Joanna Biggar's Blog

    Though a chameleon in her looks, as befitted an aspiring actress with many roles to play and eyes that changed color according to whim, Jocelyn was ever the cool, beautiful blond, adored by men and inspiring awe in women.

“The boulanger hurrying to his bakery along Rue Racine [believed] the church bells merely an intrusion on his one holy practice, the worship of beautiful women…this day he sees her, a tall, alluring figure wrapped in a foreigner’s beige coat.  Her head is covered with a dark scarf, but he can see wisps of blond hair and a chiseled, oval face.”     “Perhaps it is a lucky day because of this good omen.  A beautiful woman…That of course is where trouble begins, too. He sighs, knowing this. All men know this. But he is not just any man; he is a Parisian. Therefore, he knows it doubly. For, as Jocelyn has just reminded him, Paris is a woman.”

Jocelyn had picked her personal patron saint, Sainte Genevieve, savior of Paris, long before arriving. Once there, however, that icon morphed into a more contemporary one, a woman Jocelyn could aspire to resemble.

“I saw her,” Jocelyn whispered excitedly.

“Who?”

“Catherine Deneuve. Going right down Saint-Germaine. She looks just like Sainte Genvieve. Twentieth century version.”         

Catherine Deneuve, imagen_medium

   “It was still early in those days along the Seine, when the trees yellowed, turned crimson, and dropped their leaves to dance into the streets, that Gracie took steps unlike any she’d taken…She had absorbed enough information from watching Camille and the rest of us, and especially those young French girls heading to high school, that she knew  she wanted to move in a new way.” 

   “Height and glamour at once, she figured, and headed to Galeries Lafayette to buy high-heeled shoes.”                                        

 “I like to picture her choosing, though she had no idea of her size in French, a pair of leather shoes with long, thin heels. They were the color of red rust or the leaves of the vineyards, Napa Valley, in fall, she said.  Across the toe lay a small strip of lizard skin.‘They were classy. For once in my life, I said yes before even asking the price.'”

Melanie, whose early fashion imprinting came from her “society” mother, was given to the chic of Paris even before arriving. With her lithe figure, transparent blue eyes and yellow-blond hair, she was a knock-out without knowing it, a natural for “cafe society” even if she rarely went there. 

 Even in front of her inquisitors during exams at the Sorbonne, Melanie managed to remain stylish — and classy.  “Inside the Sorbonne, the first thing Melanie remembered was her shoes. She pulled a pair of navy blue heels from her bag, traded them for her boots, and straightened her wool suit.”

                                                  But if Melanie wasn’t aware of her looks, others were. About to meet Prof. Alain St.-Georges near the Cafe de la Paix, she recalled:” He looked up, surprised. ‘Eh bien, Mademoiselle Hart…” And he pulled down his glasses for a moment like he was inspecting me. I felt dumb. Then he said, “But I told the waiter to watch for a beautiful young woman with blonde hair and a — what do you say na-vee-bleu coat. Very nice. Very correct.’ And he stood and kissed my hand saying, ‘Please. Sit down.'”   Continue Reading »

From the corner of the Salon de The, on the elegant Rue de Rivoli, Evelyn studied the elegant French ladies. She knew from their shoes, handmade high-heeled works of art in calfskin...

  from the way the expensively cut wool, silk, suede hung on them…she knew from the way the perfume wafted in the air when any of them passed. She knew, but could not yet explain, the difference between the dime-store fragrance her mother wore on holidays and the real French perfume.

     But beyond the abstractions of studying fashionable ladies, Evelyn had an urgent problem. She needed to find — and afford — a gown suitable to wear to a ball at Versailles, the very place where Jackie Kennedy had triumphed.  She began a serious search, perusing the grandes maisons of haute couture.

              After checking out many different styles, she fell in love.

      The ivory dress with beadwork along the bodice had slid halfway to the floor next to the plastic dress cover with Givenchy emblazoned across the top. Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite designer…Evelyn’s heart rate had quickened even as her feet slowed when she saw it in the window, and she had longed right then to feel its cool, elegant satin…

     Once she’d figured out hot to get the money she needed…she knew in her heart the dress was made for her…”I had lost my heart. It was love at first sight.

Jackie Kennedy arrives in Paris, May 1961

The fashion icon above all was First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who had arrived in Paris the year before the demoiselles.

For Evelyn, in particular, she was a heroine. Her picture hung above Evelyn’s bed where others might have had a cross, or an image of the Virgin Mary.

A Place of Light on the Corner, with a Hint of Mountain Behind

  In my pursuit of great venues for reading and signing books, I found another, last week, in Golden, Colorado. Clear Creek Books is the kind of place you’d have to be as heartless as the Tin Man not to fall for — and that right below the mountain where the big M for the Colorado School of Mines signifies its home. Continue Reading »

The search for new and unusual venues for selling books has taken an unexpected e-turn. My son Rob, sitting at a Peet’s coffee shop in Sacramento, was quietly reading — That Paris Year, of course — when approached by another dude. Dude expressed interest in the book, said he and his wife were going to Paris and maybe he should buy it. Rob offered to copy down the name, but Dude had a different plan. He whipped out his iphone and took a picture of the cover. Said he had an app that could find all needed info. from a cover shoot, plus keep a photo file for him of all his fav reading. Now that’s what I call a real bookselling apportunity.

Glowing after the Readings

Launching a new book opens up endless opportunities for exploring “new and used” places and venues. Alan Squire Publishing has been creative in finding non-traditional ways to present its new productions to the world – creating a theatrical, dramatic event featuring three new books at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, for example – and its darkened theater with spoken lines from my novel and a young chanteuse singing Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” was an introduction to a reading unlikely to be topped. Continue Reading »

Wine Room, Pub and Bookstore, Volcano

Before my stepson Paul’s recent wedding at Lake Tahoe in the high Sierras of Northern California, my husband Doug and I went on a treasure hunt in the foothills below. A vast amount of gold during the Gold Rush was extracted from this territory, and it is dotted with old mines and quaint towns from that era. But Continue Reading »