It was the fabulous place that Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and plenty of cultured, highly literate expatriates called home when they couldn't handle their hometown. In Paris, they were welcomed by Kiki de Montparnasse — a singer, caberet performer, artist's model, and occasional painter. She was also the unofficial queen of the Left Bank neighborhood where the culturati drank, sang, wrote, and acted like the flâneurs they so hoped to conjure up. They succeeded, of course, as proven by the vintage photographs and original paintings published in a new book Paris in the 1920s with Kiki de Montparnasse (Assouline). Click ahead for a look at old-school Gertrude Stein, the artist Man Ray, the dancer Jean Rai, and plenty of vintage clothes you probably don't want to wear, but can appreciate nonetheless. RRP US$195.
View slideshow at Vulture
View slideshow at Vulture
