For decades, servers at Cafe Luxembourg on Manhattan’s Upper West Side would present a postcard with the check at the end of a meal. It bore a black and white image of three nude women, with their backs to the camera, standing at the restaurant’s zinc-wrapped bar. One looks coyly over her shoulder, a cigarette dangles from the fingers of another. Inspired by the 1930s Brassaï photograph Chez Suzy, la preséntation (At Suzy’s, introductions), the image was used on matchbooks, merchandise and ads in publications like Interview magazine. Over time it became as iconic as the restaurant, which opened in 1983, itself.
Recently, diners noticed that the photograph of the women had disappeared, and a new postcard was presented with their checks. It also featured three women au natural, but this was a drawing of the ladies perched on the edge of a martini glass, with their legs dangling in the martini itself. Read the truly delightful story of how came to be, here.