My first Colette was “Claudine at school”. As a teenager I read it in one sitting. Yet the life of a schoolgirl at the end of the 19th century was not quite like mine. And yet the pages turned on their own. Then L'Entrave, Chéri, la Chattte, le Blé en grass and so many others...this magician of words had caught me in her net. Of course, all his characters exist with finesse and subtlety. Fates can be guessed without excess.
But above all, the words in his work are like delicacies that we taste while licking our fingers. So much richness of vocabulary: flowers, insects, birds, wood species, everyday objects...And then above all the fabrics, the woven fabrics, the colors and the very precise and embodied descriptions of the clothes that we could feel them under his fingers.
And then Colette is also a style. Lots of delicate blouses, worn over dark skirts. Little black boaters and hats offset on the forehead. And the masculine-feminine, black and white play that characterizes her in her numerous photos where she poses, cigarette holder in hand and a little glint of challenge in her eyes.
My Colette line offers variations around the pleated blouse, embroidered with fine lace , with an officer collar which delicately surrounds the neck and gives a pretty head posture. Always worn over a long dark skirt which opens onto box pleats at the back, sometimes with overlapping and transparent plumetis veil. And then of course, the essential Col Claudine, named after her work and which alone sums up the natural impertinence of this remarkable writer.
