Despite the ridiculous gestures more incongruous than couture, at Carolina Herrera the task does not matter as long as you have drunk. But it is true that with “Gordon who did not invent the Gin”, the creation and the filiform girls follow each other and look alike, these thin as nails, never make me hammer. “My eye is used to seeing beautiful things” he likes to say, he comes from Chicago Illinois, and builds dresses like the buildings of the city of Al Capone. If you attended the last presentation of his collection in New York, we had trouble seeing the beautiful and sublime being non-existent! A color palette of stains and gingham a la Tati, on suits that set the tone of a collection not very shiny.

Far, very far from this young boy so charming who, at the time, gave us his copy without inhibition. We thought then that his age would outweigh his youth to become a real designer, but it is not so. We have before us the finest example of couture cheating, imitation and false art, as well as the triumph of failure, the apotheosis of puffism. Continue reading →

Did you know that onomatopoeia makes words from a sound? Coquelicot, which appeared in the 16th century, is derived from cocorico, because the red flower is reminiscent of a rooster’s crest. Click, which in 1306 meant “to make a dry noise” had disappeared from the French language. It came back in 1980, reported by the English as “To click” to designate the use of the computer mouse. But there are many other terms derived from onomatopoeia such as chuintement, claque, hibou, hiccup or even zézaiement…

Over the course of time, we will also discover that words are sometimes taken from proper names. As early as the 16th century, the “truism”, in other words “an obvious fact that is unnecessarily specified”, was known. It comes from Jacques de la Palissade, who had nothing to do with this posthumous glory. Continue reading →

Gabrielle Chanel’s lucky number was five, for Karl Lagerfeld it was seven, and for Riccardo Tisci it is 17. That’s apparently why he puts that number on his T-shirts and at the end of his Instagram handle. This is the tip of the iceberg, because when it comes to superstition in the fashion industry, fortune tellers, fortune tellers, lucky talismans and even shamans have been around for ages. Friday the 13th is still considered a bad luck day.

Irrational beliefs with supernatural influences that would be at the origin of the perfume of the late Alber Elbaz; created in 2017 and named “Superstitious”. Former Dior designer Gianfranco Ferré never included a No. 17 look in his collections. It was always 16 bis, which is also why four-leaf clovers and evil eye motifs became so popular in his jewellery collections.

Superstitions in fashion, say psychologists, are due to a predisposition especially to people in insecure situations. Fashion is an industry that goes through ups and downs; you can be the star of the catwalk one day and totally out of favour the next. Part of the superstition comes from a lack of autonomy and anxiety, and people in the fashion industry think it helps them to choose when to present their collection. Continue reading →

Le Dictionnaire Amoureux du Parfum, by Elisabeth de Feydeau

From Adam and Eve to Chanel N°5, from the still to orientalism, the historian Elisabeth de Feydeau, who has already written many books on perfume, wanted to add a novelistic dimension to the words and characters she tells. Historical references and unpublished anecdotes are combined in this book, which reads almost more like a short story than a dictionary.

Editions Plon, 27 €.

Les 5 parfums de notre histoire, by Laure Margerand

No, this is not a book about the five most mythical fragrances, but a novel. An olfactory novel about anosmia and the quest for a taste for life after a family tragedy. Bonus: a bookmark with 6 scents linked to key moments in the story. A card with repositionable stickers designed by Arcade Beauty and put in smell by the perfumer Irène Farmachidi of TechnicoFlor.

Editions J’ai lu, €19.90 Continue reading →