You are cordially invited to the home of Duchess d’Uzès
for a colorful fête
to fight the bleak midwinter.
The invitation in your hand is gilded, but the party is not magical.
At least not at first glance.
There is no starlight in the champagne—of course, you’d be served champagne, seeing as your hostess is the heir to the Veuve Clicquot fortune!—and the Mazarin paintings on the ceiling stay put no matter how long you stare. A doorman offers to take your coat, then gestures down the front hall at a long line of mannequins. They are not wearing gowns but wigs. The finest work Paris’s perruquiers can manage—coiffed to perfection. Only someone of Duchess d’Uzès’s standing could afford so many pieces. The dyes alone must have cost a fortune.
“The duchess requests you wear the color of your choosing.”
The doorman himself is wearing a headpiece of the lightest violet—it is a subtle shade compared to the rest of the offerings. You drift down the hall, picturing yourself in different shades of blue: moonlight or steel or fairy pool. There are purples to rival the ripest of plums. Pinks that would make roses wilt for shame. A marquise has chosen an orange wig that makes her dark eyebrows look like tiger stripes. You do not know if you are that bold. Perhaps green is the color that’s calling to you. Sea glass or spring leaves or the shine of a dragonfly’s wing.
Yes, you think, when the piece settles over your head. This fits.
“Rainbow wigs!” another guest beside you exclaims, as she picks out a set of turquoise curls. “How on earth do you think the duchess comes up with such ideas?”
She isn’t really expecting an answer, but one arrives anyway. The palace doors open for two girls the doorman does not seem to notice. He doesn’t take their fur coats, nor does he point them toward the wigs. It looks as if one of the girls is already wearing one—pink that wouldn’t just shame roses but Valentine’s Day cards too. This doesn’t stop her from snatching a sapphire piece for her friend.
“Look, Anastasia!” she exclaims. “We did it! The wigs are real!”
What else would they be?
You forget this question quickly, as you enter the party proper. A photographer stops you and asks to take your portrait for L’Illustration. The picture will be printed in color! It will be admired by ladies in London and New York and Melbourne… ladies who will then pay their wigmakers countless dollars and guineas to copy the idea. Of course they will! It’s not just avant-garde. It’s fun.
The camera’s bulb flashes.
You smile, not just for posterity, but because you want to make the world a brighter place.