Mademoiselle London is the creation of Katya Jezzard-Puyraud and Franki Goodwin, two Londoners who live in Paris and work together as an art and writing team. Kat does the words, Franki does the pictures.
Franki ran the creative and digital agency Franki&Jonny in London for eight years but in 2010 traded her Shoreditch office for a new start in Paris to learn French and have an adventure.
Katya sold everything she owned and came to Paris six years ago on a whim having worked previously as a journalist, assistant film editor and a TV/cinema scriptwriter.
The two met in a dingy bar in Ménilmontant in early 2010 and within half an hour decided to embark on a project about Paris together. But instead of the usual ex-pat swoonings over macaroons, haute-couture and café society, they wanted to tell a different story about life on the scruffy side with drawings of real Parisians and stories about hard drinking and crap sex and big laughs and bad grammar, written in both English AND French.
The girls formed the bilingual character of Mademoiselle London as a way of reflecting the topsy-turvy mix of language in their lives whilst revealing their most embarrassing stories and deepest fears about living in a strange city.
Kat and Franki’s hope is that Mademoiselle London becomes a dream language teacher for their audience (one that slips in swear words and slang) and that somehow their character can break down a few of the cultural barriers that keep the English and French at loggerheads. But then again, they don’t expect over six centuries of bickering to be undone by an imaginary character with a drink problem and a calamitous love life.