Artwork by KlunderBie for the Hotel Barceló Torres de Madrid
I always start by explaining how much I loved the atmosphere in my mother’s bathroom when she got ready to go out. There was a hush, an almost religious sentiment to the way she and her girlfriends would gather around our one, full-length mirror to conscientiously put on mascara, eye-liner, powder - in a meticulously ordered dance which I yearned to learn.
Then there would be laughs and a flurry of excitement as they tried on their outfits - cheap party dresses, covered in sequins, glittering like they were made of pure gold.
And the names! The clubs they went to always had mysterious names, names that sounded to my 5 year-old self like so many temples which the goddesses in our living room attended to be adored. Bus Palladium, Bataclan: those had to be places of worship - I saw no other reason for such a beautiful group to make that kind of effort.
My mother and her friends weren't rich. Most of them were single parents, thrown together either at conferences for my school or at the small Le Marais hôtel in which she worked. I found out later that these first parties were their main indulgence: in a life of careful expenses and child management, they made themselves feel like the most fabulous of Parisians.
Soon enough, as soon as I could read and write, I made myself a part of it the only way I could, helping to organise. I would pick the restaurant before the club; call ahead and inflate the importance of my mother and her friends (all single receptionists) who might grace their hovel of a restaurant at the promise of a few extras. When the restaurant agreed (and it usually did, influence circulating outside of Instagram follower counts in that age), I called the club: did they not know what queens of the Paris nightlife planned to go through their doors tonight? They could even call the restaurant to confirm my story. They often did, and this only served to amplify the legend that Anne Lavandière and her receptionists gained in Paris nights.
Over time, I made a reputation of my own: that of Mme Lavandière’s private aid and advisor. At this point it must be said that I had carried out my whisperings so well that my mother regularly appeared on gossip columns around town - and I did too, from the age of 15, affecting an air of faux nonchalance in pictures that I would replicate when my classmates asked me about the latest Kate Moss party I attended.
The rich kids in school started coming to me for advice: was the Palace really as sensational as they said? What about Les Bains? And could I get them into either?
The title of guardian of the clubs entries, which they seemed to have bestowed me, was one I was happy to shoulder in exchange for two fees. The first - and obvious - one was a 5% commission on any drinks ordered whilst in the club.
The second fee, however, was a way of ingratiating myself with the only ‘in’ crowd I respected: the club and hotel workers whom I booked with. The clubs required a phone call, I told the kids, to be made directly to the receptionist in order to confirm their identity. This was made by verifying embarrassingly private questions about themselves (the size of one’s pecker, the age at which another had lost his virginity and to whom) which were to be asked again on the door.
This in turn allowed me to build up a repository of secrets which I recorded with excruciating detail. Whilst I never used it during my high school days, I thought it might be useful in the future - and time would prove me right.
The parties themselves were of little interest to me. An habitué of the most extravagant places from a young age, I far preferred the hushed conversations between maître d’s and waiters; the minute before a club welcomed a famous guest and the smirk bouncers wore because, as partygoers went wild, they knew their own power to dictate who could and couldn’t come in - Naomi Campbell included.
In my capacity to sweet-talk and my meticulously recorded collection of secrets, my mother saw the traits of a great businessman - forgetting my complete incapacity for numbers. What she saw as a symptom I felt was a vocation: I wanted to know everybody’s secrets - for them to trust me entirely - and to organise for all the same kind of worship I had been a servant to from the youngest age.
This profession, as it turned out, had a name - and one which I would shortly discover: the concierge.