In the face of occupation French women had their own resistance… while British women had uniforms they had hats

The Arts Society Newbury lecture: Le Théâtre de la Mode: The Renaissance of French Fashion, by Connie Gray

on Tuesday, July 9

at Arlington Arts, Newbury

Review by ALAN CHILDS

AMONG the German aims of the Second World War – cowing Europe, destroying the Soviet Union, building a Reich to last a thousand years – there was one that seems, at first glance, frivolous. Moving the centre of the fashion world from Paris to Berlin.

Not so frivolous, expert Connie Gray told The Arts Society Newbury.

There were more than 30,000 workers in Paris in the fashion and associated industries, and couture was vital for the economy.

Central to the defence of the industry in the face of occupation was the Syndicate Nationale de Haute Couture – which then, as now, decreed its members were the only couturiers.

Its headquarters were stormed early in the invasion and its archives and customer lists seized. Its head, Lucien Lelong, convinced the Germans that their plan to move the couture industry would only destroy it.

The shadow of collaboration still hangs over the fashion houses, but Lelong’s argument was that it provided continued employment, even for some Jewish workers.

French women had their own resistance. While British women had uniforms, said Gray, French women had hats. Hats and turbans became increasingly extravagant to show that women had not bowed under occupation.

Then came Liberation, but the country had no money and no fuel in the worst winter in history.

Lelong organised the astonishing Theatre de la Mode. Sculptors made 200 71cm-high zinc wire mannequins, each with sculpted heads.

Couturiers used the scraps of material that were available to design the year’s fashion in miniature.

Tiny shoes were carved out of wood and the seamstresses made the exquisitely small decorations on clothing where the pockets opened and the buttons worked.

Artists and set designers drew and built elaborate backdrops from the vistas of Paris. The Theatre de la Mode provided work, hope and purpose.

All Paris flocked to see it at the Louvre, in admiration and joy.

There were a million visitors in the first month.

It toured the world to show French couture was back. And the designs? They became the still famous and international New Look.

And Berlin never did become the centre of fashion.

theartssocietynewbury.org.uk

Next lecture: Banksy: Fraud or Genius? on September 24