Lorette (prostitution)

The name derives from the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, one of the churches located around the old Breda street (hence their other name of brédas), part of the area of prostitution in the subdivision of Nouvelle Athènes, located in the current 9th arrondissement of Paris It was in this district that they resided for the most part at the time of Louis-Philippe.

[6] Phryne, rich of the good of more than twenty lovers, And the neck dripping with gold and diamonds, Irritated about the luxury of the lorettes, And asks for a decree which limits their toilettes ...

This breed belonged entirely to the feminine sex: it was made up of charming little beings, tidy, elegant, flirtatious, whom one could not classify according to any known type: she was neither [...] a street walker, nor a grisette, nor a courtesan./ She wasn't the bourgeois type./ And she certainly wasn't the honnest/decent woman type.

women of the world departed, scandalised by the neighbourhood of lorettes Fie upon the fop dog, fie upon the fatuous Danish quadruped, the King Charles, the pug or rascal, so enchanted with itself that it leaps indiscreetly at the legs or on a visitor's lap, as if desperate to please, boisterous as a child, foolish as a lorette, sometimes snarling and as insolent as a servant!

Nestor Roqueplan, the Goncourt brothers, Paul de Kock, Alexandre Dumas fils, and Henri Murger often found inspiration from what they saw as frivolous and naive demi-mondaine women.