Howell, Geraldine. "Epilogue: Picture Post Reports on Fashion News from France." Women in Wartime: Dress Studies from Picture Post 1938–1945
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Howell, Geraldine. "Epilogue: Picture Post Reports On Fashion News From France." Women in Wartime: Dress Studies from Picture Post 1938–1945. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019. 151–158. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350000957.ch-010>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 12:05 UTC. Copyright © Geraldine Howell 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 9 EPILOGUE: PICTURE POST REPORTS ON FASHION NEWS FROM FRANCE Introduction After the Nazi occupation of France from June 1940, British contact with the French couture ceased.1 Picture Post stories thereafter showed that British wartime style continued to reflect the mix of fashions that had been popular up to this point, some of which had been inspired by British ideas anyway. Alongside of these, at times, historically inclined dress styles and accessories, British tailored classics and country mix-and- match separates sustained their popularity, particularly as they offered the practical and durable pieces women wanted for wartime living. Clothes rationing was a manufacturing rather than a style watershed, although the reduced capacity to buy clothing did result in some interesting style ideas for the home wardrobe, as Picture Post readers would have been aware. Stories about dress in Britain from the spring of 1942 generally reflected the appearance of Utility clothing, which would eventually provide almost all high street apparel, and the progress of the austerity restrictions that would control Utility style. Design consolidated around a relatively unadorned, pared-back line for suits, coats and dresses with a focus on neat tailoring, practical, hard-wearing fabrics and a continuing capacity to mix and match. Picture Post readers, as we have seen, were kept up-to-date with the minor changes in detail – rather than silhouette – that now came to represent fashion, and informed about the new fashion values inherent in home-made and making-do. This was the story of fashion in Britain for the remainder of the war. That fashion had been taking a very different course in occupied France came as a surprise. Picture Post offered four articles on Paris fashion between 1943 and 1945, each providing slightly different viewpoints which charted the magazine’s reaction to, and consideration of, what Paris designers had been doing and for whom. As stories on British fashion continued to reiterate the less-is-more philosophy shaped by clothing control, it was French fashion that was, if only very sporadically, making news. This final chapter looks at these four stories, not only as they revealed the contrasts between controlled British and 152 WOMEN IN WARTIME: DRESS STUDIES FROM PICTURE POST 1938–1945 French couture wartime style, but also as they signalled new ways of thinking about fashion for the peace. Picture Post receives a copy of the Album de la Mode Figaro In the spring of 1943 Picture Post reported that a copy of the French magazine Album de la Mode Figaro had appeared in their office. It contained 120 pages ‘packed with beautiful drawings of magnificent clothes’.2 The article went on to report that the album ‘showed a wealth and luxury which is the last thing one associates with Paris in war’. Staff pondered whether the edition was, perhaps, a propaganda exercise? Was such clothing really being made and worn despite the tragic conditions of occupation? Subsequent investigation revealed ‘a strange story . In Paris, incredibly, the fashionable life goes on’.3 The elaborate and opulent outfits reproduced, together with some examples of design features and accessories, all revealed fashions ‘as beautiful and luxurious as in pre-war days’. Anne Scott-James reported that these clothes were being made right now and included ‘evening dresses in dozens, draped, décolleté, embroidered, jewelled. There are pleated frocks, fur-trimmed coats, lace-trimmed blouses, none of which may be made in England, taking yards of material. There are tucked sleeves and embroidered pockets involving many hours of hand-work’.4 Yet Paris was experiencing ‘starvation and barefoot poverty’.5 In addition there was also ‘new jewellery and perfumes to match’6 in contrast to the situation in Britain where jewellery and perfumery had both been extensively controlled under wartime Limitation and Prohibition Orders.7 Here were some perplexing revelations about the ‘Nazi New Order’.8 Clothes by France Obre, Jean Patou, Maggy Rouff and Robert Piguet were featured, each in their own way reflecting the ornate styling of an industry apparently undiminished by regulation or restraint. The small print accompanying the images described variously: a new dress line by Obre, characterized by fullness in the lower skirt and a decorative bow in moiré draped at the hip; a long tunic-style fitted jacket by Patou in multi-coloured brocade with asymmetric closure and tassel detail worn over a narrow crepe sheath; and two outfits by Maggy Rouff, one with a long line fitted and pin-tucked bodice embroidered above the waist with paillettes and worn over a gathered skirt, the other a dress and coat ensemble in padded taffeta lined with velvet and with an ostrich feather sleeve. Some unascribed drawings showed a sumptuous fur coat replete with fur hood and muffler beside an ornate cut-away jacket with polonaise-style peplum and generous roll collar. Smaller inset drawings, similarly unascribed, focused on design details such as an embroidered pocket and an opulent fur hood. A black velvet ‘Party Frock’ by Robert Piguet was distinguished by its ‘Velasquez skirt’ and the ‘glittering sequins’ that decorated the low-cut bodice and pannier-style hip shaping.9 Extravagant and audacious in design terms, these clothes were now setting the Nazi elite and its wealthy French collaborators apart from the rest of the French population. EPILOGUE: FASHION NEWS FROM FRANCE 153 The article went on to consider the lifestyle of these 2,000 or so collaborators who had turned their backs on the ‘rags and squalor’ witnessed in ‘most of the pictures that come out of France’ and were currently enjoying the ‘doubtful blessing of Nazi patronage’. Possession of a ‘carte de haute couture’ or buying permit entitled any ‘recognized collaborator’ to buy opulent clothing at the design houses without restriction. The ‘theatres, dinners, cocktail and restaurant parties’ that continued to operate under the Occupation provided the opportunity to dress up.10 Meanwhile, for the ‘vast majority’ of the French people ‘too loyal to collaborate and too poor to buy in the Black Market . the Germans provide nothing’. There had been ‘no attempt at rationing or a Utility scheme, for there is no bulk supply of fabric in France. The Germans have looted all the stocks and taken most of the workers’.11 This first article on the continuation of French couture fashion clearly separated out the ‘small Franco-German set’ still enjoying the good life from the ‘humbler’ citizens of France now enduring hardship and shortage. While remarking on the ‘splendid isolation’ of these few who chose to ‘ignore the poverty and squalor of the rest of the people’, Scott-James made no direct comment on the work of the couture houses other than to register some of the styles, the high prices and the extent of the labour invloved.12 The Album de la Mode Figaro had revealed to Picture Post staff and readers alike a new and unexpected view of life under the Occupation. Picture Post reports that ‘Paris fashions are quick off the mark’ Well over a year later and only a little more than a month after the liberation of Paris,13 Picture Post returned to the subject of Paris fashion.14 This time the focus was on French fashion designers and the type of war they had fought. Six photographs showing anonymous daywear outfits – three captioned ‘The Models in Reserve’ – established the continuing difference between French and British fashion. None were directly referred to in the text. Large and ornately decorated hats, in particular, were a feature of these photographs, alongside dresses made with generous skirts, and worn with higher-heeled and wedge- heeled shoes. All these reflected the styles on which couturiers had been working and the liberal resources at their disposal. Determined in the cause of fashion ‘war or no war’, here were models that suggested, according to the writer, that ‘the Fashion Trade is ready for peace’. Yet the caption went on to remark that it was ‘perhaps truer to say that the French fashion designers have always been ready for peace since they never knew war. There were always buyers for their models’. The fashion industry had carried on with its trade irrespective of the changed context and clientele. Designers knew, it was suggested, that ‘though Frenchmen might die in the Maquis, the future of the fashion industry was secure’. A final short paragraph added, ‘Perhaps the Resistance Movement, when it has time, will be able to thank the dress designers – both those who stayed and those who 154 WOMEN IN WARTIME: DRESS STUDIES FROM PICTURE POST 1938–1945 Figure 69 ‘The Incidental Background. The war has limited materials; but not for the smart coutourieres who make their models, war or no war.’ ‘Paris Fashion Are Quick Off the Mark’, Picture Post, 7 October 1944, p. 19. Bob Landry/Getty Images (2661225). fought so well in New York – for their contribution to France’s liberation’.15 Business as usual clearly struck the writer as controversial. Yet the irony would prove to be double-edged. The argument for keeping designer doors open is now a familiar one.16 In doing so both the industry and the untold number of jobs and livelihoods it saved and supported were secured ready, indeed, for the peace and all that that would so soon bring.17 In fighting for its survival the couture industry had been waging a very different type of war, arguably, from that being fought by the Maquis, a fact that would only become clear with the benefit of historic hindsight.