Paris apartment

Oh my god, look at these apartments, they are all so divinely beautiful. \r\n\r\nI want that one! No, that one. No, wait…. I can\’t choose, I want them all! \r\nLet\’s go and live in Paris, we\’ll have a gorgeous apartment in le Palais Royale, or rue Buci…… sigh…..\r\n \r\nhttp://parisapartment.wordpress.com/

La chambre de la Polaire

Thank you, Pam, for sending me the link to La Chambre de la Polaire, a gorgeous website dedicated to Polaire!
www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/8473/polaire.html

The pictures of Polaire are stunning, and showcase her famously minuscule waist. If you’ve ever wondered why a small waist is called a “wasp-waist”, and what it would look like, this website is for you! It looks like the photographs were all taken at one sitting — I would guess that they were taken around 1902, when she made her first major appearance on stage (as Claudine, the 16 year old schoolgirl created by Colette). Polaire would have been 28 years old then, and Colette 29, when together, the women brought Claudine to life.

Polaire’s lingerie is sumptuously, sensuously frothy and lacy. The photographs are faded, of course, and not in good focus, as if they’ve been enlarged from very small originals. But it looks like her corset laces up at the front, which is interesting — I thought the French style was to lace up at the back? In one photograph she kneels on a chair, coquettishly showing a fair bit of stockinged leg, and giving us a good view of wonderful lace-up boots, tied at the top with a satin ribbon bow.

If you look carefully at the fourth photograph, where she’s facing away from the camera, you can see a shadow on the left of her waist and bust, as if her true, more generous silhouette has been erased. I’m sure Polaire’s waist wasn’t really as tiny as it appears in the photographs. There doesn’t seem to be anything else on the website, other than the photographs, but they are beautiful.

I love this desperately erotic description of Polaire on Wikipedia:
“Polaire! The agitating and agitated Polaire! The tiny slip of a woman that you know, with the waist slender to the point of pain, of screaming out loud, of breaking in two, in a spasmically tight bodice, the prettiest slimness … And, under the aureole of an extravagant masher’s hat, orange and plumed with iris leaves, the great voracious mouth, the immense black eyes, ringed, bruised, discoloured, the incandescence of her pupils, the bewildered nocturnal hair, the phosphorus, the sulphur, the red pepper of that ghoulish, Salome-like face, the agitating and agitated Polaire!”