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10/10/2021
BrianBuchanan
355 Reviews
BrianBuchanan
2
Coquette by Colette
Gigi is one of a trilogy from this house that deals with controversial literary subjects : [Oscar] Wilde – who was prosecuted for gross
indecency with another man, Orlando – a gender morphing poet in a Virginia Woolfe novella, and Gigi – a novel by Colette where a young girl is raised to be a courtesan.
Gigi’s story is said to be based on Yola Letellier (you can see her photo by Man Ray on her Wikipedia English page). Letellier married a man forty years her senior, who was a newspaper magnate and mayor of Deauville, the über swanky resort in Normandy where Chanel opened her first boutique.
With this kind of backstory, you might expect these ‘white flowers of the Belle Epoque’ to be different from the average, and they are.
Gigi opens with a strange exotic fruit, somewhere between citrus, lychee and peach; enticing but vulnerable, a lustrous milky green, pale, more bitter than sweet.
It develops an orange flower and tuberose bouquet, which is sweetly floral but harshly indolic.
It’s as if - as she grows – Gigi masters the art of seduction, but at a price. She remains the innocent, but has a difficult side to her worldly charms.
All three of the Écrivains trilogy are built around orange flower. The others are too dusty and dry, this is the only success; it stays open and luminous with a fine balance of sweet and sour.
indecency with another man, Orlando – a gender morphing poet in a Virginia Woolfe novella, and Gigi – a novel by Colette where a young girl is raised to be a courtesan.
Gigi’s story is said to be based on Yola Letellier (you can see her photo by Man Ray on her Wikipedia English page). Letellier married a man forty years her senior, who was a newspaper magnate and mayor of Deauville, the über swanky resort in Normandy where Chanel opened her first boutique.
With this kind of backstory, you might expect these ‘white flowers of the Belle Epoque’ to be different from the average, and they are.
Gigi opens with a strange exotic fruit, somewhere between citrus, lychee and peach; enticing but vulnerable, a lustrous milky green, pale, more bitter than sweet.
It develops an orange flower and tuberose bouquet, which is sweetly floral but harshly indolic.
It’s as if - as she grows – Gigi masters the art of seduction, but at a price. She remains the innocent, but has a difficult side to her worldly charms.
All three of the Écrivains trilogy are built around orange flower. The others are too dusty and dry, this is the only success; it stays open and luminous with a fine balance of sweet and sour.
