COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / REMEMBERING DJUNA BARNES

Photograph 1922 by Maurice Branger.

Someone said: “we’ve all seen this photo.” True if the literary world of the 1920 fascinates. Here is one such photo of Ex-pat American novelists Solita Solano, right, and Djuna Barnes, who in 1922 were sipping coffee at Le Dome in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris. 

After all, drinking coffee in a chic restaurant on a boulevard in Paris was the cat’s pajamas. Time to kick up heels and do what we want the world had survived a brutal modern war and a flu epidemic that was equally horrific.

 

Photographer Maurice Branger, left, who was active during the early 20th century, was known for capturing cultural and social scenes. Seeing the fashion on these American novelists might have been shocking as Cole Porter croons in his “Anything Goes” lyrics. But American women were tired of dressing like Abraham Lincoln’s wife and if they want to challenge mores and kick down puritanical convention then sobeit. 

Below is a photo of Le Dome in the 1920s by Gyula Halasz (aka Brassai).