I am finally here: Paris, Paris, Paris! The last time I was here was in 2001 for work. I spent three days trotting and tripping up the cobbled streets of the fashionable districts in heels, heaving around a satchel of my models’ work to present to agents. It was July. I was sweaty and my feet hurt. The agents were haughty. But Paris is the holy grail of a model’s career; one had to make the effort, you see.
But that was then. In this life, I’m here with my husband and children, seeing La Ville Lumière through the gauze of my obsession with the Lost Generation and the literature and art of 1920s and 1930s Paris. At that time Americans, jaded from the carnage of World War One (not to mention far too sober due to prohibition), flocked to Paris to write, paint, drink, and live a beautiful life. Many of my heroes were there – Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Sara and Gerald Murphy*, John Dos Passos, and of course Ernest Hemingway.