Muguet de Paris

One of my favorite French customs is that of giving sprigs of muguet to friends on the 1st of May. This custom has existed since the Middle Ages. I have always loved lilies of the valley, which are far more prevalent in Europe than in the States. Due to a very cold and wet summer last year, this year’s crop of muguet is down 30 percent, but the vendors say they will not raise their prices.

The muguet was the favorite flower of the couturier Christian Dior.  Legend has it that he so loved the little lilies of the valley that the seamstresses in his workshop sewed a sprig of dried muguet into the hem of each garment.  We know they appear often in his designs. Later, they would be the base of his perfume, Diorissimo.

We all have our personal madeleines, those Proustian triggers of nostalgia that come in many forms.  Those that are olfactory are elusive, yet enduring. As a child, I knew that spring had arrived when my mother set aside her more exotic scents; she spritzed us both with Coty’s Muguet des Bois, and we went out in our summer frocks.   It was years later that I learned that the little bell-shaped flowers I had loved were what the French call a porte-bonheur, something that brings good luck.

I think, for me, the hardest part of starting a blog was choosing a name. For all of our progeny, blogs as well as children, we hope that the name we select will be as appropriate in maturity as it was in infancy. It should be attractive, original and reflect in some way the personality of the one being named. After several near misses, where I was rudely jerked back to square one when I learned the choice I had believed so original was not so original after all and that someone else had thought of it first, it came to me:  Muguet de Paris. And why muguet? It had just enough associations to make it special to me.

I hope that you have found something in my blog that has amused you, informed you, or entertained you. I write with you in mind, and without you it would be pointless. Above all, I know that I have often been inspired by and have learned from the comments you have posted and the email contacts you have sent.

And so, as spring is upon us, voilà – my virtual muguet to you. And chapeaux to my daughter, who is able to grow muguet in Virginia, something I tried and was unable to do in Washington, D.C. 

Jan del Monte, blogging from the rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris, France

© 2008 Jan del Monte

∞