Look Back in Languor
10 décembre 2009 par Iziar
Un article pour francophiles paru dans le magazine du New York Times
Modern comfort is the legacy of lolling French aristocrats
by Holly Brubach
The stereotypes are by now so deeply entrenched that we take them for granted. Americans walk the streets of Paris, where every aspect of the landscape has been painstakingly art-directed, in tracksuits and sneakers, like derelicts who have wandered onstage in the middle of a performance to the endless irritation of the actors and the audience. Meanwhile, Parisians set off for a Sunday in the country wearing polished loafers and jeans just back from the cleaners, pressed, with a crease. For the French, with their knee-jerk formality, looking good for others is part of the unwritten social contract, and refusing to make the effort constitutes an affront. For us, the oblivious Yankees, dressing casual — feeling comfortable — is our inalienable right, no matter how inappropriate. Don’t like our Crocs? Get over it.
So it comes as a surprise to learn not only that the French excelled at comfort three centuries ago, but that they actually invented it. In ‘‘The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual — and the Modern Home Began’’ (Bloomsbury), Joan DeJean documents a time when the advent of the sofa, the invention of the flush toilet, the proliferation of cotton fabrics, the delineation of specific rooms for specific functions, the concept of a private life and the birth of the Enlightenment all converged, making life in Paris easier than elsewhere and making it the model the rest of Europe aspired to.
... To read the complete article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/style/tmagazine/04brubach.html