Paris Diary by Laure

A recipe a week: aillade de veau

parisdia23 March 2020Recipes2 Comments

L’aillade de veau by Agathe Velay in Lot et Garonne

There is no need to write about restaurants at the moment, and yet it is important to keep eating well and to share cooking moments with your dear ones. I know that you love seeing food in these pages, so I will send you an easy recipe every week which you can prepare and feel like you are in deep France. The first one was sent by my niece Marguerite Velay who, instead of traveling to Saint Galen in Switzerland over the week-end, to Paris and Lausanne for her firm Easilys, which gives IT services to restaurants and hotels, is cooking with sister in law Agathe Velay in Lot et Garonne. The family house in Monflanquin, is surrounded by fields, in the area between Bergerac and Villeneuve Sur Lot, north of Agen, the town famous for its prunes. Read More

Agnès b moves East to the Grande Bibliothèque

parisdia21 March 2020Art2 Comments

Agnès b at 78, wearing her famous best selling cardigan

The opening of la fab on place Jean-Michel Basquiat was a festive yet discreet event. Designer Agnès b (the b comes from Christian Bourgois, her first husband), had always wanted to be a museum curator since she studied at Ecole du Louvre, but her successful career was achieved in casual ready to wear. The inventor of the famous cardigan with “pressions”, whose second husband Jean René de Fleurieu developed the distribution in Japan in the 1980’s, has now opened her own art center with a plan to exhibit progressively her 5 000 piece collection in the 700 square meters gallery. The first show ” La hardiesse” (boldness) includes some paintings by Gilbert & George, Jean Michel Basquiat, Pierre Klossowski, ceramics by Johan Creten, photographs by Malick Sidibé… her all time favorites.Read More

Latest pleasures from Paris in these odd times

parisdia16 March 2020Art, Books12 Comments

Kilgarren Castle, Pembrokeshire, 1798-1799, National Trust

Hélène Rodocanachi was the anti heroin of the week. She could not go out and celebrate her 105 th birthday with children (Annick, Josselin and Olivier de Rohan) and stepchildren and was locked up in her retirement home in the Trocadero! This amazing lady lived through two World Wars with her first husband Duc de Rohan, an athlete and 80 m sprinter, who caught polio at a young age. After he died, she married André Rodocanachi, a French diplomat who took her to a posting in Venezuela in her sixties. She still goes to all museum exhibitions and was looking forward to the opening of the Turner show at Musée Jacquemart André, curated by David Blayney Brown which is sadly closed until better times.

A new publishing house and an entertaining novel

parisdia13 March 2020BooksLeave a Comment

Philippine Cruse launches her new publishing house Herodios

To start a new publishing house in 2020 needs guts and this is what Philippine Cruse is proving today. At 42, she already has had a rich life. After an MA in Art history completed in Portland, Oregon, she passed her doctorate in French literature at the Sorbonne and went on to work in a bookstore, Alice, in Paris. In parallel, she organized the Festival “la Rentrée Littéraire” on the beach in Cap Ferret, where writers come to present their books in late August, and worked with the (now) legendary publisher Bernard de Fallois, for eight years. Because she was partly brought up in Lausanne, she has founded her publishing house HERODIOS there, on Lac Léman, and is publishing her first three books this spring. A novel, a memoir and a book on how cooking can save your life. This new adventure is worth watching.Read More

Amiens celebrates its modernized museum

parisdia13 March 2020Architecture, Art, Books3 Comments

Cour d’honneur ©photo Alice Sidoli – Musée de Picardie

It took 10 years and three different curators to renovate Musée de Picardie in Amiens and the inauguration on February 29 th, in the midst of the coronavirus was somewhat doomed. But I was curious to visit the city where Emmanuel Macron was raised and where his love affair with Brigitte (born Trogneux), started. Amiens is famous for its huge cathedral, the largest in France and now also for its macarons made since six generations by the Trogneux. It was both very exciting and slightly depressing…

Liliane Tuck has a new book out and it is a masterpiece

parisdia9 March 2020Books3 Comments

Lily Tuck visiting Christo’s project on Lake Iseo

French readers might not be as familiar with the character of Heathcliff as English educated children who all read Emily Brontë’s best seller “Wuthering Heights” at school. But they will still get the parallel between Lily Tuck‘s hero Cliff, in “Heathcliff Redux“, her latest novel, and the 19 th-century villain. The National Book Award winner, surprises us again in this short book where the narrator reminisces about her early married years in the South as a (rich) farmer’s wife. The erotic tension of the story is palpable, yet so discreet, like its author. In our times of political correctness, this read is a great antidote to depression coming from a woman who has already demonstrated in “Sisters” how daring her fiction could be.Read More

Cernuschi reopens and Cluny closes, for a year

parisdia9 March 2020Art, FurnitureLeave a Comment

There have never been so many construction sites in Paris, and its museums are no exception with the reopening of Palais Galliera on April 1, and soon Musée Carnavalet. Musée Cernuschi, founded in 1898 on the Parc Monceau, was reopened in great style last Thursday, with the emphasis put on its founder, the Italian born art collector Henri Cernuschi, who brought back 1 500 pieces from Japan and China in 1873. The itinerary through the collections, has been reinvented with a chronology of dynasties from ancient times to the 21 st century. In the meantime, Musée de Cluny, the medieval museum, is closing for a year at the end of June to complete its renovation, and you will not be able to see the Lady with the Unicorn tapestry after that date. There are two exhibitions there at the moment on “Daily life in the Middle Ages” and “Treasures of the museum”.

Harper’s Bazaar is celebrated at MAD

parisdia5 March 2020Fashion2 Comments

Day Gown, antique moire, 1866-1868 with Harper’s Bazaar fashion plate, November 2, 1867

Vogue magazine was predominant in 20 th century fashion magazines but it was only founded in 1892 and it acquired its fame and power thanks to Condé Nast who bought it in 1909. I learnt in this new exhibition at MAD (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), “Harper’s Bazaar, First in Fashion” that its long time competitor had been started 152 years ago, in 1867. Mary Louise Booth, (1831-1889) was its first editor: a francophile (she had French ancestors who fled the Revolution), who supported the Union during the American Civil war, she stood out to the cause of women, suffragettes and abolitionists. The show is much more fun than it sounds with many beautiful dresses by Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld set in front of their photographs by Peter Lindbergh or Richard Avedon. A nice moment of nostalgia…Read More