Thursday, November 25, 2010

Jean Cocteau on Camouflage

During World War I, the shoulder patch insignia of the French Army's camouflage corps was a chameleon. Related to that, this is a diary entry on July 16, 1919, by Folies Bergères dancer Liane de Pougy in My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan (Tarcher, 2002)—

One of Jean Cocteau's jokes. Talking of a chameleon, he said: "Its master put it down on a tartan rug and it died of over-exertion."