Falbalas & Fanfreluches

First edition.

Copy in loose leaves as issued, complete with its illustrated wrappers, its engraved title-page adorned with a colour vignette, its black-and-white vignette at the head of the text, and its twelve colour plates by Barbier. Spine very slightly sunned.

A superb copy of this almanac illustrated with 12 pochoir plates by George Barbier, who also designed the wrappers, depicting an Art Deco Venus emerging on a shell borne by two tritons highlighted in silver.

These plates became the epitome of Roaring Twenties elegance, as evidenced by the near-immediate literary reference they inspired:

"In Michael Arlen's best-selling 1924 novel, The Green Hat, the heroine Iris March is compared to a figure in a Barbier fashion illustration: "She stood carelessly like the women in Georges Barbier's almanacs, Falbalas et Fanfreluches, who know how to stand carelessly. Her hands were thrust into the pockets of a light brown leather jacket-pour le sport" (Steele, p. 247). The casual elegance ascribed to Arlen's character, a quintessential element of the 1920s fashion ideal, epitomizes Barbier's figures. With their strong yet lithe forms and dark-lidded, slightly exotic eyes, Barbier's women embody the notions of female beauty and grace of the time." (Valerie Steele)

"O all these women, all these women who left upon the centuries their irresistible power!"

The almanac also contains an article by the actress Cécile Sorel, "Glorifions la coquetterie", a charming counterpart to Barbier's compositions.

Barbier's plates are entitled: Le Retour, L'Escarpolette, Le Jugement de Paris, Mlle Sorel au Bal du Grand Prix, L'Aveu difficile, Au Polo, La Jolie Insulaire, Comptez sur mes Serments, Sérénade, Sont-ils gentils, Le Baiser dérobé, La Bénédiction paternelle.

Quote in the headline by Anne-Laure Charrier-Ranoux, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.