Gigi and The Cat

"Colette is just one of my icons, she is just endlessly inspirational in so many ways. This is a woman who was dancing half-naked on tables when she was 50, and who created one of the most glamorous heroines of all time in Gigi. Gigi was dramatized for Broadway and also made into a film, and it was the play that made Audrey Hepburn — who was personally chosen by Colette — a star. But I actually chose The Cat , which is a novelette, really a longish short story. So it’s the story of a newly married couple and a cat. And the wife is incredibly beautiful and chic. But the husband is in love with the cat. He lies, he pretends, but he can’t get away from it. And she gets very jealous and I won’t tell you how it ends. But the reason I chose The Cat , is that it’s not a very well known book, and it’s also a very good example of how even being beautiful and well groomed is not enough. You have to have something else to captivate a man. There has to be something else that entices his imagination and makes him fall in love with you. As opposed to his cat. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Colette’s book Chéri is also about this. It is a story about a young man whose mother sends him off to an ageing courtesan, Léa, to educate him. And he falls deeply in love with her. And when the time comes for him to marry a suitable young woman, he can’t give Léa up. Aged 49, she holds more allure for him than his young wife does. Again, it’s this idea of attractiveness having some kind of spiritual or intellectual element that the younger woman he is marrying doesn’t have. Which actually is another thing that is an important part of the French sense of glamour. In France a woman can be sexy at any age. Ageing is not something that has to be feared or countered with a botox injection. And Colette herself was famous for having a string of young lovers who found her irresistible, even in her old age. But generally, when you read Colette she is such a glamorous icon, everything she does, there is a woman in there that you want to be like, that you find completely compelling. She also came out with one of the funniest quotes: “Nothing ages a woman like being in the country.”"