Le Monocle and the Women Who Shaped Queer Montparnasse
- Daniel Holland
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
There is a photograph taken in 1932 that many people now recognise, even if they’ve never heard its story. A woman in a tuxedo sits at a small table, her hair neatly cropped, a round monocle perched on her eye. She looks toward the camera with an expression that is relaxed, self assured and just amused enough to suggest she knows she is part of something quietly remarkable. This is Madame Armande, photographed by Brassaï inside Le Monocle, one of Paris’s earliest and most famous lesbian nightclubs.
Between the 1920s and the late 1930s, Le Monocle stood as a symbol of freedom and belonging in Montparnasse. It was a space where women could dress as they pleased, dance with the partners they chose, and live outside the expectations of the time. Behind its modest entrance stood a world that shaped queer history long before such histories were widely recorded.
This is the full story of Le Monocle its origins, its glamour, its wartime disappearance and the poignant attempt to revive it after 1945.
Montparnasse and the Birth of a Subculture
After the First World War ended in 1918, Paris slipped into the Années Folles, the Crazy Years. Montparnasse became the beating heart of this creative boom. The neighbourhood filled with artists, writers, dancers, sculptors and travellers drawn by rumours that Paris allowed freedoms unimaginable elsewhere.
Within this mix, lesbian nightlife became increasingly visible. Bars such as Le Jockey, La Petite Chaumière and Le Bizarre attracted women who rejected the narrow roles society expected of them. But Le Monocle stood apart. It wasn’t a mixed venue with a lesbian corner. It was the lesbian bar of Montparnasse, with a clientele, style and atmosphere entirely its own.
Its signature accessory the monocle quickly became a symbol of androgynous chic. Patrons remembered it as “a wink made of glass”, a quiet code that signalled identity without needing explanation.
The Founder, Lulu de Montparnasse
Le Monocle was founded in the early 1920s by Lulu de Montparnasse, also known as Lulu Paul. She was described by contemporaries as charismatic, generous and fiercely loyal to her patrons. Though little written documentation survives about her early life, oral histories paint a vivid picture: she was a woman who understood community and guarded it.
Lulu ran the club with her long time partner, known variously in sources but always remembered as a protective figure in her own right. Together they shaped Le Monocle into a place where women who lived differently could do so openly and safely.
Located at 60 Boulevard Edgar Quinet, the club sat just beside the Montparnasse Cemetery. Its modest exterior gave no hint of what happened inside.
Inside the Club A Night at Le Monocle
Brassaï’s photographs and surviving accounts reveal a room filled with circular tables, low lighting and constant movement. Music ranged from jazz to musette to chanson. Women danced together freely. Tuxedos, cropped hair and tailored jackets were common. Others mixed masculine and feminine clothing in ways that felt daring and modern.
A 1932 article in Paris Soir described it as “a temple of tuxedos and laughter where the women dance until dawn”.
Another visitor wrote of “the elegant monocled ladies who carry themselves with the confidence of cabaret kings”.
Le Monocle attracted not only locals but curious artists, foreigners, and even travellers seeking the nightlife Montparnasse was famous for. The atmosphere was lively, stylish and welcoming yet discreet enough to protect its patrons in a time when living openly came with risks.
Brassaï later reflected on photographing the club:
“There was a harmony in the room. These women were not performing for me. They were living.”
The War Years A Community Scattered
The arrival of the Second World War changed the rhythm of Paris long before soldiers appeared on the streets. When France declared war on Germany in 1939, Montparnasse the quarter that had danced and smoked its way through the 1920s felt the mood shift immediately. Blackouts dimmed the skyline. Foreign artists quietly left the city. Even cafés that once stayed full until sunrise found themselves half empty.
Regulars at Le Monocle later said this was the moment they sensed the old world slipping. The familiar faces still appeared each week, but the conversations grew hushed, the evenings shorter, and the atmosphere tinged with unease.
Everything changed in 1940 when German troops entered Paris. Occupation introduced strict moral policing, and venues known for “abnormal” or “degenerate” culture were quickly targeted. Le Monocle attempted to keep operating for a short time in a subdued form, but by late 1940 or early 1941 it had been forced to close.
Lulu de Montparnasse, unwavering and composed, was questioned twice by police. Formal records have not survived, but later accounts describe the tone of these interrogations: patronising, moralising and meant to intimidate. One former visitor recalled,
“Lulu kept her dignity. She told them, ‘I run a respectable house.’ But of course they closed it.”
With the club gone, the community was scattered. Yet Lulu and her partner stayed in Paris, becoming informal anchors for former patrons. Their apartment served as a quiet meeting point. Several accounts note that Lulu helped friends find safer places to stay, especially those who were Jewish or politically vulnerable. A recurring rumour in memoirs claims she hid a Jewish couple in 1942. There is no official documentation confirming this, but the story persisted because it fit the woman people knew: discreet, loyal and courageous.
Violette Morris A Controversial Figure on the Edges of Le Monocle
No portrait of queer Montparnasse in the 1920s and 1930s feels complete without acknowledging Violette Morris, the French athlete whose life continues to fascinate historians. Although not a central Monocle insider in the way Lulu’s immediate circle were, Morris moved through the same networks and was well known in the city’s lesbian nightlife. Her appearance tall, muscular, sharply dressed in tailored suits made her instantly recognisable in venues such as Le Monocle, Le Jockey, and various Montmartre bars.
Morris had already gained national attention long before she set foot in Paris nightlife. A celebrated multi sport athlete, she competed in boxing, wrestling, swimming, shot put and cycling, and often refused to conform to gender expectations. Her decision to wear trousers in public and drive racing cars was widely discussed in newspapers, not always positively. When the Fédération Française Sportive Féminine refused to renew her licence in 1928, citing her masculine style and “manners deemed incompatible with femininity”, Morris became a symbol of gender nonconformity long before the term existed in its modern sense.
Her connection to Le Monocle rests largely in her visibility. She was a striking figure, and patrons later recalled spotting her at the club on several occasions sitting at a table, cigarette in hand, wearing impeccably cut jackets. Her presence reinforced the aesthetic that made Le Monocle famous: bold, androgynous, unapologetic.
Yet Morris’s story took a darker turn. In the late 1930s she became increasingly associated with far right politics and eventually collaborated with German intelligence during the occupation. She was killed by the French Resistance in 1944. For many of her contemporaries, including women who had once admired her confidence and athleticism, her political choices created a painful divide.
The war took its toll on Le Monocle’s regulars.
Madame Armande, the monocled woman in Brassaï’s iconic portrait, survived the occupation and reappeared in Montparnasse cafés after liberation.
A group called les filles du jeudi (the Thursday girls) dispersed entirely. One member was arrested for resistance activity in 1943 and survived deportation.
A well known tuxedo wearing patron known as Nana disappears from all surviving records after 1942. Her fate is unknown.
Yet queer social life did not die. It simply retreated into private spaces. Former patrons hosted dinners in darkened flats, met quietly in sympathetic cafés, or gathered after hours behind shop shutters. These gatherings lacked the glamour of the old nightclub, but they kept the community alive.
After the liberation in 1944, some women returned to Boulevard Edgar Quinet hoping to find the place where they had once danced with such joy. They found an empty shell. The fittings were gone. The atmosphere had evaporated.
One recalled,
“I went back in 1945. The room was empty. It felt like the laugh of the past had turned to dust.”
A Brief Second Life The Postwar Reopening
Despite everything, Lulu was not ready to let the club vanish entirely. Around 1946, she reopened a new version of Le Monocle. It was smaller, quieter and more intimate, attracting mostly older patrons who had survived the war and wanted to reconnect.
The monocle and tuxedo aesthetic felt old fashioned to younger women influenced by jazz clubs and Left Bank cafés, but there was warmth in the postwar Monocle, a sense of reunion and remembrance.
A visitor from this period recalled,
“It was like visiting an old friend. You loved her because you had loved her once.”
By 1949, the club faded from the nightlife scene. Paris had changed, and so had its communities. Lulu eventually stepped away from running venues but remained a respected figure among those who remembered the old Montparnasse.
Sources
Brassaï The Secret Paris of the 30s (Thames & Hudson, ISBN 9780500271909)
Brassaï Paris by Night (Flammarion, ISBN 9782080304743)
Florence Tamagne Histoire de l’homosexualité en Europe, 1919–1945 (Fayard, ISBN 9782213607289)
Shari Benstock Women of the Left Bank (University of Texas Press, ISBN 9780292704777)
BnF Gallica Periodical Holdings (Paris Soir, Le Crapouillot)
Institut national d’histoire de l’art – Fonds Brassaï
Musée Carnavalet – Photographie
Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine – Fonds Roger Schall
Archives de Paris – Series D4R
Archives Nationales – Series AJ/38
Vingtième Siècle (Tamagne, 2002)
French Historical Studies (Walton, 1996)
Musical Quarterly (Fulcher, 1992)
