PARIS, JE T’AIME

Words and Photography by Sophie Hemels
model is Teuntje

Autumn days filled with grey skies and cold winds make Amsterdam lovely. A small place of wonder and imagination. A season we like to share with our beloved. Driving our bikes from one place to the other, we think. I thought back of my younger days, days when I was still a student at the National Ballet Academy. The girl gracing the photos on your screen was a friend in my class. Teuntje.

Many glorious years have passed since that time we stood on our toes, salmon pink pointe shoes and light blue leotards. The memories are bittersweet. We sit with coffee at her dinner table, talking life.

The lady is studying Beta/Gamma, a tough-as-nails study, has a broad interest in fine arts, philosophy, drawing, beauty and The Romantic Life. She knows what she’s talking about and realizes she’s a lady in a men’s study. Programming computers for days on end where creativity isn’t a necessity. But we put that aside for the moment and talk dreams, no need to be realistic or sensible. Just pure dreams, imaginations running wild. Five minutes later Paris is on her mind…

Paris, city of lights. City of Cafe de Flore and cute love stories. The effortless beauty of the French girl, great sense of style, baguettes, film noir and painters on the streets. A city Teuntje knows all too well.

Since she was five her family used to go to France annually to spend quality time in their small house in the Correze. On the way back they would touch down in Paris for a few days and wander. Indulge. Be Parisians. Always the same dreamy hotel on the Rue de Lambre. An artistic place she remembers all too well. I can tell from the way her eyes sparkle. A fond memory carved in time (and in the tree across from the hotel).

Her father was a famous writer. On one of their trips to Magic City he would bring her to Cafe de Flore and the two of them would invent stories he would later write about. The same father that bought her her first Dior dress in Galeries Lafayette when she was nine and dared her to nick an white ashtray from a table of the same flowery cafe.

Now, years later, a different height, more memories and experiences, a different hotel (Hotel Mama Shelter), this strong lady explores the city on her own. In 7 hours she drives from Amsterdam to Paris to find adventure. Visit Palais de Tokyo, Musee centre Pompidou, stroll, in a huge fur coat and baret, the garden Luxembourg. Sit alone at a cafe with the three C’s: coffee, croissant and cigarette (her favorites). Have nothing to do, run into no one and lose yourself in a book or scribble on a napkin. She loves it and I can’t blame her. After seeing movies like ‘Paris, Je T’aime’, ‘Midnight in Paris’ and ‘Jeune et Jolie’ we all crave the French lifestyle.

I ask her if she could see herself living there. She tells me she is thinking about it. Maybe do an exchange and study philosophy for a year.

I hope she’ll do it.

For now it’s still a golden dream. And as she walks here with her baby blue baret, cigarette and Dutch croissant I know it’s not the same. But she gives Amsterdam one fine French touch.

words by Teuntje @teuntjebril
Photography by Sophie Hemels My instagram: @francismorrismorrison
website: www.sophiehemels.com
facebook: www.facebook.com/francismorrismorrison