Georgette Moger
November 2025
MEET THE BOULEVARDIÈRE
Georgette Moger has never simply lived in a city. She absorbs it. She has a way of cataloguing the world through scent, texture, and the quiet rituals of elegance: a pearl-tipped cocktail pick, a curated playlist for chilly autumn mornings, a perfume chosen not for the day, but for the memory it will become. Whether hosting a salon in Paris or disappearing into a corner bar in New York, she moves through life with the effortless glamour of someone who knows that pleasure is an art form. To Georgette, the boulevardier spirit is not about decadence. It is about attention. Attention to beauty, friendship, and living well and with feeling. Below, she invites us into her world.
THE MODERN DÉFINITION
Arthur Moss defined a boulevardier in 1927 as “a permanent fun seeker. Their life is a perpetual holiday.” What's your definition?
Isn’t the word itself so velvety? There’s a touch of the sensualist there, a nip-waisted hedonist with a long gait, clad in loafers, doing anything but. While originally the term was associated with a monied class of men on endless vacances, I believe it’s irrespective of gender—any elegant parvenu who creates with élan, never toiling to exhaustion. It’s in the nature of the boulevardier/e to maintain as little delineation as possible between holiday and working day.
THE SPARK OF THE CITY
Which street corner, café, bar, or park in Paris constantly sparks your creativity?
When I first began coming to Paris, as a treat to myself, I’d sit at the little L corner of the bar at La Belle Hortense with a Suze and Champagne, nose-deep in a book, a notebook waiting like a butterfly net to catch my thoughts—so many circling around what my life would look like if I lived here. I’ve neglected that nook since making good on the daydream. Now inspiration comes not from the corner of that bar, but during a book-soak in the lion-footed Belle Époque tub in the salon alcove. My favorite reading chair to date.
THE ESSENTIAL DEMANDE
The original boulevardiers demanded “wine and a song” to set the scene. What two things (physical or metaphorical) do you “demand” to keep your life feeling like a perpetual holiday?
A visa with a far-off expiry date and the promise of a marché en plein air, no matter the day.
SILENT MUSE
Describe the single, most elegantly designed object at your desk or in your studio that affects your concentration and creative workflow.
My Russian Blue, Anoushka. Emerald eyes. Neck of pearls. She sleeps at the corner of the desk or on the back of my chair as I write.
THE SIGNATURE STEP
What is the small, daily ritual that makes you feel instantly well-dressed or put-together and the one thing that completes your look du jour?
The morning ritual of a single-serve French press poured into a latte bowl, taken with milk and honey, and the antique Cartier Baignoire watch I never leave the house without.
LEISURE & L'INSPO
How do you integrate aimless wandering or quiet observation into your creative process? Which street, in any city, is your favorite for an aimless stroll or flânerie?
Well isn’t this just where the boulevard meets the boulevardier. I love the Tuileries in late summer, that sweet spot in the season when the Parisians are away, after the tourists have had their fill of the funfair. I love watching the flying swings taking flight alone, together. Then again, there’s nothing like the flânerie in Firenze. (What a fine B-side on a Cole Porter 45 that would’ve been.) The sense of freedom to choose at whim which passage to peek around is remarkably amplified in this part of Italy. No one ever gets hopelessly lost here, only hopefully.
L’OBJET DU DÉSIR
What have you had your eye on lately?
I dream of a flea-market reunion! It’s with the twin sister of a marble Singer sewing machine dining room table I had to abandon in New York when I moved here. She was such a workhorse. One week she’d be covered in flour while I was making a tarte. On weekends, she’d serve as an oyster shucking station for salon guests. On a random Tuesday she’d be set with linens and my mother’s china for a dinner party. I miss that table and all the memories it held.
L’ART OF JOY
What is happiness to you? Do you find your truest sense of joie de vivre in your work, your relationships, or your passion projects?
Why am I suddenly calling to mind that line Corey Stoll delivers as Hemingway in Midnight in Paris, “Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?” I digress. Much of my happiness derives from the care I give to those I host, help, or heal. The sense of joy I feel when guests recall an evening at the salon, right down to the candlesticks. The familiar humility of a stranger on the street, sheepishly asking me for directions in broken French. Nourishing a sick friend with the surprise of homemade soup and pressed oranges. Living in France forced me to shift into a lower gear than the one I ran at in NYC, and I can take the time to care for myself so that I can best care for those I care for.
“QUOI DE NEUF ?”
What’s inspiring you lately or something you’re excited about?
All the “r” months! I’m launching a salon series called Oysters, Urchins and Other Aphrodisiacs in late October. Guests will learn how to shuck and perfume their oysters (not a euphemism), navigate miniature scissors around the spiny circumferences of French urchins, and deftly shimmy dainty daggers into Saint-Jacques scallops.
LAST CALL
In the spirit of The Boulevardier tradition, leave us with a drink and a song.
I’ll leave you with Katie Melua’s, “If You Were a Sailboat”. I first heard it in the convertible my sweetheart and I rented on a weekend road trip through Avallon and Vézelay—one of those bright June days when I was drifting half dreaming as he was driving us through a twisting tunnel of pines. A few months later, the song found me again as I was dozing off beneath his grandmother’s olive tree in Normandy, book in hand after an afternoon Pastis. This winter, the Mauresque will serve as my madeleine de Proust, with the power to bring back that same drowsy warmth, as if the song were carrying me once more through those sanguine siestas.
As told to Patrick Dooley
