La Vie Creative

Send us Fan Mail CC Aoustin is a native New Yorker, growing up in a melting pot of cultures in and out of her home. She has a BA from Queens College, in psychology and Fine Arts. She attended New York University’s Masters in Art Therapy Program, where she practiced for 13 years until moving to France. She reconnected with art through photography, by creating her own backdrops.  Caroline has exhibi...

Send us Fan Mail The Chateau Versailles, just the name evokes glamour, golden splendor and the regal days of France.  We cover it all today on the newest episode of Paris History Avec a Hemingway.   Versailles began in 1604 when Louis XIII would come out to the woods to hunt and decided to build a hunting lodge. In 1623 a small lodge next to a windmill that sat on top of a low hill was the humble...

Send us Fan Mail Joanne Kimes was a television writer in Los Angeles when she became pregnant and soon realized the road to procreation was plagued with miserable potholes. So she wrote a book called, “Pregnancy Sucks” that became a best-seller and led to a dozen other titles in her “Sucks” books series. She’s appeared on the Today show, written dozens of magazine and website articles, and has jus...

Send us Fan Mail In our final episode about the ladies of Marie Antoinette there wasn’t anyone closer in those final months than her sister in law Madame Elisabeth.  The youngest child of Louis and Marie-Joseph, her older brothers would become king over the next 70 years. Born on May 3, 1764 a year later her father died and she spent most of her time in the shadow of the older brothers living a ca...

Send us Fan Mail Rosemary Flannery has lived in France since 1989 and enjoys dual French-American nationality. She graduated with honors from Columbia University in 1985 with a degree in French language and literature. On the show today we talk about her love of Paris and the Angel statues that surround the beautiful streets of the city. She has written multiple books and now spends her time paint...

Send us Fan Mail Madame Campan was one of the only women to work for Marie Antoinette, survive the Revolution, work for Napoleon and end with another Bourbon king when most didn’t survive past Marie Antoinette. Jeanne-Louise Henriette Campa was born October 2, 1752 in Paris. Her father was a foreign affairs clerk sent to London to work on the 1763 peace treaty and took a large role in her educatio...

Send us Fan Mail I'm a musician. Learned to play guitar in high school after I watched the movie The School of Rock with Jack Black which inspired me so much that I became a rocker and wanted to have a band! Since then I realized that music is the language in which I can express my feelings, myself, and feel good about it. I lived in a small, conservative city in Croatia where people believed...

Send us Fan Mail In this week's episode of Paris History Avec a Hemingway, we continue on with another lady of Marie Antoinette. Gabrielle de Polignac was a constant source of gossip from Versaille to Paris. The fun-loving Polignac was born September 8, 1749, in Paris into the French noble family of the Nouilles. Married in 1767 to Jules de Polignac, captain of the Royal Regiment and a member...

Send us Fan Mail Victoria Bourgin, born in Ukraine, strongly believes in the power of dreams and in bright colors! After her studies in Sweden, she came to Paris where she worked for 10 years at the most prestigious French fashion houses in Paris including St Laurent and Balmain, and just a month ago she finally realized her childhood dream - creating her own Brand LA JAQUETTE. LA JAQUETTE is a st...

Send us Fan Mail One of the most faithful and trusted ladies of Marie Antoinette served by her side until the bitter end. Madame de Lamballe was born in Turin and raised under the iron thumb of her father Prince Louis Victor of Savoy. The duke of Penthievre was keen to marry his son Louis-Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe and descendant of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. Their short & rough mar...

Send us Fan Mail Erin Colston is a Texan who followed her dreams to New York to attend American Musical and Dramatic Academy and pursue a career in theater and singing at the young age of 18.  After 9 years in the Big Apple and some small successes, she then followed a second dream to Paris. There, she started a musical theater class with 9 students in her first small day camp and it has grown to...

Send us Fan Mail Marie Antoinette is known for her style, love of fashion and jewelry and in the end what led to her demise. One woman is behind her look more than anyone else including those amazing hair styles. Rose Bertin had a knack for style that drew the attention of a very devoted following that went back to her early days.  Born July 2, 1747 in Abbeville, she moved to Paris and started wor...

Send us Fan Mail Sunny Buick was born in British Columbia, Canada, and grew up all over Northern California, finally ending up in the Bay Area in her teenage years. In 1986 while attending a high school especially for artists, she started to hang out in the milieu of San Francisco tattooing; and began to tattoo professionally in 1992. She served a formal apprenticeship with Henry Goldfield for 6 y...

Send us Fan Mail One of the newest sensations in Paris this summer has been the very long awaited reopening of Samaritaine. It started as a tiny store on the corner of Rue du Pont Neuf by a couple that spent their entire life in retail.  Marie Louise Ja Ja, born on July 1, 1838 came from a large family and was forced to start working at a very early age to help support the family. In 1853 she move...

Send us Fan Mail Flytographer connects travelers with local photographers in over 350 cities around the globe for fun, hassle-free photo shoots. Inspired by a 2011 trip to Paris, from the desire to capture vacation memories that weren’t awkward selfies or blurry photos from strangers, Nicole Smith set out to solve the gap in the market for vacation photography. Two years later, Flytographer was bo...

Send us Fan Mail Manet, like most painters, had many models they worked with. Manet found women that not only sat for him but also inspired him. Berthe Morisot was a young art student that had the looks of the dark haired Spanish beauties he was obsessed with. Morisot became an accomplished artist herself and married Manet’s brother, creating a devoted family of artists.  Victorine Meuret sat for...

Send us Fan Mail When I first set foot in Paris as a teenager, les pyramides in front of the Louvre didn’t exist, the Musée d’Orsay was a defunct train station with broken windows, and the cathedral of Notre Dame would continue to display a sooty black façade for another twenty plus years. Still, Paris had that certain je ne sais quoi. And, like so many before me, I was hooked…well, nearly. In ear...

Send us Fan Mail Dora Maar from the end of her life until today is widely labeled the “Muse of Picasso”. As with most women in history they are relegated to being a postscript in a man's story, Dora was much more than that.  Born on November 22, 1907 Henriette Markovitch in Paris at the Tarnier Maternity Clinic at 89 Rue d’Assas. Her father Joseph was a Croatian architect and her mother Louis...

Send us Fan Mail Born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Karen grew up with the aspiration to be a comedian, a musician, or both… She groomed these crafts from a young age by making everyone around her laugh and beginning a lifetime romance with the flute at the age of 9. She went on to study drama at Temple University in Philadelphia and played in a series of bands. From the age of 30 until s...

Send us Fan Mail Louise Joesphine Weber is remembered more for her adoptive name La Goulue and how she got the name. Born on June 12, 1866, in Clichy the love of dancing was instilled in her at a very early age by her mother. By 1882 she had moved to Montreuil and started dancing at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre.  Customer and journalist Charles Desteque noticed her and introduced her to...

Send us Fan Mail Rebecca Devaney is a textile artist, researcher, and facilitator. She has recently established Textile Tours of Paris . Rebecca Devaney first landed in Paris in 2017 to follow her dreams and study haute couture embroidery at the prestigious École Lesage. With a BA in Art and Design Education and an MFA in Textile Art and Artefact from the National College of Art and Design in Irel...

Send us Fan Mail Liane de Pougy at the end of her life was labeled “from whore to nun” but I am getting ahead of myself.   Anne Marie Chassaigne was born June 2, 1869 in La Flèche in the Loire and raised in Brittany. On July 15, 1886, at 17 she married Joseph Armand Henri Pourpee who was a naval officer living in Marseille. Joseph would be gone a lot and Anne Marie filled her time with another man...

Send us Fan Mail Melissa grew up between Australia and the Philippines, singing in choirs and writing her own songs from a young age. She studied Musicology at the Conservatorium of Sydney and went on to work as an opera critic and co-editor of the classical music magazine Limelight . In 2013, she moved to Paris and freelanced as a travel and music journalist, while working at the Marché aux Puces...

Send us Fan Mail Madame de Sévigné, one of the greatest authors of the 17th century, never wrote a single book. Instead, she is known to us today as a “lady of letters”.  Marie de Rabutin Chantal was born February 5, 1626, in the Palais Royal home of her grandparents. By the time she turned seven both of her parents had died and were being raised by her grandparents and uncle Christopher. He would...

Send us Fan Mail Mrids is a former film/TV producer who left the BBC, Hollywood, her jeans - sneakers outfit, to buy a sharp striped suit for a Masters at Columbia University in New York diving into business strategy.    An ambitious entrepreneur with a first profitable business at age 9, she truly loves solving problems and brainstorming solutions.  In her corporate role in NYC as Growth Strategi...