In this week’s episode, we are circling back to Babe Paley, from a Patron Bonus long ago. Babe, a woman of much style and influence – this one really goes places, from fragrance to birdcages, and her influence on Truman Capote in the early days.
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I loved your notes on Babe Paley’s favorite perfumes! For those who love 1960s nostalgia, I must add that in 2015 Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, partnered with perfumer Celine Baril to re-launch the Norell perfume line.
As for bird cage chandeliers, they are still very popular. In the literary world of the 1960s, they contained a hidden reference to Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Applicant.” Plath uses the image of a bird cage chandelier to mock the traditional expectations of marriage and domesticity. She writes: “Will you marry it, marry it, marry it. / Here is a hand / To fill your hand, / A heart to stop your heart, / A voice to wake you in the morning. / It is waterproof, fireproof, and can be locked up. / It is a chair, a table, a bed. / It is a bird cage chandelier. / It talks to you.”