Le goût des femmes (The Taste of Women) is a coloured picture book showing Varenne exploring a new style for a new century. Around 2000 he started experimenting with bright colours added to his trademark ink drawings, producing images clearly influenced by modernist artists and Japanese Shunga. He also started producing erotic reinterpretations of paintings by famous artists including Watteau, Courbet and Gaugin.

Each of the fifty images in Le goût des femmes has a title, many of which show that Varenne was still thinking in very conventional terms, but when these are ignored this large-format album shows him at the peak of his artistic imagination.

Le goût des femmes was published by Albin Michel.