Weekend in France

And In this Post . . . The Opaque Jessica Daves . . .The Nun's Story

A quick and welcome trip to France on these two pages.

Carnet de Bal, which means dance card, which is what young men wrote their names in when claiming a dance from you, which conjures up a whole lost world.  This is a lovely ad.  The small print says you can buy this perfume in the Revlon department of finer stores, which is confusing because it made me think that "de Revillon" just meant the extra fancy division of Revlon.   It's not.  It is or was part of the furrier house.

According to  Perfume Intelligence - a new find -- Carnet de Bal was "an oriental floral aldehyde chypre parfum with citrus top notes; heart notes of cyclamen, rose, jasmine, lily and ylang-ylang; base notes of amber, patchouli, civet and musk and is classified D3f."  I find D3f the most romantic of all the D3s, don't you?  This stuff was strong.

Bardot plus bikini equals gingham play suits.  Why is France mad about gingham?  Because:

Brigitte Bardot wore a pink gingham wedding dress his year when she married Jacques Charrier.  Voila!

And now back to the very boring Jessica Daves, who you will surely have forgotten was the editor of Vogue.  I obtained a copy of Ready-Made Miracle from the San Francisco State Library, renewed it once and still haven't been able to get through it.   I did learn about the buildings along Seventh Avenue that housed the various branches of the fashion industry.

I was trying to tease out a sense of Jessica Daves herself.  For a fashion editor, she had a remarkably nuts-and-bolts turn of mind.  She was very interested in how many actual items were manufactured by various companies and various classes of companies:  better dresses, day dresses, catalog houses.   The book reminded me of something in a high school library you'd use for a report:  cheery, confident, full of facts.  It could have been written by a home ec teacher.

Ms.  Daves probably thought herself rather broadminded.  She made two flattering comments about Jews as a race  -- they are loyal and they have some other wonderful quality that I can't find now.   Strange and unsophisticated for a woman in her position.  She did have one startling  phrase:  (About Lana Turner)  "although that tightly pulled sweater across her surprised young bosom . . ."

This week's trip to the movies:

*  A young nun struggles with the vow of obedience in her convent and in the Congo.

*  This was really good.  I saw it as a child and remember feeling so shocked when Audrey Hepburn's hair was cut off.  I had forgotten everything else about it.  Audrey Hepburn was flawless.  The movie is beautiful, both the European and the African scenes.  I was quite surprised at the lack of sentimentality.

*  A rare film of any time so occupied with a woman working hard.