THE TYRANTS OF THE RUE DE LA PAIX
If one would write of Vanity Fair, one must write of the Rue de la Paix
and the Place Vendôme; for the faithful worshippers of the vanities
turn toward that quarter of Paris as devoutly as a Mohammedan toward
Mecca. There the high priests of Fashion hold sway, and women the world
over acknowledge with reverent salaams of spirit that there is no
fashion but Paris fashion, though ideas as to Fashion's true prophets
may differ.
Let no one speak lightly of the French frock. It has been a world
power, and its story, if adequately written, would be a most absorbing
and comprehensive one. Drama of all kinds has clung round its frills
and furbelows. Revelations philosophical, historical, sociological,
lurk in its shimmering folds. Men have died for it, women have sold
youth and honour, husband, child, and lover, for it. It is Fashion's
supreme expression, and, on the altar of Fashion all things precious
have, first and last, been offered up.
Even the French scarcely realize the vital issues involved in the
making of the Fashions, but they, at least, approach the matter with
becoming gravity. Americans are said to be, next to the French, the
best dressed women in the world; but there is a certain lamentable
levity in the American attitude toward dress, while the French take
everything pertaining to clothes seriously. One need only read a page
from one of the best French fashion journals to grasp the national
point of view.
Here is no mere curt chronicle of the modes. The writer's rhapsodies
put our spring poets to shame. Called upon to describe a creation
in pink taffeta, he dips his pen in May morning dew and invokes the
muses. He soars upon the viewless wings of poesy, and, soaring, sings
impassioned chants of praise; he culls his similes from all the realm
of beauty, his adjectives glow with fervour, he quotes from the
classics, he draws upon history and fable, he winds up with a fervid
apostrophe to fair woman,--and not one of his French readers smiles.
They see no extravagance in his periods. The pink taffeta was from
Paquin. Upon what shrine could flowery tributes more fittingly be laid?
The artists of the French fashion journals approach their work in the
same spirit. One uses the word artist advisedly, for they are really
artists, those men who picture modish femininity for the Parisian
fashion journals of the highest class. On this side of the water,
fashion illustrators, with one or two exceptions, attempt nothing more
than an accurate reproduction of the details of frock or wrap or hat.
There their whole duty ends, and as for producing a clever and charming
drawing,--perish the thought! The artist who can do that scorns fashion
work; or, if he condescends to it, ranks it with his advertisements
for soup or sapolio, and refuses to honour the pot boilers with his
signature.
"They do these things better in France." There, a man may have studied
seriously, may have seen his pictures given place on salon walls, and
yet may take pride in being one of the foremost fashion illustrators
in France. For example, there is Fournery. He is, perhaps, the most
popular of the French fashion artists; he commands large prices, has
more orders than he can fill, is independent to the last degree--and he
loves the work, puts into it the best of the skill that he has acquired
through earnest study, the skill that has won him a place in the salon,
when he has taken time from his serious fashion work for such frivolous
side issues.
He is a feminist, this artist. Everything that goes to make up feminine
coquetry and charm interests him. He is willing to draw a picture
of a fashionable frock, for the joy of drawing the woman who can
successfully wear it. The "femme chic" is his chosen theme. If editors
pay him large sums for gowning his women in certain costumes, so much
the better.
A visit to Fournery and a study of his methods would suggest a new
point of view to the American artist who thinks anything will do for a
fashion sketch.
One finds a delightful studio, a vivacious and enthusiastic young
man,--French to his finger-tips.
"You want to know how I do my work? A la bonheur! It is quite simple,
my method. I draw first the nude figure,--from life, bien entendu.
One must have the perfect figure before one can display the frock at
its best, n'est-ce pas? A wooden woman cannot show off a beautiful
gown. The wearer must be graceful, supple, svelte, chic. When one has
the woman one adjusts her lingerie. One corsets her--but why not? The
corset is an abomination perhaps, but it is worn, and there are corsets
and corsets. Since women must wear corsets, let them wear good ones.
The fashionable figure is not that of the Venus de Milo, but what would
you? It is the fashionable figure. The fashionable gown is made to go
over it. Voilà! My woman must be perfectly corsetted upon the accepted
lines, but with as little violence as possible to nature's grace. Then
the gown! One fits it to the figure, one makes it cling where it should
cling, flare where it should flare, bring the wearer's best points
into view, as the wearer exhibits the best points of the frock. One
introduces an interesting background. It must be cleverly drawn, that
background, a line here, a line there, nothing to distract the eye from
the figure but an appropriate setting,--a glimpse of the pesage at
Auteuil, the terrace at Monte Carlo, a corner of the Café de Paris, a
vista on the Avenue des Acacias.--There you have it, Madame, my fashion
picture. Elle est gentille, n'est-ce pas, cette petite femme chic?"
She is most assuredly "gentille." So is the "femme chic" as Drian
pictures her,--Drian the youthful, who might stand at the head of our
conscientiously monotonous portrayers of pretty women, were he working
in New York instead of Paris. Many of those same American exponents of
feminine types draw badly enough to shock the clever young Frenchman,
but they would marvel at his pride in his fashion work,--for he is
proud. He recognizes the importance of his metier.
It is this popular attitude toward things sartorial that has made
Paris the centre of the dressmaking world. The great dressmaker may be
born anywhere, but even a sartorial genius, born to dressmaking as the
sparks fly upward, will not come into his artistic heritage outside of
Paris. Your artistic temperament must have its sympathetic environment,
and only in Paris is the artist dressmaker ranked with the immortals,
only in Paris is dressmaking classed among the fine arts. Worth, the
great, blushed unseen in the dark unfathomed caves of Birmingham;
Beer wasted his sweetness on the desert air of Berlin; the Callot
Sisters are from Provence and owe to the land of Tartarin their bold
originality of invention; the Maison Drecol, famous in Paris and the
foundation of Viennese fashion, was established by a Madame Wagner from
Amsterdam. Once rooted in Parisian soil, these insignificant ones waxed
great and famous, and their history is the history of fully two thirds
of the well-known Paris dressmakers.
They are the truly great men of France, those famous dressmakers.
Politicians, statesmen, generals, writers, musicians, strut across the
public stage and play their rôles; but Paris could do without them.
Given a grand cataclysm, and a possibility of saving some one famous
man for the Republic, Paris would unhesitatingly rescue Paquin.
There has been a revolution in the type of the illustrious ones, during
the last decade. Dressmaking has its Champs de Mars; but, in its case,
the new men have almost driven the old salon to the wall.
Paris to-day has two distinct schools of great dressmakers, the new and
the old, but the survivors of the old original type are few and far
between. In the old days the phrase "creative genius" was not amiss
when applied to the heads of the big French dressmaking establishments.
To-day these great men are business men, but the men of the old school
were artists, had creative talent--in a fashion sense--and cultivated
that talent.
Walles, an Englishman by birth, was an extreme example of this attitude
on the part of the dressmaker toward his art, though his name is
not so well known to the general public as many others. He was an
artist _enragé_, a genius in colour combination and line. He was an
avid student of colour, line, values, in the art galleries; he spent
day after day in the woods noting the colour combinations of the
autumn leaves; he drew upon flower and bird and insect and cloud for
inspiration, and he achieved great results; but he had the ill-balanced
temperament of genius and his career was brief.
Madame Roderigues, a Portuguese--and an exception to the rule that no
great dressmaking talent has come from Spain, Portugal, or Italy--was a
phenomenal artist of this same type, but ill health interfered with her
spectacular success.
Other dressmakers, not such extremists as these two, ranked with the
artist group, but Worth was practically the last of the old masters of
dress.
The new men are of a different class. The work turned out from their
ateliers is as good as that of their predecessors, but it is produced
by different methods. The head of the establishment to-day is, first
of all, a business man of extraordinary ability. He is also a man of
phenomenally good taste--but he is not a creative genius. He does not
lie awake wrestling with embryonic ideas concerning sleeve or flounce
or collar, he does not roam woods and fields in search of inspiration.
Not he. He buys the brains of lesser folk and launches the product of
those brains for the edification of womankind and his own glory. Some
little ouvrière in the workroom has a moment of inspiration. She goes
to her employer with her idea. If he likes it, he buys it,--and she
goes back to her work. Or perhaps some obscure dressmaker with more
originality than reputation goes to one of the famous men and shows
him models she has designed. If she has anything to offer which, in
his judgment, has possibilities, he buys it--and at a generous figure.
These men are always willing to pay liberally for ideas; but, once
bought, the thing is theirs. The originator must not repeat it nor
claim credit for it, though it may make the man who buys it famous,
and set the fashionable world agog. Unfair? Not at all. The little
dressmaker has not the ability to launch her idea. She makes more
out of it by selling it to a well-known house than she could make in
any other way. In course of time she may become the head of such an
establishment, for the seats of the mighty are filled chiefly from her
class; but, in the meantime, she is glad to find a market for her ideas.
The genius of the great dressmaker to-day consists in appreciation
of the possibilities in an idea. He may not be able to conceive an
original costume, but he knows instinctively what is good, has taste
and judgment that are unerring. Out of a hundred models he will
unhesitatingly choose the one that has a chance of success; and, having
had the taste to select, he has the business ability to exploit and
sell.
Then too, the ultimate development of the chosen ideas does rest in
his hands. The seller of sketches or of crinoline models has given
him suggestions. It is for him to bring forth from those suggestions
creations that will dictate to all the fashionable world. Robed in a
loose cloak of silk that will protect his ordinary clothing, puffing a
cigar that consorts ill with his classic toga, the master sits in his
workroom amid a chaos of materials and trimmings. Around him cluster
his chief aids, exhibiting to him the experimental models turned out
in the workroom. Jove-like, save for the great Havana tucked in a
corner of his mouth, Monsieur lays down the law, criticises, suggests,
alters, experiments. A fold is changed here, a frill is introduced
there, materials are selected and harmonized, trimmings and linings
are decided upon, names are given to the models at their birth. If
the exact material or trimming needed to produce a desired effect is
lacking, Monsieur does not allow that to worry him. He will merely tell
the manufacturer to make what he wants--and the manufacturer will do
it. The great dressmaker can make or mar a new fabric, and it is wise
for the maker of dress materials to humour the whims of the tyrant.
Under the régime of the old masters of fashion, the head of the
establishment was a sacred personality--a being to be spoken of in
hushed tones and approached with tremulous awe. He hedged himself about
with mystery. He represented creative intellect at its highest; and,
when the intellect settled down to its sacred function, nothing short
of battle, murder, or sudden death would present a satisfactory excuse
for an intrusion upon the privacy of the Master. Only a few privileged
ones, elect because of the size of their bills, their superlative
appreciation of true art or the worthiness of their faces and figures,
were admitted to the Presence, and they accepted the honour in a spirit
of true humility. If an ordinary mortal, daring as Icarus, asked to
see Monsieur himself, Monsieur's representatives were tolerant, but
pitying. See Him! Impossible! So might the priests of old have regarded
a Cook's tourist, asking to be personally conducted through the
Eleusinian Mysteries.
But Paquin and his followers have changed all that. Ordering gowns is
no longer an awesome function. It is a soothing, delightful experience.
One loses in religious exaltation but gains in beaming self-content.
Paquin was perhaps the first, as he is the best known, of the
new school. Thirteen or fourteen years ago he was a clerk on the
Bourse with no more knowledge of costuming than was to be gained by
appreciative observation of _les belles Parisiennes_. Madame Paquin,
who was not yet Madame Paquin, had a little dressmaking shop in an
insignificant quarter. The two met, married. A rich patron opportunely
turned up and furnished capital for an ambitious dressmaking
enterprise. The young couple opened a shop on the Rue de la Paix. There
was no sounding of trumpets nor beating of drums, but with the opening
of that little shop Paris was well on the way toward another revolution.
To-day, Paquin stands at the head of the great dressmakers of Paris.
His word is practically law. "Paquinesque" is the word coined to
express all that there is of the most chic.
"An ugly costume," says the first Parisienne.
"But no, ma chère, it is of Paquin," protests the second.
"Oh, vraiment? But yes, I see. It has fine points. Ah, mon Dieu, yes,
it is charming," gushes the first critic. So much for being the king
who can do no wrong.
The success was, first and foremost, a success of personality. Monsieur
Paquin is a handsome man. His manner is a thing to conjure with--and he
has worked it to its conjuring limit. Madame Paquin is pretty, she is
gifted, she is charming. Everyone is fond of Madame. From the first,
this clever and ornamental young couple followed a new system. No
haughty seclusion, no barred doors, at the Maison Paquin. Madame was
probably met at the door by Monsieur Paquin himself, and to be met by
Paquin was a treat. The most beautiful of Parisian élégantes and the
homeliest old dowager received the same flattering welcome, the same
tender interest. There was no servility in the manner. It was merely
the perfection of courtesy. The customer was enveloped in an atmosphere
that was soothing, delicious, promotive of deep self-esteem. Madame
Paquin continued the treatment. The charming woman, the handsome man,
both so deeply interested, both so deferential, both so intelligent!
This was a new experience. The Parisienne smiled, purred, under the
stroking, bought more than she had intended,--and came again.
Vanity is a lever stronger than awe. Paquin and his pretty wife
understood that fact and built upon it. Feminine Paris chanted "The
King is dead; long live the King!" The revolution was accomplished.
The sincerest flattery is imitation, and Paquin has been much
flattered. A long line of more or less successful Adonises have
followed in his footsteps. But Doeuillet and Francis are perhaps the
most important on the list.
Francis is young--in the early thirties. He is almost as good-looking
as Paquin. His manners are a Parisian proverb and, personally, he is
doubtless the most popular man in his class. His customers adore him.
What is more surprising, his work people also adore him, and even the
touchiest of mannequins, prone to decamp at a moment's notice, swears
by Francis and refuses to leave or forsake him. Ten years ago Francis
was a poor salesman. To-day he is rich. Tailor-made costumes, or the
Parisian modification of the tailor-made, are his specialty, and his
coats and cloaks are famous. Doeuillet, too, has won fame and fortune
within a few years. He, too, is young and handsome and ingratiating.
Six feet tall, with the shoulders of an athlete and the face of a
frank, honest boy, he, too, is a "lion among ladies." Mention Doeuillet
to a customer--she tells you of his eyes. "Such soft, honest eyes, ma
chère. One would trust him anywhere, anywhere." The soft, honest eyes
have been a valuable asset. Doeuillet has the most gorgeous dressmaking
establishment of all that cluster around the Place Vendôme. He caters
to the ultra-extravagant, who do not care what they pay. His gowns are
the elaborate ball gowns, the marvellous confections seen at Maxim's,
at the races, at Monte Carlo.
Ernest is another of the men of the new school; but Armand is,
figuratively speaking, the baby of the group. On the first of
September, four or five years ago, a wealthy patron put an unknown
young employee of a silk house into the dressmaking business. The
young man was Armand. He had a modest atelier on a side street. On
March first he moved into the famous Saye Palace on the Place Vendôme,
the palace in which Napoleon and Eugenie met for the first time, and
there, among the superb frescoes and splendid carvings, he installed
his luxurious establishment. Success, wealth, in seven months! Verily,
the dressmaking business has its opportunities for the young man who
combines business ability and beaux yeux.
Paquin's income is estimated at from three hundred thousand to four
hundred thousand dollars a year. Doeuillet makes as much, and even
without the Adonis characteristics, business talents may carry the
Parisian dressmaker to wealth and fame. The list of rich dressmakers
aside from "those delightful young men" is a long one. The Callot
Soeurs are possibly the most expensive firm in Paris. Doucet needs no
introduction to Americans. Neither does Beer, who is considered by
many the greatest creative artist in dress of our day. He has one of
the historic palaces on the Place Vendôme, and his salons are rich
in the eighteenth-century bibelots and furniture of which he is an
enthusiastic collector. Flowers are everywhere throughout the rooms,
and in the spring all of the many windows of the great palace are
abloom with blossoms growing in window-boxes. Beer's mannequins, too,
are vastly decorative, and this establishment is typical of the luxury
and extravagance amid which the game of fashion-making is played.
La Ferrière has the most exclusive English trade as well as Parisian
vogue, and is Paris dressmaker, by royal warrant, to Queen Alexandra.
Madame Havet, Blanche Lebouvier, Sara Meyer, Mademoiselle Corné, are
famous and wealthy. Rouff belongs near the head of the list and is a
lineal descendant of the old school. In his establishment many of the
traditions of the great old men survive. M. Rouff is not always in
evidence as are the meteoric young men. To have an interview with him
is an honour, and he will refuse to see even the most illustrious if
his whim prompts him to do so. The ordinary customer meets only his
representatives. Perhaps, during the interview, the curtains of the
door will part. A thin, dark, rather wild-eyed face will appear for an
instant and vanish. That is Rouff.
[Illustration: Doeuillet passes Judgment]
Worth has a splendid trade, but it is largely a serious one. The great
English and French dowagers go there; and Jean Worth, the present
active head of the house, wears, more or less comfortably, the halo of
his illustrious grandfather.
The dowager calls him a charming boy and says to him, "M'sieu Jean,
when your famous grandpapa was alive, he made for me a light blue
brocade that was most becoming. I would like something of that
kind"--and M'sieu Jean repeats for age the light blue brocade of youth.
He creates an extremely beautiful light blue brocade too, and he
charges for it a price that would have surprised his famous grandpapa.
He is old school by heredity, but he has modern commercial instincts,
this charming boy.
The prices of the average French frock have gone up under the new
régime, though extravagant sums were always paid for particularly
original creations. There is practically no limit to the expense of
dress to-day, and spectacular prices are paid for spectacular costumes;
but the price of the great bulk of the gowns sold by the famous makers
ranges from one hundred and twenty-five dollars to five hundred
dollars, with the greatest sales between one hundred and seventy-five
and three hundred. Certain firms refuse to make even the simplest
frock for less than one hundred and fifty dollars, and turn out few
costing less than five hundred. Small wonder that in Paris the great
dressmaker is a personage, belonging to the swell clubs, in evidence
everywhere save in society's exclusive circles, owning a superb country
place up the Seine, a seashore home in Normandy, a villa on the
Riviera, buying--as did one of the group this year--whole blocks of
houses in the most expensive quarter of Paris, spending--as did another
of the guild--twenty thousand dollars upon one day's entertainment
of a few chosen friends, running handsome automobiles, driving and
racing fine horses, and, from his vantage point, watching the flood of
fashions which he has set flowing.
Yet the expenses of a big dressmaking firm are large, as well as the
profits. Few of the autocrats are themselves practical dressmakers.
They must hire work-folk capable of carrying out, in perfection, the
ideas they wish to exploit, and expert cutters, fitters, sleeve hands,
skirt hands, etc., command high wages. Exclusive material and trimmings
are required in such an establishment; nothing is skimped, nothing is
omitted that would add to the beauty of the frock and so sustain the
reputation of the house. Success, not economy, is the watchword. A
small army of employees is required in one of the great houses, and the
place is a veritable beehive of systematized industry; but the patrons
see only the "front," and of the wheels within wheels even of that
smooth-running front, they have small idea.
Each dressmaker has his loyal and devoted clientèle, and it is upon
this faithful band that he counts for his greatest profits, although
the large floating trade, too, brings in immense returns. Some women
famed for their taste and extravagance in dress refuse to confine
themselves to any one artist, claiming that each dressmaker has his
specialty and that it is wise to go for each frock to the maker most
successful in the creation of frocks of exactly the type desired. The
idea seems reasonable, but there is much to be said against it. For
the woman with whom Parisian frocks are an incidental and fluctuating
supply, the system may work well enough, but the woman who season after
season buys lavish outfits from French dressmakers will do well to put
herself in the hands of some one of the great men, establish a thorough
understanding with him, allow him to study her personality, her needs,
her possibilities. It is in such study that the artist dressmaker
proves his title clear to the name "artist," and to achieve artistic
triumphs in dress it is not enough that one wears a beautiful gown, one
must wear a beautiful gown perfectly adapted to one's individuality,
a gown in which one is at one's best. There are some women who know
instinctively their own requirements, but these women are few, and
even they can carry out their ideas only through the sympathetic
understanding of a dressmaker who is master of his art. The average
woman must trust to the dressmaker for the desired results, and to
do this confidently and with a surety of obtaining his best efforts,
his most serious consideration, his most masterly comprehension, she
must be among his tried and valued customers, must have given him
opportunity to know her well, to understand perfectly her needs.
All are fish who come to the dressmaker's net, and the woman who will
pay the price may have the clothes; but the woman who can pay the price
and display the clothes to the best advantage is the beloved of the
Parisian artist in dress. "One does one's best, of course, even with
the woman of no figure and of homely face," says Monsieur, with a shrug
of resignation, "but when a customer is slender, graceful, beautiful,
and knows the art of wearing a frock--then it is a joy to clothe her,
then one puts one's heart into the work, then one is inspired to
flights. Ah, mon Dieu, yes, there are women for whom one would make
clothes without pay, were it not necessary to divorce sentiment and
business."
Many American women are upon this list of ideal customers. In fact les
Americaines divide the honours with the famous demi-mondaines of Paris.
Do not shudder, Madame of the impeccable reputation. The comparison
extends only to the province of clothes, and as we have said before,
the great demi-mondaine of Paris is the best dressed woman in the
world. One of the tyrants of the Place Vendôme put the matter clearly
in a recent interview:
"Our best customers--best because they spend most freely and because
they show our creations to the best advantage, are the famous
demi-mondaines of Paris. You must not confuse the demi-mondaine with
the grande cocotte. La grande cocotte is another thing. She dresses
gorgeously, she spends money like water, when she has it, but she is
seldom well dressed. She is merely spectacular. The perfection of
extravagant simplicity, the apotheosis of artistic taste,--that is for
the great demi-mondaine. She makes no mistake. Her costumes do not
jump at the eyes. They are perfection. C'est tout. There are French
society leaders who dress as well, but they are few, and for that
matter, the demi-mondaines belonging to the class of which I have been
speaking are also few. One can count them on the fingers of the hands,
those demi-mondaines who really influence the fashions."
"And the Americans?" queried the interviewer.
"Oh, they are charming, les Americaines. We depend upon them.
They cut more figure with us than any other dames et demoiselles
convenables--respectable matrons and maids--on our books. Some are
bizarre. Yes, of course. There are parvenues in America as elsewhere,
more there, perhaps, because there are more quickly made fortunes in
America. But many of the Americans have a genius for dress, and the
money to indulge their tastes. They appreciate good clothes and wear
them well. Me, I adore les Americaines."
His ardour was heartfelt, as it might well be, for millions of dollars
had been poured into his coffers by American customers. One of these
women, whose fortune is American, though its possessor elects to live
in Europe, orders, on an average, from one hundred to one hundred and
fifty gowns a year, the prices running from one hundred and twenty-five
dollars to two thousand dollars. Even the great man lowered his voice
when he mentioned these figures. "Voilà une cliente précieuse. Voilà,
certes, une cliente précieuse," he murmured reverently.
From all over Europe, and from farther afield, women flock to the
dressmakers of Paris. The Hungarian and Polish and Viennese women
of fashion have a reputation for dress, and some of the Russians
spend fabulous sums upon the Rue de la Paix. Many English women of
fashion buy almost all of their frocks in Paris, and within the last
few years the German trade has assumed unprecedented importance in
the dressmaking establishments of Paris, but neither the English nor
the Germans as a class have a talent for dress, and the English or
German woman who attains the effect to which the French apply the
comprehensive term "chic" is the exception rather than the rule.