Category Archive: Grande Dames
A Visit to the Virtual Versailles
Did you ever fantasize that the watchman would forget about you and that somehow you’d get to stay on in the museum all alone after closing time? That’s what it feels like virtually prowling through the emptied museum galleries included…
Toes Mustn’t Show
In 1818 the formidable French etiquette writer Madame de Genlis (1746-1830) reminded proper ladies that when lounging on a divan, chaise longue or daybed, they’d better hide their feet under a couvre-pieds. “Decency demands it because, stretched out like that,…
“Completely Wanton”
Encyclopedia of the Exquisite‘s entry on Heels focuses on how Marilyn Monroe wore them with such va-va-voom back in the mid-20th century. In Niagara, a film noir shot in 1952, she played a vixen with a walk so provocative that…
Divine Delilah on the Divan
A friend sent me this image of Heddy Lamarr for Christmas. It’s from her 1949 performance as Delilah in Cecil B. De Mille’s Samson & Delilah, which, naturally, involves much lounging on divans—an entry in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite—and brooding…
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