NOVELIST. PANTOMIME. SEXUAL OMNIVORE. STATESWOMAN. VOLUPTUARY. GODDESS OF THE SENSES. EROTIC DOMINATRIX. UNABASHED PAGAN: SIDONIE- GABRIELLE COLETTE SET 20TH-CENTURY PARISIAN LIFE ON FIRE WITH HER WIT, PEN, AUDACIOUSNESS & CURVES—AND THAT RIOTOUS, ILLICIT KISS AT THE MOULIN ROUGE. TREATS! LOOKS BACK AT THE LIFE OF THE FIRST MODERN WOMAN WHO DARED TO CHALLENGE SOCIAL DECORUMS, SHARED HER BED WITH MEN & WOMEN—INCLUDING A LOVE AFFAIR WITH AMERICAN ACTRESS JOSEPHINE BAKER, AND A MRS. ROBINSON ROMANCE WITH HER STEPSON—PUBLISHED DOZENS OF NOVELS EXPLORING THE KALEIDOSCOPIC EMOTIONS OF LOVE—AND HAS THE COOLEST STORE IN THE WORLD NAMED AFTER HER IN PARIS by Sarah Hassan Burlesque dancer at Follies theater, 1940. Donec porta, sem quis suscipit placerat, nibh urna fringilla nisl, non scelerisque lorem diam sed elit. Aliquam at tellus eget magna commodo tristique ut in odio. Vivamus varius porttitor ligula semper ullamcorper. Donec facilisis luctus egestas. Mauris libero urna, auctor ac vulputate nec, tempor ut arcu. Praesent feugiat tempus nisl non convallis. Nulla agn llamcorp facilisi. series. Willy was especially interested in the new pantomime “Marquise de Belboeuf”) was one of the more colorful creatures entitled Le Rêve d’Egypte (Egyptian Dream), as his beautiful in all of belle époque Paris and an impressively blue-blooded young wife, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, was headlining alongside aristocrat. She was not only the daughter of the Duc de Morny—a a cryptic actor named “Yssim.” French statesmen and half-brother of Emperor Napoleon III— Willy, a top-hat-wearing, walrus-mustachioed, ladies’ man, but also the former wife of a Spanish duke and a prominent and one of the show’s writers, was sitting next to his new Norman nobleman, Jacques Godard, marquis de Belboeuf. mistress in a theater box as he watched Yssim play the role In fact, Missy and Colette’s kiss was no mere indulgence in of archaeologist. Clad in a velvet suit and tie, Yssim putters theatrics, but a proud display of their lesbian love affair. Both over dusty books in search of an answer to the silent riddle women were recently estranged from their husbands and living presented by the linen-bound sarcophagus that stood before separate lives together, far from heterosexual conventions. The him. Yet this was no ordinary ancient figure from the Nile delta. Marquise, no fan of the horizontal dealings between man and As the linen was unwrapped, a beguiling and breathtaking wife, and Colette, who had suffered a nervous breakdown due woman appeared, cloaked like an Egyptian mummy in a in part to her husband Willy’s chronic infidelity, now indulged calf-grazing gauzy skirt, golden breastplates and a headdress. in the familiar comfort only another woman’s body could Wearing serpentine bracelets, her legs, midriff and feet were provide. The pair could often be seen strolling the streets of bare. This Cleopatra-esque temple dancer began to undulate Montparnasse, Colette wearing a dog collar that brazenly read, and fall to the feet of her master in a passionate spell, recalling “I belong to Missy.” Their appearance on stage together rocked ICTURES the seduction of the Dutch exotic dancer and accused German the very foundations of French social order—not withstanding P IFE spy, Mata Hari, and her famous striptease at the Musée Guimet the blatant and inexcusable use of the de Morny coat of arms L IME that had captured the imagination of Europe’s fashionable on the promotional poster for Le Rêve—and both women /T salons only two years before. (In 1931, Greta Garbo famously became instant caricatures: the long-limbed and deliciously POLE k played the dusky double-agent enchantress in the Hollywood curvy Colette caught in the spidery arms of her androgynous, tac S movie, Mata Hari, slithering and writhing around in Paris marquise-cum-prince-charming outfitted in her trademark top ETER THE SCANDAL OF THE MOULIN ROUGE sex trade; when they married their clients, these emancipated : P clubs while donning a nude bodysuit and jeweled bra.) As hat, suit, cigar, waistcoat and boots. (Missy would later commit HOTO if rewarding his newly revived and richly adorned slave, the suicide by putting her head in a gas oven as the Nazis were In 1905 the French medical doctor Julien Chevalier, and author women would “spread their sapphist practices to their new P of La corruption Fin-de-Siècle, boldly announced, “Lesbianism female acquaintances.” However, at the time, this was just an archeologist, planted a deep and erotic kiss on the eager mouth closing in on Paris during World War II.) is spreading like an oil stain throughout the French capital, insecure male doctor’s theory—but those who read his words of his Egyptian dream girl, leaving her left breast exposed under Willy, not one to usually shy away from a scandal, tried making its way from legal heterosexual brothels to the homes couldn’t imagine such demimonde in their beloved City of Lights. the torn slip of white linen, which also revealed her perfectly to escape with his mistress from the pandemonium, but was of respectably married women and for the past few years With its seductively warm red-hued interiors, saucer-like round thigh. Outrage erupted in the audience over the brazen met with angry fists from the audience and was pummeled lesbianism has grown in disconcerting proportions in Paris golden chandeliers floating from its soaring ceiling, and act. Candy, cigarette butts and bouquets of garlic showered the with umbrellas until the police led him to safety. The show was and other [European] capitals; we can no longer pretend to spindly red windmill adorning its roof, the Moulin Rouge lovers on stage, the orchestra pit of 40 musicians drowned out closed down on the spot and the theater was evacuated. The ignore its existence, its influence, and its danger…priestesses (“red windmill”) was the birthplace of the cancan dance by the boos and cries of disgust. Apparently, it was not only a evening was forever immortalized by the press that called it of the new cult have become legion.” In fact, the doctor had routine and the artistic heart of belle époque Paris; it was the kiss to wake the dead—but one to enrage the living. All this fuss “The Scandal of the Moulin Rouge.” no idea, really, what was lurking in the shadows of turn-of-the- undisputed crown jewel of bohemian nightlife in Montmartre. over…a kiss? The fallout of the kiss meant that Missy and Colette were century Paris. Although mainstream society tried to cast a Courtesans, artists, clowns, demigod noblemen and dancing Thanks to the stars of the short-lived show, which saw a not allowed to openly continue their affair—but for Colette blind eye, fashionable ladies, or “priestesses” as he called them, girls all mingled underneath the illuminated windmill and in casting change and reopened for only 10 more performances, it meant the beginning of shedding her skin and eventually looking for a partner in vice routinely drove through the Bois the garden, where a giant model elephant stood taking in the there was plenty to fuss over. You see, the voluptuous Colette becoming France’s most infamous woman of the 20th century, de Boulogne in open carriages, scanning the women on the sights of debauchery induced by Champagne and song. It was wasn’t kissing a handsome man-of-the-world archaeologist at affectionately known as “The Goddess of the Senses.” Champs-Élysées, their cotton-white lapdog poodles curled up the shank of the evening on January 3, 1907, when the Rouge’s all—but an anti-heroine transvestite by the name of Sophie- on their warm thighs, a bottle of nice wine uncorked and ready curtain rose on an Oriental tableau. Thanks to a sassy and well- Mathilde-Adele-Denise de Morny (known as “Missy”), who VENUS, MOON & MARS: A REBELETTE IS BORN to go. Out of the dark alleyways, the women who returned distributed publicity poster for a new pantomime added to the claimed a laundry list of strange sexual peccadilloes. A French Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette began as all women do, as a beautiful the glances of the elegant women in carriages would make a nightly performance roster, the packed hall was swarming with newspaper claimed that Missy was a necrophiliac and possibly little girl. She had a perfect rosebud mouth, waves of hair distinctive, almost horse-like sound—a rapid movement of the members of the aristocracy, including everyone from Prince a transsexual who had had her breasts removed. Salonistes framing an oval milk-white face beset with startlingly moss- tongue and lips to signal “’I go with women.” Murat to leading members of the Jockey Club to the notorious whispered that she allegedly bit the clitoris off of her former green eyes, both steely and amorous. To say the least, Colette He also warned of the threat posed by prostitutes who left the cultural critic Henri-Gauthier Villars, or “Willy” as he was known lover after a tempestuous quarrel. Missy (also known as the was a striking child, a rare combination of luminescent tomboy from the covers of the enormously popular Claudine book 42 treatsmagazine.com treatsmagazine.com 43 and coquettish femininity, especially in the backwater town of a picturesque backdrop for Colette’s vivid imagination. As if Burgundy. She was the youngest of three children: half-brother any child who dreams of being abducted can only exist in the Achille who was “full brother by choice and heart”; somber half- lush green of the countryside. Colette’s childhood home was sister Juliette; and brother Leopold, known as “the sylph.” She stately and somewhat forbidding, with ever-blossoming gardens was the only daughter born to Adéle-Eugénie-Sidonie Lando (or of wisteria and begonia tended to by Sido’s expert hands.