French women have long enjoyed a reputation for being paragons of great style and fine taste — and for not getting fat. Although famous femmes such as Coco Chanel, Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Françoise Hardy, and Lou Doillon are widely regarded as très chic, their effortless elegance is rarely equated with the "higher" arts. But fashion-forward trendsetting and brainy literary criticism aren't necessarily mutually exclusive — women's good taste isn't always constrained to sartorial matters. Tonight, Columbia College professor Katharine Hamerton discusses how 17th-century Parisian women were regarded not merely as fashion plates or domestic goddesses, but "as the rightful arbiters of art and literature."