Not too long ago a lovely girl from New York asked me to recommend some books to her. She wanted a list of things to read on a summer holiday in France, her first break after school before going into college. Amongst the usual suspects - coming of age university tales that simply have to be read right before you start tertiary education, a kind of literary rite of passage, like Circle of Friends, Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History - was Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan. Bonjour Tristesse! On a summer holiday in France! How cliche. Oh, but I think cliches are quite delicious, and, most of the time, very true. On your first summer holiday to France you have to read Bonjour Tristesse with your toes dipped in the sand. It's as simple as that. And then you have to rent the film and watch it over and over again until you just can't think of anything else.
That's what I did, years ago now. I first had the book pressed upon me surreptitiously the summer of my first real romance, and I devoured it furiously. The film came soon after, and that summer was the summer of shirts stolen from my dad's wardrobe, tied at the waist and finished with the collar turned up just so. It was the summer of endless mangoes, and bare feet, and a hair cut that was very, very short, and tanning topless and holding hands with friends. Which is kind of what Otto Preminger's film is all about, too, without the friends bit and with a bachelor dad and his bachelorette girlfriend thrown in for the mix. If you don't like Cecile in the novel - and she's not exactly the most likeable character, but then again, she is a teenager, so we shouldn't hold it against her - you'll find it hard not to like Jean Seberg's portrayal of her. Pretty as a peach, with those long caramel limbs and that sunny crop and that mole, right on the crest of her cheekbone, she was so cute you couldn't help but like her, even when she was being a real brat.
And that wardrobe! Let's just talk about that for a second. The wardrobe that A.P.C and Vanessa Bruno owe pretty much, well, their entire business to today. The wardrobe that made the breton famous. The wardrobe that taught a thousand girls (and their dads!) to tie denim shirts at their waist and leave the ends hanging down. The wardrobe that made girls search out baskets for handbags, long before Jane Birkin was even on the scene. The wardrobe that inspires a million summer vacations. The wardrobe of boat-neck shirts and flat-front trousers and linen shift dresses. The wardrobe of a million one piece bathing suits. This cinematic wardrobe is so iconic and so remembered and so celebrated and so visible in almost every single Alexa Chung outfit or French girl's summer vacay rotation that I don't think I really need to say anything more. Other than watch the movie. And read the book. And if anyone knows where to get a peach-coloured smock top with a wide neckline, let me know, alright?
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ps. that whole being young and being insufferable thing always reminds me of this bit in The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall-Smith, a lovely writer who doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is... "Sixteen, which was a state all of its own."
ps. that whole being young and being insufferable thing always reminds me of this bit in The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall-Smith, a lovely writer who doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is... "Sixteen, which was a state all of its own."
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