COLETTE launches her Parisian beauty store.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette , known as COLETTE (1873.1954)

Autograph letter signed to Hélène and Philippe Berthelot.

Eight handwritten pages written on two papers with different formats and headings.

Two 4° pages with letterhead from his Parisian store Colette.

A bi-folio in-8° with Hotel Claridge letterhead. Slnd [Paris. June or July 1932]

« … I don't know how to love little... »

Delicious and tender letter from Colette successively evoking the health of Lord Cat (the nickname she gave to Philippe Berthelot), the opening of her beauty store in Paris, her ex-husband Henri de Jouvenel, her daughter Colette-Renée, his strawberry-raspberry crops, and his love of cats.

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“Dear and perfect Hélène, I really wanted to write to you! But I was afraid of writing inappropriately – I was afraid of disturbing Philippe's rest. Everything in your letter makes me happy: you thought of me and Philippe is better! I am writing to you on my commercial paper so that you can take – finally! – some consideration for me, and to make Philippe laugh.

Yes, I do think that he does not comply well with any hygiene discipline that is not that of the “Lord Cat”. But Lord Cat himself loves the meadows, their smell, and deigns to walk on his delicate cat's feet. What is there is that Philippe is terribly young, and that his wild rhythm knows only two stages: ardor – immobility; – leaps, deep sleep… Dear Hélène, see how much I get involved in commenting on your Philippe! It’s because I don’t know how to love little , and I wonder – and I ask you – if you will come to Les Aigues at the end of the summer?

It's hot, it's Paris. Yes, the store is doing well. I have the wisdom to be passionate about each face I paint. My success is discreet makeup for the city. In three weeks, I already have subscribers, imagine, grateful subscribers. And the province and abroad are waking up…

The mail is brought to me as I write to you. I open a letter from a stranger named Jelinek. He is delighted to know that I am opening a beauty business, and he reminds me that I met him “at the Osuskis, then in Prague, at the castle”. This is our friend Claire, of course. But if Jouvenel marries four or five more times, all of us, his ex-wives, will need a very visible badge and a number embroidered on the back , a little stylized “penal colony”.

My charming daughter is in Limousin, and she writes me letters where I find her father's turn of mind – a compliment that I pay to my daughter. My God, how easily I write to you, and to say nothing, as if I wrote to you every day! I don't apologize for it. Everything is easy with the people you really love.

When do you think that Philippe's health will give you both freedom?  How do cats cope with your absence? The little gray creature, which tolerates mine so badly, is on my desk where it is good, where I am bad. Because it encroaches on my work and writing paper. It's stormy and through the window comes the smell of potted strawberries ripening on the balcony. It's an old species of strawberry-raspberry, musky, that I multiply with difficulty and success. In a corner in La Bretèche, I already have fourteen jars…

Dear Hélène, dear Philippe, this letter is empty and tender like I am myself this evening , don't blame me. Both take into account only tenderness, which is great, ancient, and yet very fresh. I kiss you both with all my heart. Your Colette. »

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Particularly sensitive to the field of perfumes and beauty, Colette regularly wrote on the sensuality of smells and the aesthetics of colors.

Thanks to the financial support of the Princess de Polignac, she was able to realize the project that was close to her heart: opening a beauty institute. The inauguration took place on June 1, 1932, at 6 rue de Miromesnil, in Paris. Doing her own makeup for her clients, Colette, enthusiastic, also offered her own cosmetics and perfumes: “ I have never given women so much esteem, so much admiration since I saw them up close, since that I hold, upside down under the metallic blue ray, his face without secrets, rich in expression, varied under its agile wrinkles, or new and refreshed to have left its foreign color for a moment. » ( Make-up in Les Vrilles de la Vigne ). The commercial adventure was unfortunately a failure.

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Philippe Berthelot (1866.1934), an eminent French diplomat, was close to the artistic and literary world. He participated fervently in the promotion of the Arts in France and helped numerous writers, creators and artists such as Paul Claudel, Saint-John Perse, Paul Morand, Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Coco Chanel and Colette.

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There is no need to further develop Colette's love for cats. Let us simply note that Philippe Berthelot offered her, in 1921, a female serval from Chad, baptized Bâ-Tou: “  She brought her eyebrows together at the sight of me, jumped to the ground and began her wild walk, from the door to the window, from the window to the door, with this way of turning and changing feet, against the obstacle, which belongs to her and to all her brothers. But her master threw her a ball of crumpled paper and she began to laugh, with a disproportionate leap, an expenditure of her unused strength, which showed her in all her splendor. She was as tall as a spaniel dog, her thighs long and muscular attached to a broad kidney, her forequarters narrower, her head quite small, topped with ears lined with white, painted, on the outside, with black and gray designs. reminiscent of those which decorate the wings of twilight butterflies. A small and disdainful jaw, mustaches as stiff as the dry grass of the dunes, and amber eyes set in black, eyes with a look as pure as their color, eyes which never weakened before the human gaze, eyes who have never lied... One day, I wanted to count the black spots that embroidered her dress, the color of wheat on the back and head, ivory white on the stomach; I could not.

– She comes from Chad, her master told me. It could also come from Asia. It's an ounce, no doubt. Her name is Bâ-Tou, which means “the cat”, and she is twenty months old. »