Cocotte (prostitute)

Cocottes (or coquettes) were high class prostitutes (courtesans) in France during the Second Empire and the Belle Époque.

Some managed their fortune, others died in misery, others finally, like Sarah Bernhardt, who in the beginning was a cocotte, became adulated actresses.

Cocottes were elegant, fashionable and extravagant, the papers reported on their clothing, parties and affairs.

This novel describes the life and tragic fate of a street-walker who rises to become a cocotte, and whose ways lead to ruin the powerful men she meets.

[9] Several mansions of Paris were built for "cocottes", such as that of Esther Lachmann, known as la Païva, on the Champs-Élysées.