Café society in the context of Années folles

Truman Garcia Capote (/kəˈpoʊti/ kə-POH-tee; born Truman Streckfus Persons; September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, and he is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. His work and his life story have been adapted into and have been the subject of more than 20 films and television productions.

Capote had a troubled childhood caused by his parents' divorce, a long absence from his mother, and multiple moves. He was planning to become a writer by the time he was eight years old, and he honed his writing ability throughout his childhood. He began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of "Miriam" (1945) attracted the attention of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf and resulted in a contract to write the novel Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He achieved widespread acclaim with Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)—a novella about a fictional New York café society girl named Holly Golightly, and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966)—a journalistic work about the murder of a Kansas farm family in their home. Capote spent six years writing the latter, aided by his lifelong friend Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).

Sir Brian Clarke Hon FRIBA CF (2 July 1953 – 1 July 2025) was a British painter, architectural artist, designer and printmaker, known for his large-scale stained glass and mosaic projects, symbolist paintings, set designs, and collaborations with major figures in modern and contemporary architecture.

Born to a working-class family in Oldham, in the north of England, and a full-time art student on scholarship by age 13, Clarke came to prominence in the late 1970s as a painter and figure of the Punk movement and designer of stained glass. By 1980, he had become a major figure in international contemporary art, the subject of several television documentaries and a café society regular. He was known for his architectonic art, prolific output in various media, friendships with key cultural figures, and polemical lectures and interviews.

The jet set is a social group of wealthy and fashionable people who travel the world to participate in social activities unavailable to ordinary people. The term was introduced in 1949 and replaced "café society"; it reflected a style of life involving travelling from one stylish or exotic place to another via jet plane. With the democratization of air travel it has been replaced at least in part by the term "glitterati", reflecting a greater emphasis upon celebrity, including "being seen" and stalked by paparazzi, and less upon mode of travel.