Many of Renoir’s portraits of women should be seen as depictions of types rather than portraits of specific individuals. Renoir’s young Parisian lady has also been called La grisette, a term used to describe a woman from the working class. These young women were often seamstresses, laundresses or shop assistants in the cities. As a rule, women who worked as artists’ models also came from the working class. The word grisette implied looseness and vanity.