Hello!
So a lot has happened since I last posted… May balls, Paris, my brother’s GRADUATION!, an internship and now I am typing from sunny Tuscany! My short little Parisian excursion was about a week ago now but it was just so wonderful I thought it would be better to write about it late than never…
And THIS post will actually feature one of my FRIENDS because I promise I do have them and it’s actually quite funny that none of them have featured until now…
So! Meet JO! I met her at uni and we have one of those friendships where we never really knew how we became friends, but she’s somehow become the kind of person I’d call in the emergency of a tragic date, or ring when I’m sad and I don’t know why I’m sad, or when I’m just having a bit of life crisis. Basically she’s really great.
She was visiting one of our friends Leo, who’s on his year abroad in Paris, and there was an exhibition I wanted to catch in the city, so we had the fabulous idea of combining our trips and enjoying the beautiful capital together.
We’re quite a good travelling duo actually – especially in France – because Jo speaks French and I can tell her about the arty stuff. We learn a lot from each other.
The exhibition I had anticipated was a retrospective of the brilliant Mary Cassatt at the Musée Jacquemart-André in the 8th Arrondissement.
Cassatt was one of the few American artists to exhibit with the French Impressionists – and on top of this – she was a woman! Hurrah!! And she used gender as a weapon in her art – depicting women in a way she believed that men could not.
Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878
It was an absolute joy to see her work in the flesh, having admired it on my computer screen for so long – but I was slightly irritated that the curators had decided not to capture her feminist gusto and fearlessness. She painted many images of upstanding women, attempting to prove the innate falsehood behind contemporary sexism which led to women being almost imprisoned in the domestic sphere – but the exhibition didn’t address this side of her artistic oeuvre as much as I would have liked. Very silly.
I packed very lightly for Paris (I was only there for two nights), and if you know me well, you’ll know that was an absolute miracle.
On my only full day in the city I wore one of my favourite purchases from Provence – my off-the-shoulder hot red dress by American Vintage.
Just checked their website and they have a sale on at the moment! And this dress comes in lots of different colours so take your pick! Shop mine here.
You can find loads of similar style dresses on asos. Check out this polka dot red one for a similarly summery vibe.
We ended our day with a trip to Montmartre to eat strawberries up by the Sacré-Cœur, followed by dinner near Le Marais, and a late night stroll finishing in a jazz bar. Lovely, dreamy stuff.
See you in Siena! ❤
Big bisous!
Annie X X X
The Cat, the Kitsch, and the Wardrobe 