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CHAPTER II
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.
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.
