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Nicole, in a way, is a cliché: she is precisely what everyone except a Frenchman imagines the mature, sophisticated Frenchwoman to be. American women ask me if I brush my teeth with white wine and eat only the frog and the snail," she complains. "I say, 'Does your husband wear his cowboy hat at home with him, does he chew his gum and shoot, how you say, cows?' "
Three times in the last four years she has been named one of the worlds ten best-dressed women, a standing she protects with three trips a year to Paris to refurbish her collection of 60-odd Diors Chanels, Cardins, Jacques Heims and St Laurents. She has a full-length mink coat, and when Hervé gave her another for her birthday last month, she converted it into a button-in lining tor six coats—including a raincoat. "It is not chic to display all of what you have," she purrs. "Besides, mink is warmer inside than out."
The Back Room. Paris-born, she has the Parisienne's knack of flirting without quite inspiring wives to reach for steak knives. "Men can't help but look kind of gaga when they are around her, muses ex-Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis Strauss. At a recent dinner she turned her charm on an extremely high-ranking Administration offical seated next to her, so entranced him that, in the words of another guest, he almost fell into her soup."
In a city where VIPs sift through a dozen invitations a day and are confirmed members of the better-offers club Nicole receives few regrets. Her husband has an $80,000-a-year entertainment and housekeeping allowance from the French government, and she uses it wisely. She has the best French chef in Washington, Maurice Bell, who has spent two-thirds of his 40 years collecting and perfecting a drawerfu of menus. One of them is inscribed simply, "Danke—Adenauer."
When the Mona Lisa came to Washington last January, Nicole had 90 people over for drinks and dinner. Everybody was there," recalls Nicole, and she is one of the few people who can say everybody with confidence. Almost the whole Kennedy clan was there—Jack and Jackie, Bobby and Ethel Sarge and Eunice, Steve and Jean, Pat and Mother Rose. Only Peter and Senator Teddy could not make it.
"This is my job," says Nicole, "I work hard at it." She thrives on large groups. "Nothing is worse than not having enough people," she says. But, like most of the best hostesses in Washington she finds smaller dinner parties—known in the trade as "working sesions"—most valuable. "Nicole never loses sight of the purpose of each function," says one of her guests. When it is business, she is all business. The conversation is light and gay, but if you talk too much, that delectable lobster is simply whisked away. The aim of the affair is to get the men into the back room. And she does. You have fun while you're getting there, but she definitely gets you there on time.