Note: this was accidentally published two weeks ago.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, here it is again.
Confessing to be a thorough Francophile as well as being fond of ships most of my life, I’ve long thought that French Line’s Normandie was the epitome of the luxury steamship era. The Cunard Queens, Mary and Elizabeth were both splendid in their own ways, but to my mind, Normandie was the crème de la crème. This three minute video helps make my case:
… as does this four minute video …
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Normandie represents the peak of Art Deco elegance. Even though she was launched at the time of the world-wide Great Depression, she embodied manners and civility almost totally alien to today’s trashy “culture.” When luxury goods retailer Nordstrom sends a Mens Wear e-mail ad featuring a scruffy looking tattooed male model, as Nordstrom did last week, we are surely about to hit bottom. Looking at the elegant spaces and the well-dressed travelers on Normandie makes us want to travel back in time …
Above and below: Stairs aboard Normandie
Below: the chapel on Normandie
The Grand Salon:
Another lounge aboard Normandie:
First Class Lounge:
First Class Dining Room:
Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich aboard Normandie:
'56 Packard Man 
It is hard to imagine this opulence, and better yet someone who could dream it up!! LOL
Beautiful. My mama said, “No elbows on the table!” These folk musta had the same warnings! LOL
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Indeed, Jack – it is hard to imagine the creativity that went into designing this ship. When Normandie burned and capsized, that era of elegance burned and capsized with it.
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… hee hee … 🙂
That’s right, Jack! NO ELBOWS ON THE TABLE!
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Again, a splendid remembrance of an era of civility and creativity, linked together in some of the most monumental “moveable architecture” ever known by modern man. Nordstrom’s indeed–and the drone of the media, defiling every rule of grammar and good taste! Thanks for the grand hold-outs like you, Paul.
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Thank you, John! I know that you are a “hold out,” too!
I was just on the Nordstrom website and I am absolutely appalled at what I see. Hideously tattooed models in scruffy looking clothes – and THIS is supposed to be a LUXURY goods retailer?!?! I don’t have much, but I’m selling my Nordstrom stock and Satan will be ice skating in his underworld home before I buy any more clothes from Nordstrom. Virtually every thread in my closet and every shoe on my shoe rack has come from Nordstrom since the early 1980s. I’m writing Bruce Nordstrom and enclosing my cut up Nordstrom card. I had been hopeful that our country was about to turn the corner and head back to civility and manners, but it appears my optimism was misplaced …
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