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About PatriciaI have always loved the idea of entertaining. When I was little in Atlanta, I loved passing out the canapés when my parents invited friends over. Before I was old enough to cook, I collected recipes and later got my Girl Scout Badge in Cooking. I loved the Southern concept of hospitality and was always so happy when we had people over or when my Grandmother had tea parties and brought me along to hers. I loved welcoming people to our home and I still do (to mine). My door is always open. (In the photos of the Ile St Louis that open the site, that's my open door). I have always tried to be a gracious hostess and to recreate the aura of Southern hospitality that I learned from my Mother and my Grandmother. MORE ABOUT PATRICIA. Even as a child growing up in Atlanta, I always remember having a feeling of organizing events: church, neighborhood and school. My Grandfather owned a nightclub and I guess that when I was a baby, I must have overheard him telling stories to my Grandmother about the different people and acts each day, as he held me in the rocking chair. In this family photo, which my Mother proudly called "The Four Generations", my Grandfather is the handsome, stern-looking man on the left. Then there's me, my Great Grandmother and finally my beautiful Mother. My famous paternal ancestor, not in this photo, was Colonel McHenry who had been in the Georgia House of Representatives right after the Civil War. |
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Growing up, in high school, I participated in and helped organize a flurry of activities. In my freshman year at Atlanta's Spelman College, I was Social Chairman of my freshman class (organized all the parties) and when I transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, from which I graduated, I helped organize mixers between the different East Coast colleges, I've never stopped. Even as an Art History student in Florence, Italy, and as a young advertising professional in New York (D'Arcy, Masius Benton and Bowles), I always helped host corporate, personal and alumnae events. LITTLE PATRICIA'S TEA PARTIES Everybody who attends Paris Soirées Dinners knows that when I was less than 10 years old, on hot, lazy Southern Sunday afternoons, after Church in Atlanta, I had imaginary tea parties.
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After the traditional Sunday afternoon dinner, I would sit in my parents' dining room, with my miniature crystal punch bowl and cups and host tea parties with my dolls and other imaginary guests and we would all have punch I gestured a lot as I served and was really in another world. I repeated all the things that I had heard my Mother saying at church tea parities and that my Grandmother said during refreshments at the meetings of her sewing circle. As a newly arrived Paris ex-pat, I worked in several American organizations helping with their fund raising events. I was also a trainee at Le Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools. Then I found myself stepping away from groups in 1994 and having my first African-American Literary Soirée. I had met Ernest Gaines during his sabbatical year in Paris and asked him to by my guest for an evening. What a success! It continued. Over the years I had Soirées at David Toft's Gallery (Quai des Grands Augustins), Cafe' Marly, The Web Bar, The Seven Lizards Jazz Club as well as other historic buildings in the Marais and even on a river barge. I even organized several Soirées for the American Embassy in Paris. In 1999, when I broadened to become Paris Soirées (from Paris Connections), I moved the events to my living room. Everything came under the Paris Soirées umbrella -- even the book signings originally held at WH Smith's. I have gone from purely African-American literary events to international events to international events which interest the expatriate and French communities and people from all over the world. Paris Soirées Dinners have flourished for seven years. Thousands of interesting people have attended. I make sure that each person personally introduces themselves to the group, so that we all know how original each person is. Looking back, now being a longstanding expatriate of 23 years, I see myself following in the cultural footsteps of Nathalie Barney and Gertrude Stein, who in their turn, walked in the footsteps and carried the torches of 17th and 18th century society matrons such as the Marquise de Rambouillet, Madame Helvétius and the most famous of them all, Madame de Sévigné. These famous women have made a tradition and institution of the Salon. Nathalie Barney's Salons were on Friday and were THE place to go to meet people. Gertrude Stein's were on Saturday and were THE place to go to learn about Modern Art. Patricia Laplante-Collin's salons are on Sunday and are THE place to go to meet new and interesting people. The 2007 focus is to meet great people, to learn about a contemporary universe of things, to network and to learn how to fit into a foreign culture. At Paris Soirées, you also get Southern hospitality, great food, have fund and get a better understanding of what it means to live in the Paris of today.
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Paris Soirées Dinners Every Sunday At 18h45. |
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