café society

• cafe society

café society (plural café societies)

1. Especially from the late-19th century through the mid-20th century in Europe and America, a culture characterized by continual socializing in bistros, coffee shops, and nightclubs, sometimes extravagantly frivolous and sometimes intensely intellectual in nature but always high-spirited.
   • 1938 Sept. 19, "Books: Caf" (book review of The Happy Island by Dawn Powell), Time (retrieved 26 May 2014):

     Manhattan café society provokes a lot of writing, most of it about as enduring as a café socialite's hangover.

   • 1988 Aug. 23, Wolfgang Saxon, "Obituary: Jerome Zerbe, 85, Photographer Of Café Society and a Columnist," New York Times (retrieved 26 May 2014):

     He was one of those who in the 1930's pioneered . . . candid shots of socialites and entertainers out-on-the-town and eager to be seen. . . . His photography became one of the elements on which café society thrived.

   • 2009 Nov. 20, John Lichfield, "Cafe society is dead, but long live the cafe," The Independent (UK) (retrieved 26 May 2014):

     [H]e realised that the free-wheeling café culture of the 1930s or the 1950s – when Jean-Paul Sartre held court in Montparnasse – had vanished. Overall, he concludes (rightly, I think) that the French café is thriving but French café society is dead.

   • 2013 Jan. 23, "Iran's morality police crack down on coffee shops: Popular hangout for Tehrani intellectuals closes," The Guardian (UK) (retrieved 26 May 2014):

     Iran's cafe society has been targeted as a fertile breeding ground for dissidents.

• intelligentsia
• jet set

• café society at OneLook Dictionary Search