig, November 8 at New Morning and his first CD with Verve. I caught up with him in his suite at the Ritz, an appropriate setting since his new record’s entitled “High Life.” Continue reading “Wayne Shorter’s High Life”

The Best of Enemies

France Books, The Best of Enemies: Anglo-French Relations Since the Norman Conquest, by Robert Gibson

For over nine centuries now, the English and the French have maintained one of the greatest love-hate relationships of all time. They have fought countless bloody wars against one another and joined forces to wage war against others. As Robert Gibson points out, more Englishmen are buried on French soil than in any other land. However, “The Best of Enemies” is not, strictly speaking, a history book; nor yet another compendium of kings, queens, princes and battles, but rather a lucid study of nationalism and the emergence of two very distinct national identities. Continue reading “The Best of Enemies”

Korean Designers Riding New Wave

Ten years ago, the thunder of Japanese fashion, with its great big black silhouettes, roared down Parisian runways, provoking a thirst for exotic aesthetics that has never quite been quenched. Though trends have evolved far from those rebellious looks of the mid-1980s, rag trade professionals continue to be titillated by designers who translate their cultural heritage into modern forms of western gear. Today the fashion world is witnessing another invasion, this time from Korea. Instead of rumbling down the catwalk with aggressive, anti-fashion modes of expression, three designers (all women of a certain age) are creating a quiet sensation with softer looks that for a young woman who’s worldly, yet fragile and vulnerable.

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