lundi, Class No. 2...Qu'est-ce qu'on a vu dans la rue?

...so this time, I didn't forget my one million photocopies at the copy shop.
Started the class with our ongoing challenge: Qu'est-ce qu'on as vu dans la rue?
It's our ongoing assignment of style watching - What did we see in the street? in the shops? in the métro?on the bus? Style is everywhere - with each day, the students become more observant and open to all kinds of discussion.
Still doing a quick survey of Parisian Fashion History...moved on from Rose Bertin & les sans-culottes to the 1800's and the invention of the sewing machine, Charles Frederic Worth and his Maison de Couture to Paul Poiret.

What were the major contributions of Paul Poiret to fashion history? Did you know that Poiret was fired from the Maison de Worth by the couturier's sons? Did you know that they both married shop girls and used as their muses and models?

Enough of class, I left the classroom and decided to walk from just beyond the Pantheon down rue Saint Jacques to the Seine. There I crossed the river and walked before Notre Dame. At one point, I was doing my Parisian/big city walk: head down, determined, weaving in and out of tourists who were either lost or taking their time. I can do it perfectly - obviously without even giving it a second thought. And then as I crossed back across the Seine, where rue Saint Jacques actually sides up next to the Tour, I saw the sky - a beautiful blue with puffy white clouds. I stopped and cursed myself. Fucking cancer made me do crazy things and now it was going to make me slow down. It's so beautiful here - I take it all in like a big drink of waterr. I promise to walk more slowly with my head in the clouds instead of buried in my footsteps...