The American Girls’ Club: a Paris story hiding in plain sight

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Still-lifes make delicious little voyeurs out of all of us. No matter the era to which they belong, they always give us the sense that we’re spying on a table set for a night of romance, gluttony, or a secret rendez-vous; a clandestine scene where only the finest cornucopia of treats will do, or a party in another dimension where the wine overfloweth. For most of us, the fantasy stops there, but what if we told you there was a secret meaning to that chalice of sweet berry wine? Or that butterfly poised so deftly on a biscuit? Today, we’re decoding the secret language of still-life paintings to uncover what they’ve been trying to tell us all along…

Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Rue de Rivoli, Avenue Montaigne, each year millions of tourists follow the tired and testing formula of ‘been there, done that, bought the Eiffel Tower keyring’, and often leave the city with an unfortunate case of ‘Paris Syndrome’. As you may already know, we are not tourists here. We choose the path less trodden, in hope of a trip down the rabbit hole into unknown and unusual Paris. Often it’s the least suspecting places that are hiding the biggest secrets. Take our hand for a stroll back in time down a skinny, squalid alleyway in the 15th district, which although doesn’t sound it, was once Paris’ hottest postcode.

It was a flourishing trade in human flesh. A quest headed by art suppliers so ruthless in seeking out the perfect pigment, that it makes Dorian Grey’s creep-level look like amateur hour. It was the business of making “Mummy Brown,” a paint colour that quite literally required the ground up remains of mummies to achieve a warm, fleshy ochre that’s definitely been living in some of your favourite paintings. Mummy Brown was sold well into the 20th century, in fact, its story unhinges a whole ‘Pandora’s Box’ of longstanding abuse of ancient human remains as “material” for Westerners: as souvenirs, and museum pieces; as apothecary fodder, and black market trading.

A timeless, unisex pyjama for those who believe inspiration strikes hardest at 2AM, ideal for “working on your manuscript” or dramatically sighing at your blank notebook, these pyjamas are worthy of a Left Bank literary salon — if salons were hosted in bed. On the chest pocket, delicate embroidery reads: “WRITERS, READ

This is the Parisian atelier of painter Jules Thulot, little-known today, but in this photograph we get an intimate look inside his personal space. A fabulously bohemian lair, begging to be explored inch by inch. It was the discovery of this photograph that sent me on my hunt for today's compendium

Welcome back to my virtual art gallery, where I like to highlight painters, particularly Paris-inspired artists, that I've never heard of. When speaking of early 20th-century art in Paris, the usual household names like Picasso, Matisse, or Modigliani often spring to mind, yet within that lively mil

Suddenly, nothing about her story felt “straight-forward” anymore. Ultimately, this one artist, Loïs Mailou Jones, would lead me to discover many more African-American artists like herself that came to Paris, whose legacies have been neglected, whose work is missing from art history books and the walls of our museums. She would also introduce me to her social cohort of Black creatives known as “The Little Paris Group”. And unlike literature’s famed Lost Generation of Paris, this was the first I’d ever heard of it. Go figure.

She was the kind of woman who never belonged to anyone but herself. At least, when it came to love. But for Natalie Clifford Barney, life overflowed with colour, creativity, and passion in Paris' Left Bank during one of city's most romantic periods. Think of her as a lesser-known Gertrude Stein, alb