Courbettes & Galipettes
I have often thought to find a new name for this occasional journal. At least a name at all, since Notes is a kind of cop-out at the best of times. But it hasn’t happened. If it did, I might consider the above title, which I love as French language and even as English, where it might be Curtsies and Twirls. I know it’s a chain-store, but here I’m dealing with another kind of poetic. I’d passed the shop many times and always assumed it might be the names of its two proprietors. Highly suitable, maybe, for the Fashion District in which we live, even in its dated and uncool etymology. I will carry it with me and use it in some other context, if not this one, I’m sure. There is a parallel jocularity to the translation of my favourite restaurant in Roscoff, Brittany L’Écume des Jours as The Froth of Life. However all this frivolity can get more troublesome when you see many of the contemporary galleries round here hired out for fashion week, with temporary signs covering their already dubious identity. So much for Curtsies and Twirls! SC
notes from an urban hibernation 