The party is over…
From the 1920s to the 1960s, Paris, London, New-York or Venice were the theater of extravaganza and glamour. Aristocrats, billionaires, artists and party crashers blending in a debauchery of luxe and eccentricity. Balls and cruises, parties hosted in fabulous mansions, ancient Venetian palaces or family castles, the members of the most exclusive club in the world, The Café Society would never call an end to the party. This cosmopolite society multiplied orders to the best designers of the first half of the XXth century; villas and yachts by modernists architects, fittings with the upcoming fashion designers such as Balenciaga, Chanel and Christian Dior, over the top jewelry, events covered by photographers named Cecil Beaton or Horst. They launched a style, an art of living, original, upscaled and some times « avant garde » mixing a great sense of fantasy to distinguished elegance. A baroque society sparkling in the nights. Their parties would be designed by Picasso or Derain, music by Francis Poulenc as Jean Cocteau would write some lines and Coco Chanel overlook the costumes.
The author, my good friend Thierry Coudert, has witnessed the last splendors of this glorious and fancy era. He has gathered an exceptional collection of photos, documents, drawings and anecdotes in his book. Nostalgia of a time, ghosts of a civilization in the transition process from aristocracy to people. This is the end of the party, the last breeze of a rich and carefree elite who valued beauty and elegance, considered sophistication as an art of living. The page has been flipped as we can flip the pages of this great book.
Café Society by Thierry Coudert
Available on www.amazon.fr
Or at my favorite English bookstore in Paris: GALIGNANI 224, rue de Rivoli 75001 Paris
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