In 1937 Clarissa studied art in Paris. Her mother had asked the British Ambassador, Sir George Clerk, to keep a watchful eye on her, an unintended consequence of this being that she was taken under the wing of an Embassy press secretary who, with his wife, introduced her to a round of "café" society parties. Among the friends she made in Paris were the monocled Fitzroy Maclean, a future politician and adventurer who was then third secretary at the embassy, and the writer Marthe Bibesco. Together with two female contemporaries, she made a visit to the Folies Bergère, an unusual destination for 16-year-old girls, where the singer Josephine Baker, clad only in a circlet of bananas, became the first naked female body she had ever seen.