A message from Rude Health in St Kilda...

Below is an email I received from Julia the owner of my stockist in St Kilda.

DAGMAR ROUSSET (née Rude Health)

We have a new name! Why? Well, a few people found Rude Health offensive, perplexing or just plain moronic. Thankfully, many people loved it (which made me feel a bit less lonely on my usually sparsely inhabited wavelength). Some people also thought our logo - the very cool smoking pig by Nate Trapnell, aka the Southpaw - was in some way condoning smoking. (I was actually going for irony, but I can see how people could get the wrong end of the stick!)

So I decided to re-name my shoppe Dagmar Rousset.

Dagmar - a girl’s name of German/Scandinavian origin - always brings to mind an impossibly elegant screen siren languidly reclining on a chaise longue caressing a cigarette holder between her long, delicate fingers (oops, there I go again, promoting the ingestion of noxious substances!) .

Rousset, because I am a lifelong Francophile and devoted promoter of the French language. In fact, the reason why my shop is closed for much of the week (much to the annoyance of my customers) is because I am teaching le français to eager young minds at university.

Who is Dagmar Rousset? She is everything I hope to be one day: fearless, elegant, and shamelessly eccentric.

Bisous,
Julia

I personally disagree with Julia on the last bit, I think she is already fearless, elegant, and shamelessly eccentric.