If you have never experienced something like this, you cannot know what it feels like. For months I have been courting a very pretty, intelligent, nice, elegant girl with dozens of other virtues that I won't list here. After turning down invitations to dinners, luncheons, movie premieres, classical concerts, jazz, pop, etc., the day before yesterday she agrees to go out with me to attend a figure skating show on ice, a somewhat repurposed version of the famous Cinderella fairy tale.
Everything runs smoothly, great evening. After the show, I propose that we go to dinner at a place a stone's throw from the theater, she accepts. She chooses some kind of bistro, not a starred restaurant, and when we are at the table, no award-winning chef dishes, but a first course and a second course, almost like home. Daring, I propose a glass of champagne, but she doesn't, she is special, she wine, red wine. I ask for a good Cabernet-Sauvignon, fill glasses and propose a toast.
I make to approach my goblet to hers and it is a matter of an instant, a bloody instant : my hand trips over something, a napkin or the bread basket, I don't know. The wine, all the wine in my glass, ends up on my hapless diner. It bathes her from her shoulder to her chest, to her waist, to her hips, to her legs. She says nothing, doesn't react, crosses my gaze and I realize that she has whitened in the face, her cheeks are milky white. And only then do I realize that she is wearing a cashmere knit dress that wraps her completely from her neck to her knees, and it is, or rather was, also white as white can be.
As I said before, if you have never experienced such a thing, you cannot know what I felt. I wanted to sink down, rewind the events as if it were a movie, erase those last minutes, I wanted to disappear from sight. And that's when she, at the height of class and charm, says to me, "Red wine doesn't go away. Goodbye Eric Bompard!"
At first I thought she was confusing me with someone else, because my name is Maxime and not Eric, then the light dawned on my mind. That pathetic farewell was addressed to his beautiful dress with the brand name "Eric Bompard - Le roi du cachemire."
I didn't try in the slightest to suggest any remedy for her to get the damn wine stains out, I realized that it's not by going to the dry cleaners to be told, "We'll try, but it'll never get back to the way it was!" that the problem was solved. She was great, I must admit. She didn't even make eye contact with me, got up from the table very calmly, whispered in a hushed voice, "I have a bit of a headache, would you mind driving me home?" and the evening ended there. It is clear that his thoughts were no longer for me, but for someone else: Eric Bompard !
I went to bed alone and without dinner and with only one thought in my mind: make it up to him, no matter what!
The next day I searched the Internet and did not struggle too much: Eric Bompard, at 91 Champs-Elysées, was the address I was looking for.
First, however, I took a look at the history of this brand and learned quite a bit. He, Monsieur Bompard, before becoming the king of cashmere had been a computer scientist, representing a European company in China. And it was in Mongolia that Bompard had been fascinated by the softness of the fur of a white goat of a particular breed, unknown to us. Lightning struck when he met a certain Wang Lixiang, a Chinese man who owned thousands and thousands of those sheep. He discovers almost immediately that excellent cashmere yarn is made from the fur of the white beasts. In no time at all, he gets an idea: why not give up IT and start making cashmere clothing in China?
Said and done! In 1986 Bompard set up a company in France and began producing and selling high-quality cashmere clothing. The clothes are beautiful, warm, elegant, Bompard's name runs from mouth to mouth, and his reputation as the king of cashmere is soon made.
Only after reading this fantastic story did I understand what my friend must have felt when I poured my Cabernet-Sauvignon on her. Only then did I realize the sadness of that "goodbye Eric Bompard!"
I closed the computer, rushed to 91 Champs-Elysées, and asked a kind vendeuse to help me find the exact copy of the dress I had desecrated with my red wine the night before. It was not easy, it seemed that there was no other exactly identical one, when the miracle happened: we found it.
Accompanied by a note of apology, I had the white box delivered to my friend's house. I do not know what effect it had on her to recover what she thought was lost forever. All I know is that she called me a few hours later, asking if we could resume the dinner we had so abruptly interrupted. Am I or am I not a lucky man?
P.S. Never again red wine at the table with a beautiful girl dressed in white. You never know !
Photo: copyright © Eric Bombard
