Paris, part 1

I booked a very last minute trip to Paris this week! I finished class on Friday, the Winter Ball at Goodenough College was Saturday night (no pictures, sadly, my phone died), so I had from Monday until I went home on Thursday in front of me...no better time to go!

I stayed with a friend of a friend who I met 3 days earlier but it was perfect! Didn't have to pay for a place to stay and he was super nice! Above is the view from his bedroom window.

Stop #1 was the Musee D'Orsay...it houses basically ALL the impressionist paintings in Paris. There was an exhibition I had heard about called "L'impressionisme et la mode" or "Impressionism and Fashion." The exhibition put side by side paintings and then the dresses that were worn in those paintings, in one case the exact one that was painted!

The rest were dresses that were the same style and/or fabric as the ones in the paintings...impressionists like Renoir, Monet, Manet, etc were famous for painting from real life - they painted contemporary fashions (even though they would go out of date quickly) because they were interested in the ephemerality of life and what constituted "modernity"

The scenes they painted are just scenes from everyday life, like the one above. The dress below is the same style and fabric as the one the woman sitting in front is wearing...

Here is another example! Loved this painting...so elegant 

and this is what her dress would have been

It was so neat to see them up close! 

The exhibition traced fashion through the 1800s - you could see the evolution of the waist and bustle and how certain styles evolved and went in and out of fashion as it went along.

It was also organized by theme...this last part was "en plein air" pictures, and the woman sitting below with her skirt around her on the picnic blanket would have been wearing something really similar to the summer dress below

Such a cool exhibition! And the best part was that I got in for free by virtue of being a student in the EU. Woohoo!

I wandered around the rest of the museum afterwards...LOTS of works by Van Gogh

love his brushwork - the thick blobs of paint are a technique called impasto 

this is the museum from the other side of the Seine...

...and this was my walk back to meet marco for lunch! Such a lovely day outside.

"love locks" on one of the bridges

I actually had 2 papers - unfinished - waiting for me that are due thursday...but totally worth leaving them for the last minute to see this and see Paris with zero tourists on such a beautiful sunny day! Not feeling very guilty...