Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

I am here to deliver something that has been often asked of me, but until now decided to keep to myself: my Paris recommendations.

Living in a city that is relies on the tourist economy, sometimes I feel like I live in a theme park (sorry, not sorry to the many visitors to whom I have barked ‘il y a des gens qui habitent ici, ce n’est pas Disneyland’ when they ignore their surroundings and block sidewalks, doorways, metro turnstiles and more in their pursuit of posting to social media.) It is also a place I (begrudgingly, but genuinely) love, and I try to keep my favorites to myself so as to avoid the internet virality that has rendered too many of my former standbys utterly and totally unvisitable (see: Shakespeare & Company and Officine Buly.)

There is only one shopping recommendation in here, for a bookstore. The rest relate to sensory pleasures: food, wine, and experience.

I will reveal some my sacred spaces… for now. Only behind the paywall, but I can’t open the gates too much…

x

Chloë

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Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

Yes, I know, it’s been a minute. Between Frieze in Los Angeles, the French Film Festival in New Orleans, and that whole business where I was profiled in the New York Times (and subsequently put on the front page of the international weekend edition, which, surreal doesn’t cover how that felt) — I’ve had little time to commit to Sacred Monster. (I won’t lie: I have had a bit of writer’s block lately, but my intellectual wheels are starting to turn again.)

You might have noticed that my output has changed, and to reflect that, I’ve lowered the prices for paid subscriptions… so if you’ve also been debating laying down your credit card and getting access to the entire archive, take this as your sign !

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The last few weeks have been packed, as I’ve traversed New Orleans, London and Paris, working and playing in equal measure across the three cities….

I’ve had a deep love of New Orleans since my first visit back in 2009 to tour colleges. Over the years, I’ve come back every time I could, which has been often.

Immediately upon touching down I was overjoyed to be back — I dropped my bags at my hotel and took a leisurely walk around the Garden District to gain my bearings. After saying hello to Marissa at Century Girl Vintage, I moseyed to Garden District Books to pick up something new to read. It faces Lafayette Cemetery #1, which is currently closed but reopening soon, upon which I highly recommend visiting. I finished my day with the first of many delicious NOLA meals at Miss Shirley’s, run by the charming Shirley Lee, who hand-makes her dumplings daily. As someone who is coeliac, it’s rare I get to enjoy gluten-free dim sum, and Miss Shirley’s was that rare offering. Her ‘Mardi Gras leftovers’, which were purple and stuffed with the trimmings of local crawfish, pecans, and greens, were unbelievable.

The following day, I hopped onto the St. Charles streetcar — which is lovably unreliable — to have a wander around the Vieux Carré. I paid a visit to the Nous Foundation, which is a beautiful and modern new addition to Toulouse Street. Nous is devoted to the promotion of Francophone culture and language in Louisiana, and is one of only three (!) dedicated French and Francophone bookshops in the United States. I was delighted to meet co-founders and husbands Rudy Bazenet and Scott Tilton while there, and get an invite to join them on their balcony the next evening, where I indulged in one too many glasses of champagne. I also fell in love with their dog Chaoui, whose name means ‘raccoon’ in Louisiana Creole.

The next evening, I was happy to see a crowd at the opening of La Belle et La Bête, an art show I co-curated with 812 Royal Gallery. At one point, the proceedings stopped to watch a second line parade make its way down Royal; it was about as NOLA as it gets.

By the weekend, the Festival was in full swing, and I delighted in introducing screenings of both Orphée and La Belle et La Bête with the crowd of cinephiles who gathered at the historic Prytania Theatre. Fun fact: the Prytania was where Ryan Coogler and crew would screen dailies while working on Sinners. The Prytania also has some of the best merch ever — Los Feliz, Vista, New Bev, you are all on notice!

For the Festival’s REEL Futures day, I was invited to speak to a group of insightful and curious students at Loyola University. I loved going back to school for the day, and was seriously impressed by the questions Professor Camille DeBose — and her students — asked of me.

The highlight of any trip to New Orleans, for me, is a visit to M.S. Rau, the storied antiques shop on Royal Street. I like to say it’s actually one of the foremost small museums in the United States — just shoppable (if your net worth is at least nine digits.) I have seen truly unbelievable things pass through their doors over the years, like Edward VII’s siège d’amour which he had custom-built for his favorite Parisian brothel (Le Chabanais); the only original copy of the Zapruder film not owned by the U.S. government; shrunken heads; Napoleon Bonaparte’s death mask; the deposed King Farouk I of Egypt’s entire bedroom set; the top hat and opera glasses that Abe Lincoln was wearing that fateful night at the Ford Theatre; an armoire from the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas; and so much more. It feels like the entirety of history of we know it has been in there, from dinosaur bones and wooly mammoth tusks to the first computer and rocks collected from the moon by the Apollo 13 crew. One of my group was amused to see that a sizable slab from ancient Egypt boasting beautiful hieroglyphics cost less than most of the paintings in the Frieze tent ($50,000).

New Orleans is, of course, synonymous with jazz and no visit is complete without a visit to at least one jazz club. After a hectic week and nearing exhaustion, I treated my team to a performance at the iconic Preservation Hall. Time is porous in there; it slows down and speeds up, wrapping everyone in its small audience in a cocoon of great music and eternal optimism. Don’t forget to leave the musicians a tip !

After a talk at the Résidence de France, it was time to rush back to the Hotel Peter and Paul (my favorite place to lay my head in the Crescent City, I’ve been staying there since before Covid-19) to pack my bags and brave the ICE-occupied, TSA-shutdown lines at MSY, so I could head to my next stop…

London !

I was grateful to be invited to preview the eye-popping Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum ahead of its public opening. I had just enough time to drop my bags, order in a little Dishoom and snooze before I was up and at it…. only haute couture could get me out of the house, en tenue, before 8am.

I am happy to report that the grotesque travel day and early wake-up was well worth it. The exhibition is breath taking, balancing Elsa Schiaparelli’s most groundbreaking designs with Daniel Roseberry’s modern showstoppers. Of course, the highlights for me were the iconic Cocteau collaboration coats, as well as the inclusion of a drawing of Schiaparelli by Cocteau that came from the Wunderman collection.

After the morning at the V&A, I strolled down the street to Harrod’s to say hello to the team at the Schiaparelli boutique there. It is a marvel, designed to resemble a surrealist apartment, complete with a gorgeous Cocteau-inspired painted ceiling. I highly recommend a visit, even if just to ogle the design. I have to thank Alan and his colleagues, who are art history obsessives and perhaps just as passionate about Cocteau’s work as I am. As they handed me a (shocking) pink box with a gold brooch inside and winked, “a little scorpion for a little scorpion,” I felt incredibly lucky to have made friends like them.

Work hard, play harder, and after my Schiap morning, a night out was due. My friends brought me to the London’s chicest club du jour, Lost, aptly named as it is located inside of a cavernous empty cinema multiplex in Soho. With phones locked in pouches, extremely low lighting, countless staircases, and DJs in every room (including the toilets), I was pleasantly disoriented for hours. It is as if M.C. Escher designed a nightclub.

Finally, I hopped on the Eurostar to check on my Parisian apartment for a quick 48 hours of meetings — but I was still able to make time to stop by my friend Ariana Papademetropoulos’s dreamy show Glass Slipper at Thaddaeus Ropac. While there were plenty of young people looking to get a ‘grammable photo of themselves in her Air-scored fish tank, I loved her (literally) steamy painting of a couple coming together in the condensation above a stove. Ariana’s a neighbor of mine in Los Angeles, and the show was a welcome reminder of one home in another, which is where I find myself now, snuggling with my beloved dachshund Louis, who I missed terribly while I was away.

More (very) soon,

Chloë

If you are in London on February 11th, I’ll be introducing the screening of Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946) via video at BFI Southbank. Tickets and information at the link here.

If you are in Los Angeles on February 13th, I’ll be co-hosting a Valentine’s Day Fête d’amour and screening of Jacques Demy’s LA PEAU D’ANE (1970) at the Philosophical Research Society, in person. Tickets and information at the link here.

Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

I wish I could say, “I hope you’ve had a nice start to the year,” but what with the complete and utter horror that has and continues to unfold across the United States and particularly in Minneapolis, I don’t know that that question can ring true.

I must confess that I have been both extremely busy and extremely uninspired lately — from the end of November, through the holidays. But I can feel the stirrings of some ideas that may come to fruition soon.

WISTOVER

Le CANARD EP 001: Jeu de Paume

This is the second essay in a series about love and dating as a 30-something gay American in Paris, the first essay “Escape Artists” was published in SOUVENIR Magazine and can be found here…

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4 months ago · 6 likes · Clark Moore

As far as culture I’ve been consuming, I, like many, many others, have been bewitched by Heated Rivalry. I blame my close friend Clark Moore — whose series “Le Canard” is a must-read — for giving me the heads-up about it at his Friendsgiving dinner back in November. What is there to say about Connor Storrie, Hudson Williams, François Arnaud and Robbie GK that hasn’t already been said? If you somehow needed one more push to watch it, consider it this. A bright spot in a pitch-black world, I fucking loved it.

I’ve picked up a few books, including my friend Navid Sinaki’s queer, Iranian noir Medusa of the Roses; Jacob Soboroff’s sobering Firestorm; and Good Girl by Aria Aber. In their own very different ways, all three books present ways of shifting, changing and transitioning from one state of being to another. (I wonder what that says about my current state of mind… ha).

Musically, I’ve been revisiting some old favorites from my days working at The Roxy — deep cuts and hits of the genre/movement that Gen Z has branded “indie sleaze.” At the same time, I’ve had the hypnotic track “Here I Am” by duo The Hellp on repeat. They sound exactly like something I would have come across on MySpace and insisted on booking in my time working at the famous Sunset Strip club that gave me my professional start, back when I was but a wee 14-year-old.

Another song I’ve had on repeat — and which was a mainstay of my Spotify Wrapped for several years — is French act Christine and the Queen’s revisit of Indochine’s classic ode to androgyny “3SEX.” I think it might be my favorite French song ever, with lyrics that have remained current for almost four decades and that challenge the limits of the very romantic, but very gendered, language of love.

Finally, when Harry Styles dropped his latest offering “Aperture” last week, I instantly thought of the song “Need You Now” by Hot Chip (a band whose music I have cherished and loved for nearly twenty years, a frightening realization I had not long ago). I used to play “Need You Now” a lot when I was a radio DJ, which is one of those phases of life that seems like it happened to someone else; another version of myself I was, then.

More soon,

Until next time,

Chloë

Long before Heated Rivalry charmed us with its story of hot, fluffy love between two hockey players, Jean Cocteau was one half of a high-profile, interracial, same-sex sports romance. (He really did it all, first.)

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In one corner: ‘Panama’ Al Brown. Born the 5th of July 1902, he was and remains a boxing icon (who happened to share a birthday with his future lover-slash-manager.) He was the first Latin American boxer to be a world champion title holder, in 1929 achieving the title of world bantamweight champion; this made him an instant celebrity throughout the Americas, but especially in the United States and in his native Panama. Throughout the 1920s, he was considered one of the best in the world, and toured internationally, including to Paris, a city he’d return to several times throughout his tragically short life.

A series of humiliating losses in 1934 and 1935 pushed Brown to retire; battered, physically broken, and mentally scarred, he resorted to performing in Parisian cabarets to scrape enough money together to get by and fuel what was by that point a crippling drug addiction.

Which is where, and how, Jean Cocteau found him.

1936 was not a kind year to Cocteau. He was strung out on opium (again), his lover had one foot out the door, and though he was consistently employed, he was rather washed up. Once the most notorious social butterfly of Paris, he had become a recluse (by his proto-Charli xcx 365 party girl standards, that is.)

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Sacred Monster has been around since March of 2024 — nearly two years later, I thought it useful to catalog every essay here for easy perusal. Subscribers at the paid level have access to the archive entirely; free subscribers may find a paywall removed here and there (ssssshhhhh….)

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If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to bonjour@chloecassens.com. Happy reading!

Jean Cocteau

Welcome to Sacred Monster Why you, and I, and we are here today (February 2024)

Sexy, Sparkling and Grotesque A love letter to La Belle et La Bête (1946) (March 2024)

The Juggler’s Revenge How a landmark exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice celebrated what were once Cocteau’s most maligned qualities (April 2024)

Wild, Child Les Enfants Terribles, Yves Saint Laurent, and that time Pierre Bergé blackballed me when I was 17 years old (May 2024)

Jean-Jean & Jean Cocteau’s first great love lived sensually and died a hero (June 2024)

Le Roi Soleil Cocteau escaped to the south of France, became a 12-year house guest, and explored his spirituality (July 2024)

The Pen of Light Le Sang d’un Poète (1928) was nothing short of explosive upon its release (September 2024)

Jean & Coco Without Chanel’s care to keep him alive, Cocteau may have died many years earlier (October 2024)

Jeannot & Jean Cocteau’s greatest and most enduring love story made him one half of the “first gay power couple” (November 2024)

In The Zone Orphée (1950) set the table for the New Wave (December 2024)

The Message The last thing Cocteau ever did was speak to the year 2000 (January 2025)

This Charming Man Cocteau is all over the New Wave, if you know where to look for him (February 2025)

Monsieur Bébé How Raymond Radiguet exploited Cocteau’s love for him, and left a trail of destruction through the course of his very short life (April 2025)

Club Classics Well before Charli xcx and Brat, there was Jean Cocteau and Le Boeuf sur le Toit (May 2025)

Bloom & Gloom Jean Cocteau’s first mentor was the biggest star of his time (June 2025)

The Final Word Le Testament d’Orphée (1960) was Cocteau’s eulogy (July 2025)

A Love of Love Cocteau’s 1928 semi-autobiographical Le Livre Blanc remains a radical argument for the acceptance of queer people (August 2025)

An Angel, A Flower, A Bird How Cocteau championed the first drag superstar (November 2025)

The Boxer Before Heated Rivalry, there was Jean Cocteau and ‘Panama’ Al Brown (January 2026)

Severin Wunderman Stories

The Time Lord Who was Severin Wunderman? (February 2024)

The Golden Ring A story about chance, destiny, and Andy Warhol (June 2024)

The 450 After the Palisades fire, I ended up the custodian of a Wunderman family heirloom (March 2025)

Sex, Sex Workers & Sexual Politics

Monster, Legend, Divine Sarah Bernhardt was the first Sacred Monster. She was also a sex worker, Jewish, slept in a coffin, and had one leg (August 2024)

The Lost Queen of Montparnasse The Pompidou’s Surrealist centennial may have displayed Man Ray’s revenge porn (October 2024)

On All Fours The Louvre gave wall space to Aristotle’s favorite dominatrix (November 2024)

“You Can’t Afford It.” How a courtesan mastered the art of the publicity stunt — from her boudoir (May 2025)

Ghosted Marie Duplessis died at 23 but has haunted the narrative for two centuries (October 2025)

Modern Monsters & Pop Culture

The Reality Above Reality, Parts One & Two An opus about Vanderpump Rules and André Breton (March 2024)

Soft Power in Your Area How the K-Pop machine and Blackpink refined what Louis XIV started (July 2024)

The Beautiful and the Damned John Galliano remains the rarest of men: a Sacred Monster of the modern era (August 2024)

Requiem for a Monster Kanye West was once a Sacred Monster, and he knew it (September 2024)

Showgirls is a Dada Masterpiece Marcel Duchamp’s urinal was the precursor to the so-bad-it’s-transcendent film (December 2024)

Human After All What Daft Punk can teach us about humanity, the dance floor, and the French (February 2025)

It’s Britney, Bitch American society turned a pop princess into a monster (March 2025)

The People’s Monster Princess Diana was perhaps the most sacred and profane of them all (August 2025)

Getting Personal

Paris/Hollywood Reflections on my two home cities, originally commissioned for 7Hollywood magazine (January 2025)

I Fought A Nazi in Tom Ford-era YSL Don’t let your mouth write a check your ass can’t cash (March 2025)

From The Archives: Frankenstein Excerpts from an academic past (April 2025)

A Note About Los Angeles Underestimate her at your own risk (June 2025)

A Note About the Musée Jean Cocteau and Menton Answering questions that for a long time, I was unable to address (September 2025)

Sacred Musings: The Greatest Hits

April 2024 Recapping the Venice Biennale; gov’t sanctioned art always sucks

June 2024 TV recommendations from my Covid sickbed

July 2024 More thoughts on K-pop and the Rolling Stones

August 2024 That time I lived in an emptied-out Chateau Marmont

December 2024 24 things I learned in 2024

April 2025 Sinners, Paris Noir and Parisian racism

August 2025 Zoolander, Josie & The Pussycats and the death of the “sellout”

What once was a subculture of a subculture has now gone mainstream: drag queens (and the occasional, though too rare kings) have become part of mainstream pop culture. Unquestionably the result of Rupaul’s Drag Race’s popularity, it’s delivered to the general population a version of a transgressive form of performance that has been translated into something digestible for a mass audience.

Decades before the stars and creators of Drag Race, La Cage aux Folles and The Rocky Horror Picture Show were even born, however, existed a circus sideshow and a multidisciplinary Parisian artist enraptured by one of its performers.

Vander Clyde Broadway (his legal name and birth year remain unconfirmed) was born in 1898 or 1899 in Round Rock, Texas. His mother took him to the circus when he was a young boy, and it was at that point that he decided he would join one – spending hours as a kid teaching himself aerial arts and tightrope walking on his mother’s metal clothesline at home. He joined one after graduating high school at around fifteen years old.

The original meaning of drag is an acronym dating back centuries: “Dressed Resembling A Girl.” Which is what Vander agreed to do when he auditioned to replace a female aerialist in a duo act. It was suggested that it would be more striking if performed by two women instead of a mixed-gender pair. He came up with the name Barbette to sound exotic, elegant and French, and was off to the races.

By the early 1920s, Barbette was performing as a solo act, part of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, and touring through the United States and Europe. In 1923, Jean Cocteau saw his act and was instantly obsessed.

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Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

Happy Halloween/ Samhain/ Scorpio season!

I’ve been plugging away at what seems like a sudden explosion of projects — I keep joking, but not, that I throw irons into the fire and forget how many or what ones are there until they’re ready to come out, at which point I’m caught by surprise.

I landed back in Paris at the top of the month with my dutiful, furry companion Louis and felt instantly like I was shot out of a cannon — a quick and spur-of-the-moment trip to London to take some meetings (and schnorr off of a friend’s gorgeous suite at the Peninsula); Art Basel; and a lovely event for Sacred Monster, Vol I all happened one after the other.

I have nothing to say of the current state of the art market — I’m thrilled to play no part in that area of the art world — but the scene in the Grand Palais for the fair was, as per usual, more interesting for the dynamics amongst the visitors and less for the art on the walls. Throw the traveling circus that is the art world into what is, in effect, a greenhouse; make them anxious about who has what VIP/Preview status and access; and sprinkle an unstable global economy into the mix and let the social experiment rip. I somehow went twice in one day (yes, I had VIP/Preview status) and felt like my eyeballs were going to fall out of my skull by the time I left. That said, I enjoyed the displays on show from the Emergence level.

To finish art week, the ladies behind Fvtvrist Magazine hosted a reading event for me at Harvest in Paris’s hipster-chic 11e arrondissement.

I am so appreciative of everyone who showed up, listened to me read, and asked thoughtful questions. For those who missed it, there’s more to come — I have a VERY busy 2026 ahead.

Finally, I — like many others — have been digesting West End Girl, the latest album by Lily Allen. It’s raw and funny and dark, like the rest of her work, which I think has not received enough of its due. Without Lily Allen, we would not have the Taylor Swifts or Olivia Rodrigos or Billie Eilishes that we have today. West End Girl is like an audiobook or opera — it must be listened to in order, as a complete body of work. I also have to give flowers to my sweet and talented friend Blue May, who produced the entire thing. It is lovely to observe him getting the acclaim he deserves.

à la prochaine,

Chloë

The thing about tropes is that they all originate somewhere.

Think about a sex worker in pop culture and two come to mind: Julia Roberts’ Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman, and Nicole Kidman’s Satine in Moulin Rouge!.

Both are emblematic of a couple of the most common tropes that apply to women who ply ‘history’s oldest trade’ – that of the ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ and that of the tragic woman who had to sell her body to slimy rich men, while giving her heart to a smitten artist who immortalizes her after she dies (because she always dies.)

Like many of the most popular canonical literary tropes that are endlessly riffed on today, these came from Alexandre Dumas fils, who was so struck by the loss of one of his favorite courtesans that he wrote a novel inspired by her. This novel was then adapted into several different operas, all of which have had outsize influence in their own right.

La Dame aux Camellias (The Lady of the Camellias) appeared first as a novel, written and then quickly adapted into a play by Dumas. From there, it was then adapted by Giuseppe Verdi into his iconic opera La Traviata, and re-named and re-worked under the name Camille for English-speaking audiences. It has also been adapted into a ballet.

It is a piece of performed art that has launched and made the careers of countless icons of the stage and screen – Sarah Bernhardt, Isabelle Huppert, Theda Bara, Greta Garbo, Alla Nazimova, Margot Fonteyn. The list is long with names that have themselves become synonymous with their own archetypal visions of femininity.

But I must point to the woman who rests at the origin of this world: the courtesan Marie Duplessis, who like many other grandes horizontales of her time, forever shaped a culture that insists on forgetting her and those like her. For a sex worker may always be the foundation on which great art is built, but she is rarely given her flowers for it.

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Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

Nearly every discussion amongst my friends lately has touched on the fact that this month has felt interminable. From the ‘back to school’ transition into fall (I hear Paris experienced a brief cold snap that shocked everyone into the new season) to the usual parade of unusually terrible headlines, it’s been a slog.

You might have noticed the lack of essays this month — I admit, this is partially due to the aforementioned slog, which left me unusually bereft of inspiration, as well as the ripple effects of the news which broke at the top of the month (for more on that, you can read my statement here.) I’ll be back in October with a piece about a courtesan who was ghosted by the rock star of her era, as well as a piece about the first drag superstar.

When I wasn’t moving through the soup that was September, I was happy to experience a few things that certainly made me optimistic for the days ahead (for only darkness can live with light in equal measure to counterbalance it.)

Though I am usually beach and water averse, I often say that I like to ritually cleanse myself in the ocean once per year (I typically find myself on the beach once a year, despite the fact that I live in Los Angeles and routinely visit the Côte d’Azur for work.) This year’s dip was in service to my close friend Jean-Luc Eldenwood, who enlisted me to be in a music video for a song off of his gorgeous new album, which will be released soon. I won’t give much away, other than that I very much enjoyed my short-lived video vixen moment, and I learned that R.A.T. Beach in Palos Verdes is stunning and its waters are pleasantly warm, even during a cool sunset.

Like seemingly every other French and Franco-adjacent Angeleno, I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see the legendary band Air play their album Moon Safari with the orchestra. The show was incredible — the production was eye-popping and the music was moving with the added dimension of the orchestra. Most of the friends I conferred with after the show used the word “spiritual” to describe it, which was apt. They have a few stops left on this tour, so if you’re in a position to go, I highly recommend it.

Finally, I was thrilled to welcome my friend Kathryn Hewitson to LA. Kathryn is a talented British fashion designer and the brains behind the brand Pristine, which I have been a patron of for a few years now. We became internet pen pals after I made numerous requests for customized clothes, which she generously accommodated. Over the weekend, we gathered a group of her loyal clients to hang out and meet in person — everyone came decked in their finest Pristine, and everyone looked amazing. Kathryn’s creations are mostly made by herself in her London studio, with extremely high-quality fabrics. I always feel punk, powerful, naughty and feminine in her pieces, and I always get stopped by strangers with compliments when I’m in them. If you are looking to invest in something special to wear this fall, I can’t recommend Pristine enough, and I am so looking forward to seeing what Kathryn has up her chic sleeves in the future.

à très bientôt,

Chloë

Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

I have been asked one question more than any other for several years now: “What is going on with the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman in Menton? I saw it’s closed… do you know when it will reopen? What happened?”

Some of you may have read the article published on September 2 in France’s Le Monde newspaper. I am thankful to Roxana Azimi for her balanced reporting. In the days since, the story has been picked up by many other outlets like Le Figaro and Nice-Matin (with whom I did an interview, which you can read here.) My name has been circulated among well-meaning strangers, journalists and political figures, all of whom have expressed an interest in this story and in how it moves forward. It has been overwhelming. For some more of my personal feelings about what’s going on, I’m removing the paywall as this will be my statement for the time being.

If you wish to cover this further, please contact Aubrie Wienholt aubriewienholt@prforartists.com and Colter Ruland colter.ruland@prforartists.com.

Merci,

Chloë

For a long time I did not realize that the word “Anonymous” was not actually my grandfather Severin’s name, but a word meaning that he wanted to skirt recognition for his good deeds. I simply knew him as our family’s beloved “Poppy,” who would often take me on tours of his house to share his love of the beautiful pictures on the wall with me.

Severin Wunderman spent his life adoring and loving his art collection. It was, and remains, the largest collection in the world of works by the iconoclastic French artist Jean Cocteau. It also contained works by Cocteau’s contemporaries: Pablo Picasso, Christian Bérard, Françoise Gilot, Amedeo Modigliani, Giorgio de Chirico, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, and more. Painstakingly acquired over almost his entire lifetime, he started collecting Cocteau before he knew who Cocteau was.

It all started with a simple drawing of the notorious Cocteau character Dargelos. As the legend states, he spotted it in the vitrine of a shop and spent an entire week’s wages on it when he was nineteen years old. “What I remember most is the scene at home when I gave my wife the [money] left from my paycheck… I still have the drawing. I don’t have the wife anymore,” he told Vogue in 1989.

While he was growing his knowledge of Cocteau – and his art collection – Severin was concurrently growing his business, which went from zero to sixty in record time. He founded Gucci Timepieces and in doing so, invented the fashion watch, a division which nearly every luxury fashion house has added to their repertoire in the decades since. None of which have touched the success Severin achieved with Gucci. Gucci Timepieces has been universally recognized by those who were there, or who know the history of the iconic Italian house, as being the reason why it survived otherwise financially disastrous decades and exists today. All of which is to say: he made a lot of money.

Growing up, I attended many events thrown to raise money or celebrate philanthropic causes. Sometimes, they were in Severin’s honor. Many times, either he or my mother would point to a plaque listing names of large donors on the wall and say that we donated money. He was almost always “Anonymous.”

The amount of money that Severin gave to philanthropic causes is estimated to be in the range of $150–200 million. He died in 2008. That’s not adjusted for inflation. As my aunt Deborah often says, “He was the kind of guy who if he had a dollar, gave away 80 cents.”

Of the causes that he allowed his name to be ascribed to, or rather – who overrode his wishes of anonymity – there were three: the Shoah Foundation at USC, which lists his name on their site if you look hard enough for it; the Severin Wunderman Division of Thoracic Surgery at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine; and the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman in Menton.

By comparison to the hundreds of millions he devoted to other causes, I want to be clear: a collection of art worth, depending on who’s estimating, 7 to 15 million euros is a drop in the bucket. But Severin gave this collection back to France because it was his deepest desire to make this cultural fortune accessible to the public.

Which is why, 20 years after this monumental donation, it is so deeply unfortunate that the communication between Menton and the Severin Wunderman Family Foundation has been so far unproductive and opaque. We are currently at an impasse wherein we are learning of the city’s position via the press, rather than via open communication. The terms of the donation have not been honored, and on our side, we remain in the dark as to when and in what way they are expected to be respected again.

The city of Menton has moved the goal posts of reopening nearly each time they have been asked about it. They have failed to honor Severin’s wishes as outlined in the donation contract and have not displayed the art in a manner that respects them.

The 2018 flooding of the Musée Jean Cocteau-collection Severin Wunderman came as the direct result of an unprecedented climate event. This is the first time in contemporary art history that a collection of this size and stature has been damaged to this extent by sea water. Unfortunately, I am not sure that it will be the last, what with the number of arts institutions located in precarious environments: Miami, Venice, Los Angeles. The list goes on. The restoration efforts made over the last seven years have been nothing short of awe-inspiring, as many conservationists had to improvise and find ways to solve problems such as: how does one remove caked salt from ink drawings on paper? (The answer: they are rinsed in fresh water first, the thought of which makes my stomach knot itself.) I often feel like a canary in a coal mine when I talk about the flood: the art world needs to wake up and take notice of what is at stake with climate change.

Having such an extraordinary collection of art by an incredibly iconic, important and iconoclastic artist such as Jean Cocteau that has been kept together – and survived such a disaster – is no small feat. As a writer and lover of Cocteau’s work, I will continue to do what I love to do, which is share the story of both Cocteau and Severin’s lives and legacies with any audience that wishes to listen to me, and hold on to my hope for a resolution.

I hope the end of August — in my opinion, the most maddening month of every year — has treated you well.

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I am yet yet yet again packing my trunks for a cross-continental flight to Paris. As the United States tumbles further and further into fascist chaos, the differences between Los Angeles and Paris only become more stark. Not necessarily for the obvious, but for the simple fact that even Parisians seem to demonstrate more common sense day-to-day than the average American. Quelle horreur!

I am sure an astrologically minded subscriber could give me the cosmic explanation as to why it is that this August has been particularly chaotic, but I have been in a state of whiplash for several weeks as more than one gig has cancelled, only for another, larger opportunity to fall into my lap, and so on. It has been a month exemplary of the expressions “When God closes a door, he opens a window,” or for those more secular, “Rejection is redirection.” What with the ample and long lead times of the art world, I am already looking at my 2026 planning with a mixture of excitement and dread. At the rate I’m going, I am already blocking time in 2027 for a true holiday.

I have filled the hot hours of August doing some of my favorite Los Angeles summertime things: catching Cinespia film screenings at Hollywood Forever Cemetery (where I own a plot — a story for another time) and enjoying philharmonic rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl. I feel lucky to have watched Gustavo Dudamel rehearse his orchestra many times over the years, and am sad that this is his last season conducting for the city of Angels. Unfortunately, Hollywood Bowl rehearsal has gone from a well-guarded neighbors-only secret to a social media phenomenon; that said, it’s always nice to see people of all stripes enjoying classical music, and I take enormous pleasure in roping new friends into joining me for a little morning coffee and hushed conversation on the benches. (One such friend, the talented musician , just launched a Substack which I highly recommend checking out.)

At Cinespia, I caught a screening of an eternal, all-time favorite film, 2001’s Zoolander. I hadn’t seen it in some time and it had me thinking much about how prophetic seemingly inane comedies like Zoolander, Josie and the Pussycats (2001) and the oft-cited Idiocracy (2006) were. Josie and the Pussycats charmingly satirized the commodification of music groups via relentless product placement and subliminal messaging — and yet, today, it feels commonplace. I was telling a friend that I remembered a time when the indie band of Montreal was more or less ‘cancelled’ — or rather, being labelled "sellouts” for licensing one of their songs to an Outback Steakhouse commercial. Nowadays, a feature like that would simply be seen as them “getting their bag.”

Watching the absurdist plot to brainwash idiot male model Derek Zoolander into becoming a political assassin, I thought about the links between fashion and geopolitics — okay, sure, I don’t think Lucky Blue Smith is going to take out the Prime Minister of Malaysia, but it’s foolish to deny that the veneer of glamour that the fashion business projects has a hand in swaying high-level government decisions. People hoard power, resources and money in order to… be seen out in the newest Chanel bag? Sit front row at Paris Fashion Week? The desire to be accepted by the ‘cool kids’ in the culture space is both a weapon and a tool to be refined and, perhaps, better used. Zoolander opens with a cabal of high-level fashionistas (Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani are referenced) demanding the assassination of the aforementioned Prime Minister to prevent him from hiking wages for child labor and sweatshop workers. The ensuing hilarity is perhaps the stuff of Hollywood fantasy, but the real concern for the bottom line over garment worker’s rights isn’t.

à là prochaine,

Chloë

Jean Cocteau’s most immortal and important piece of writing was one that he never put his name to.

In 1928, a mysterious and short novel called Le Livre blanc was published in a run of just 21 copies. 11 were released to the public. 10 were given to friends of its writer. None bore the name of its author.

Some years later, an update to the book was made. This time, the author added illustrations, and with them, a tacit acknowledgement of his authorship. This is, of course, Le Livre blanc, also known as The White Paper: Jean Cocteau’s semi-autobiographical novella documenting an unnamed narrator’s discovery and acceptance of his homosexuality. Radical then and (unfortunately) radical now, Cocteau took the name of the type of writing usually reserved for sociological argument.

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Of all the gods and monsters in the world, there’s one entity that I continue to land on when I ponder the grey areas of humanity. It’s an entity that used to rule the world; it’s the entity that, one could argue, played a large part in the very creation of the ideas surrounding who and what is and is not sacred, who is and is not profane. It’s an entity that, I say in jest – but not really – can be found at the scene of most of today’s geopolitical crimes if you unravel the threads even just a little bit.

I’m talking about the British monarchy, of course.

All monarchies remained or obtained power throughout millennia by claiming their direct lineage to the various gods that ruled their lands; claiming that a royal is a Sacred Monster stretches the definition of the term as such that the result looks less like a human being or recognizable artist than the deformed Monstro Elisasue thing that appeared in place of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley at the end of 2024’s The Substance. (Google that one at your own peril, and perhaps on an empty stomach.)

However, there was one who seemed to fit the bill when it comes to sacred monstrosity, and whose spectre has arguably haunted the British royal family since her introduction into it and tragic death in 1997. She’s so sacred and so monstrous that I don’t even have to say her name.

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Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

I hope your summer is going well!

I’ve just landed in Los Angeles from another sojourn in Paris, with pit stops in Manchester, England and Palma de Mallorca, Spain sprinkled in.

I’ve been doing my best to actually take a bit of a break — or rather, my version of one — but will resume usual activity in August. Keep an eye out for exciting news… it’s coming!

Anywho…

Summer travel is the perfect opportunity to pick up a few new reads, and I was lucky enough to dig into a few books I’ve had sitting on my nightstand for several months.

Full disclosure: I’ve linked to these books via Bookshop.org, which is a little bit like Amazon, but the money goes to independent booksellers instead of Jeff Bezos. If you buy through one of these links, I get a little kickback. Do with that info what you will!

Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality T.V. by Emily Nussbaum is a haunting recounting of the beginnings of one of the most insidiously fascinating, voyeuristic slices of our current culture. If you’ve ever written off reality t.v. as unserious or dumb, I would still read this book — the leader of the free world is an alum of the form, and one must know their enemy.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is a very entertaining, unexpected story about a female serial killer and haute cuisine. There are more than a few recipes mentioned throughout that will have you reading with one hand and cooking with the other.

Sister Europe by Nell Zink is a tight little story about a ragtag group of people navigating a single, chaotic night in Berlin. I inhaled it on one puddle-jumper flight and was entertained by the hyper-specific cutting, yet humane insights Zink gave all of her characters, who walk the line between feeling wholly realized and totally satiric in their depiction.

Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss is a semi-autobiographical, sort-of true story about Weiss’s role in the early-2000’s tabloid machine. We’ve all been rethinking our treatment of the Princess of Pop, and Weiss’s book cuts down to the bone. I’m still haunted by it.

Still on my nightstand are the following…

Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet (which has recently been translated to English); Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber; Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhiri Vara; and The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin by Daniel Brook.

If you’ve read something you recommend, please drop me a line!

à très bientôt,

Chloë Helen America Cassens

Many of us remember where we were in January of 2016, when that turbulent year kicked off with the news of David Bowie’s death. The Starman had left the terrestrial plane to perhaps return to a home planet in a galaxy far, far away. His parting gift was a final record titled Blackstar, which he had released only two days prior, on his 69th birthday. Fans quickly ascertained that much of Blackstar, including its lead single and video “Lazarus,” addressed what he knew was his impending death. While the whole album and its timing was characteristically Bowie in its ability to surprise, he wasn’t the first nor the last artist to release a self-written elegy. Jean Cocteau had done it in 1960, with his final film, Le Testament d’Orphée.

Cocteau had found a second, or perhaps even third, life as a celebrated film maker. Following the release of La Belle et La Bête in 1946, he became popular with audiences around the world. Audiences in Japan, Brazil, and the United States all embraced the original fairy tale-film and all of a sudden, Cocteau’s world bled outside of the borders of his native France. A new generation of young people started to flock to Cocteau, who by that point was an elder statesman and icon to them. No longer the young twerp begging for a shot to work with Serge Diaghilev or the effete outsider beefing with André Breton, Cocteau’s film making in particular was what solidified him as a cultural touchstone.

La Belle et La Bête premiered at the very first Cannes Film Festival; by the late 1950s, Cocteau had twice served as its jury president. In 1959, Cocteau, though not a jury member, rallied hard for a young film-maker named François Truffaut to win the Palme d’Or for The 400 Blows. To thank him, Truffaut gave his champion a large sum of the money he needed to make his final film.

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Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

Summer is in full swing and it feels like humanity’s pot has been set to boil. We’ve barely passed the Solstice and we’re already spiritually and physically overheated… but at least I have good news…

I honored to announce that I have joined the advisory board at the Philosophical Research Society!

PRS means the world to me, as the first place to embrace Sacred Monster without question. It is LA’s best kept secret, having existed at the corner of Los Feliz and Griffith Park Blvd for 90 years — ancient by Angeleno standards.

PRS is a community center for the weird and wonderful, for those who are curious and thoughtful and caring.

PRS is a place where on any given day, you can go to a lecture about ancient folklore; participate in a group meditation; buy a book on an esoteric subject; attend a Surrealist study group in the library; have your tarot cards read (or attend a workshop on designing your own); catch a screening of an off-the-beaten-path film; join a monthly death support group; enjoy a little tea, sun and conversation the courtyard; and more.

However, maintaining a space like this one for 90 years requires money, which PRS needs to raise — to buy a new projector that can handle more film programming, repair a hole in the library’s roof, replace the wildly uncomfortable seats in the auditorium (WE KNOW THEY SUCK), and have enough saved for the next 90.

If you’re curious about PRS, hit me up! I’d be happy to tell you more. Hopefully, I’ll see many of you there at my fundraising event on July 5th. If you can’t make it and want to make a contribution, let me know.

Earlier this month, I was treated to a private walk-through of the landmark $3 Bill: Evidence of Queer Lives exhibition at the Getty Research Institute by its curator, Pietro Rigolo, ahead of its official opening. Pietro was exceedingly kind and generous to give me his time, and the exhibition is one of the most thoughtful and moving that I have been to in a long while.

The show opens with one of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s ever-thought provoking candy works (this one, red-white-and-blue lollipops) and follows with almost an entire wall dedicated to Jean Cocteau — a rarity in a major US museum. From there, Pietro’s curation takes you through a chronological journey through the last century of queer history, explored via art and objects. There’s Mapplethorpe’s Duchampesque ready-mades, Ron Athey’s still-provocative needle crown, Catherine Opie’s Dyke Deck and much more. I was already on the verge of tears seeing how much of Cocteau was included, and almost lost it when Pietro told me the story behind John S. Boskovich’s 1997 work Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate. To commemorate Earabino’s role as the stylist behind Madonna’s “Bedtime Story,” Pietro told me he included a QR code on the wall that opens and automatically plays the video on Youtube. It was his wish, he told me, that people would fill the ever-silent GRI with the song, allowing Earabino to take up just a little more space as people moved through the building.

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A few days later, I was back at the Getty to celebrate the formal opening of $3 Bill with its companion exhibition, the monumental photography show Queer Lens. In tow with me was my friend Hamish, a young art student from LA studying photography in Paris. We both learned a ton walking through the exhibit — I found early photos of men in drag and a Muybridge motion picture series particularly fascinating, and took great pleasure in pointing out to Hamish contemporary artists like Robert Andy Coombs, whose provocative work is on display (and who was at the opening!)

As Hamish enjoyed one of the Gonzalez-Torres lollipops from $3 Bill, I was confronted with a particularly jarring sight: a Shepard Fairey poster from 2008 made in response to California’s Prop. 8. It was truly surreal to see included in an exhibition about history a piece that I experienced in its present. The Fairey poster was all over West Hollywood and the offices of Equality CA (I used to work the phone bank for them) when I was a teenager, sneaking out to party in Boystown because my Sunset Strip colleagues all knew that I was the underaged Roxy intern.

It was a sharp reminder that we are always living through history. We have control of how it’s written in the future — whether in anecdote or fable, on a museum wall in glass or not at all.

$3 Bill and Queer Lens are open now through September 28th. Don’t miss them.

à très bientôt,

Chloë

If I hear one more time that there is a dark or sinister energy in Los Angeles, or another social media post simply marveling at the fact that Los Angeles – wouldn’t you believe it, of all places! – is the place where the revolution is starting, I might commit seppuku.

It was only six months ago I saw the same wonder, sometimes borne of awe, sometimes of condescension, that Los Angeles was coming together in community to support the victims of the Altadena and Palisades fires.

Those who are surprised by the extremes to which Angelenos will go to support, defend and protect each other woefully misunderstand what this city is like – our history, culture, and values. I will admit that it’s easy to get the wrong impression: we’ve made our reputation on the creation of images and sale of fantasy, which can undoubtedly read as quite shallow.

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Nobody comes into the world like Athena from the head of Zeus, fully formed. We are born, raised, molded, sculpted and developed over time; our natural predispositions combine with our environment and, like water and light, allow the seeds of our personality to bloom.

Jean Cocteau was no different.

Though mostly known to us today as a mentor to many (François Truffaut and Jean Genet, among others,) of course he was himself mentored by several of French culture’s most legendary names: Marcel Proust, Serge Diaghilev, and in the earliest case, Edouard de Max.

Cocteau was a precocious kid from an haut-bourgeois Parisian family who was blessed with good connections. He was also, as we would probably call him today, a twink: lanky and attractive and in possession of a big personality that had yet to be dampened by the cruelties that his life and time dealt him.

From an early age, he showed every sign of being gifted and talented – and a handful. His mother (who was quite literally beleaguered by his behavior until the day she died, by which point he was in his fifties) shrewdly made introductions to those who could grant the baby of the family access to the chicest salons of the day, and hopefully, take him off of her hands.

The person to do so came with a colorful personality in his own right – and would ultimately change the trajectory of young Jean’s life forever.

Edouard de Max was a Romanian Jew born on Valentine’s Day, 1869, eventually making his way to Paris and joining the Paris Conservatoire when he was nineteen years old. He was captivatingly beautiful, with large blue eyes, a Byzantine profile, and what was by all accounts a striking speaking voice. As a Romanian and a Jew, he was well aware of his status as an exotic outsider to Parisian society and played it up – making him a near instant sex symbol as well (although, it must be said, appearing nude on stage certainly contributed to this reputation, too.)

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Bonjour à tous et à toutes,

Yet another summer is nearly here! I am packing up to head back to Los Angeles, and fortunately, Paris has seen an incredible season of spring this year (it rained nearly every day last May.)

Museums and cultural institutions are opening their summer exhibitions and in Paris, they are starting off strong.

At the Petit Palais — always a pleasant experience — there is “Worth: Inventer la Haute Couture,” about the groundbreaking fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth. Alongside countless stunning garments from the mid-to late-19th century and early 20th are paintings which orient their wearers into space and time. Of particular note was a gallery taking the viewer through the average day in the life of a Worth woman (ie: one who was very, very rich,) which included up to six (!) outfit changes, all spectacular.

I’ll admit that I was surprised to discover the Musée d’Orsay’s “L’art est dans la rue” exhibit spectacular. The Musée d’Orsay is rarely high on my list of institutions to visit, mostly owing to the fact that while, yes, they are in possession of many master works (Manet’s Olympia, Courbet’s L’origine du monde, Bouguereau’s Dante and Virgil come immediately to mind) — in my opinion, the home of the greatest examples of Impressionism is the Art Institute in Chicago, IL. (While the nouveau-riche American industrialists were snapping up Monets and Seurats at a quick clip, the Parisians who didn’t think Impressionism was worth their time were, unfortunately, victims of their own hubris in this case.)

That said, “L’art est dans la rue” — a blockbuster showcase of Belle Epoque-era street posters, advertisements, and political cartoons — is well worth your time. Imagining a Paris devoid of color, except for the wheat-pasted prints that were on display, really sent my imagination into overdrive. And while we are inundated with “art” in the street every day, seeing the vast decline in artistic and aesthetic beauty when it comes to advertisements and political cartoons is simply depressing. Bring back the Toulouse-Lautrec vibe!

Finally, if you have been a longer-term paid subscriber, you may remember last summer’s deep dive into soft power via Blackpink and the K-pop machine.

It came out not too long before Netflix dropped their fascinating documentary series Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, which delved into the training and development process for a “global girl group” that debuted under the collaborative efforts of megalabels HYBE and Geffen. It’s a brutal watch that I ended up binging in one sitting; I still think about a scene where executives gather to discuss the great sponsorship interest they’ve received before selecting which teenaged girls they were going to put in the final group lineup.

That said, I have to shout out two creatives working behind-the-scenes with KATSEYE, now nearly a year into their career: stylist Kelly Page and songwriter/producer Alice Longyu Gao. Both women are dear friends who have hit it out of the park with their work on the newest single “Gnarly” — an abrasive, tongue-in-cheek satire of consumer culture. The moment I saw the outfits and heard the song, I knew they were behind it.

I have so much I’ve been working on that I am coming very close to announcing. I am beyond excited to share; watch this space!

à très bientôt,

Chloë

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History’s greatest masters of personal branding and marketing have always been sex workers.

Where a new way to advertise oneself emerges, a sex worker is right behind it, ready and able to use it to maximum effect. The advent of photography brought with it women who would, essentially, create the earliest versions of collectible baseball cards with their faces and names displayed. The printing press was used to distribute sporting guides (shout out to my sage and savage friend Liz Goldwyn’s book-slash-objet d’art Sporting Guide: Los Angeles 1897) which pointed travellers in the direction of the whorehouses which best suited their tastes (and wallet sizes.) Pornographers and sex workers swiftly capitalized on the vast potential of the internet in ways that we still see today – from early websites and chat rooms to now, social media, OnlyFans, and subscription-based sites. *(If you are already a subscriber, join the Sacred Monster chat and I might tell you the story of being walked through the day-to-day operation of the OnlyFans account of one of the most famous porn stars working today. She told Liz and I that she was clearing over $500,000 per month via that platform in 2020.)*

One of the most enduring marketing campaigns ever waged rests in the Musée des Art Décoratifs today. To the naked eye, it’s simply an ornate, bordering on tacky, bed. To those in the know, it is the state bed of Valtesse de la Bigne, one of the most iconic and enduring grande horizontales of the Napoléon III era.

Valtesse remains one of the great rags-to-riches stories of her time. Born in a Parisian slum, her ascent was neither smooth nor assured, and was purely the result of her shrewd thinking, bold ambition and shameless embrace of the philosophy that all publicity was good publicity.

At the peak of her notoriety, she was immortalized by Edouard Manet and Emile Zola, although where Manet painted a portrait of her enshrouded in all of the respectability a courtesan could want, Zola did the opposite, skewering her for her lack of scruples, talent, and perceived vulgarity.

Valtesse de la Bigne was simply famous for being famous. One hundred years before the age of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and influencing.

Valtesse de la Bigne, like many of history’s greatest self-starters, was not born that way. Emilie-Louise Delabigne entered the world in 1848, the daughter of an alcoholic and a grisette in a Parisian slum that is today’s 10e arrondissement. As a grisette, her mother made poverty wages as a laundress, and supplemented her income by engaging in prostitution.

Denied an education and forced to work as a child, Valtesse’s entrée into sex work was the unfortunate result of a rape she suffered while walking to her job in a dress shop when she was only 13 years old. An old man attacked her on the street, she later recounted, and this changed her perspective of herself, humanity, and the world around her. After this event, Valtesse was determined to work her way out of her miserable circumstances.

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