April newsletter
Dear listeners,
Pictured: your podcast host trying to finish this month’s episode while maintaining high standards of productivity during the work week.
Y’all, it’s the last day of April and my brain cell count is 2. In between learning more about 17th century agriculture than I care to know, completing a few big projects at work, and buying a car (my first one ever, no less) I managed to find time to get VACCINATED!!!!!!!! Second shot is next week, so far no side effects. So this month’s newsletter is just a delightful potpourri of things that delight my low functioning brain right now:
PO-TAY-TOES. Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew.
This picture is from 2018, not 1618?? Reports of French agricultural modernization may have been slightly exaggerated.
Ready for a potato that knows it’s better than you are? Meet La Bonnotte:
Are they sneering at me?
You’re looking at a picture of the most expensive potatoes in the world. La Bonnotte potatoes are grown on the eensy Île de Noirmoutier, where they absorb the local terroir of salty ocean air, seaweed, and algae. They’re grown on a plot of land even tinier than my studio apartment, and harvested by hand. Afterwards, they’re sold for $300 per pound, no doubt destined for some place in Las Vegas where they’ll be dusted with gold leaf on top.
I lived right next to Pere Lachaise cemetery when I was younger, and one of my favorite memories was looking out over my back balcony to see all of the flickering candles set on top of the gravestones during Toussaint. Here’s Antoine Parmentier’s grave, surrounded by potato plants, with spuds placed reverently on top - I have to wonder if enough candles made this one smell like French fries…
Want to try your hand at some hachis parmentier of your own? Here’s a super traditional recipe from Le Figaro, though I’m going to default to the version from my beloved Dorie Greenspan.
So help me, no more potatoes, Diana.
Lauren Collins writes for the New Yorker and I thiiiiink she might be a listener. If she’s reading this, hello, your work is amazing, career arc is aspirational, etc, etc. 👋 If one French-themed newsletter isn’t enough (of course it isn’t) I clap my hands every time her Lettre Recommandée arrives in my inbox. This month, she’s written a terrific deep dive into the newest addition to the arsenal of French cuisine: les tacos.
I loved everything about this piece - the YouTube challenges, the identity politics, the refusal to endorse French self-mythologizing around fast food, etc. Lauren’s commitment to journalism includes “weighing her gigataco on her bathroom scale” and if that isn’t the embodiment of le quatrième pouvoir I don’t know what is.
(Yes, you can totally get 🥔 in your French taco.)
—
Speaking of other women on the French beat, if you aren’t following Messy Nessy Chic on every outlet, you probably should be. I thoroughly enjoyed last week’s feature about one man’s painstakingly curated Louvre of wine and I just realized to my delight that she’s running a fantastic TikTok account as well. I think the Venn diagram of her readers’ interests and my listeners’ interests is a perfect circle, so if you’ve never checked out her work, I apologize for the hours of productivity you’re about to lose.
—
The biggest laugh of my week:
—
"Two different women told me two different things at two different times, and I always go back to them. One person told me that every time she wears Lanvin men fall in love with her, and I thought that was so beautiful. The other one told me that she was in a taxi going to face her husband’s lawyer because she was getting a divorce, but she was wearing Lanvin and she felt so protected. If I can make men fall in love with women and if I can protect women, I think I can die peacefully."
Rest in peace, Alber Elbaz, former fashion director of Lanvin. He passed away from COVID at the absurd age of 59 this week. I read the quote above years ago, and it was the first thing to pop into my head when I heard the news. His little bowties were as unmistakeable as his collections, which almost singlehandedly propped up France’s longest surviving house of couture from 2001 until 2015. I always felt Alber Elbaz and Alexander McQueen were two of the only designers who truly created for the women who wore their creations, not the crowds who admired them - there’s a sense of deep respect running through their collections that I found very moving. You can feel how much women loved wearing his dresses, including the biggest celebrities of the age. I’m particularly struck by how many older women wore his creations - like Christian Siriano does today, Elbaz knew that a good designer can make all bodies feel beautiful and confident. Chloë Sevigny posted a lovely tribute to him on Instagram. Meryl Streep wore Lanvin just about every time she was up for a nomination, just in case, because she knew he’d never let her down. He was the only designer to figure out Nicole Kidman’s best color. Perhaps his greatest triumph came in 2011, when Beyoncé famously announced her long-awaited pregnancy wearing a beautiful one-shouldered orange gown. Let’s wrap up a long week - and a very, very long month - by browsing through a very soothing collection of his finest work. Thanks for everything, Alber - you did it.
Bisous,
Diana