Yes, Paris’s fashion industry is at the heart of the city’s establishment, as it has always been …
Kings and queens of the fashion world
It is often said these days that most of us live under a kind of fashion tyranny, dressing as the magazines order us to, or the department stores allow us to. But it wasn’t much different in centuries past, when anyone who could afford it had to emulate their rulers or be excluded from high society.
This was especially true during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), who believed almost literally that the sun shone out of his royal posterior, and wanted everything that clothed it to be suitably divine. He therefore summoned the best tailors from all over Europe to his court to make baroque outfits for him and his nobles. Lace and ribbon-covered culottes, shoes decorated with roses, bouffant blouses, pheasant-feather hats—and that was just the men. Women wore tight corsets, low-cut dresses, and trains that got longer as the lady rose up the social ladder (which she often did by taking all her clothes off).
The magnificence of this non-stop preening influenced not only the rest of France, but most of Europe, except those countries under the yolk of Puritanism, of course, where the merest buckle was regarded as a temptation sent by Satan.
Although Louis and his successors managed to bankrupt France with their unsuccessful wars and botched colonialism, Paris hung on to its luxury tailoring industry, and the city became a popular shopping spot for European aristocrats. Anyone with some money to spend could find a tailor capable of making an outfit that would be the talk of the town back home.
All this could have been called Parisian haute couture, but it took an Englishman to pin the concept down and turn the tailor from a craftsman indulging the whims of the noble customer into the tyrant of taste that is today’s styliste.
Worth his weight in chintz
Charles Worth was born in Lincolnshire in 1825 and went to London as a teenager to become an apprentice draper (a merchant selling cloth and sewing materials). He apparently spent most of his time bookkeeping, but developed a passion for dress design. So when his apprenticeship finished, he immediately left for Paris to work for a textile merchant who also sold ready-made clothing. Here, Worth began to make dresses that won prizes at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 and the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle. Soon, he had enough private customers to set up a company of his own in the rue de la Paix, a new, chic street built on the site of a monastery that had been demolished after the Revolution.
It was at this point, in 1858, that Worth created the business model that made Paris the fashion capital it is today, and he did this by introducing three revolutionary concepts.
First, by his sheer self-confidence and by sewing in labels saying ‘Worth, 7 rue de la Paix’, he convinced everyone that his dresses were not just clothing but works of art. Secondly, he showed potential customers how magnificent they could look by modelling the dresses on real women rather than simply draping his creations over a tailor’s dummy. And thirdly, he held fashion shows, dictating to women what they would be wearing the following season.
This was not yet a democratization of fashion—the dresses were handmade and richly decorated, and would be individually tailored to fit the rich clientes. But Worth got the royals to come to him rather than vice-versa. First Princess Metternich, wife of the Austrian Ambassador, began patronizing his shop, closely followed by her friend the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. Soon, the rue de la Paix shop was turning clients away, and its reputation was sealed.
In 1868, Worth was instrumental in the creation of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne, and as we all know, once a French syndicat (union) gets involved, nothing will ever change again. Which is why all the Parisian haute couture houses, from Chanel to Dior to Yves Saint Laurent and beyond, have followed the same basic model—create a look, imbue it with Parisian exclusivity, and make people worship you.
In short, Charles Worth invented not only haute couture but the whole concept of luxury branding, which has been as much a part of Paris’s appeal for the last century as the legs of its Eiffel Tower and those of its can-can dancers.
France has a habit of denying foreigners credit for things they wish they had invented themselves, like the guillotine and the baguette.* Charles Worth, though, is an exception. Today, Paris’s haute couture industry is completely open about its debt to this Englishman. The highly prestigious École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, where big names like André Courrèges, Jean-Louis Scherrer and Yves Saint Laurent studied, runs a history course entitled La Mode depuis Worth (fashion since Worth). Not ‘since Louis XIV or even ‘since Chanel’—since Worth. Quite an accolade.
The only stain on this shimmering cloak of honour is one that Parisians have made by accident. They find it very difficult to say ‘th’, and can’t believe that a word with ‘or’ in the middle should rhyme with fleur. They therefore have a nasty habit of mispronouncing the name of their English benefactor as ‘wart’.
Ich bin un Parisien
These days, Parisian fashion is schizophrenic. On the one hand, brands like Chanel, Dior, Chloé, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy are seen as the ultimate in Parisian chic. On the other, they all hire, or have hired, foreigners to create or nurture this Parisianitude—big names like Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Marc Jacobs and the late Alexander McQueen.
Granted, England brings in foreign managers to train its football team, but that is precisely to get them playing like stylish foreigners rather than clodhopping Englishmen. Surely handing the image of a Parisian fashion house over to a foreign designer is like a top sushi restaurant recruiting a Belgian chef?
Well, yes and no. Take Karl Lagerfeld, for example, directeur artistique for Chanel, the Parisian fashion brand par excellence. He was born Karl Otto Lagerfeldt in Hamburg, and speaks French with an almost comedy German accent, popping up in the media like some modern incarnation of a Prussian envoy to the court of Louis XIV. How, you might justifiably ask, could he possibly represent—embody, even—Chanel, which he has done almost continuously since 1982? Well, for a start, behind that accent lurks a grammatically impeccable and very witty French. Secondly, in his black-and-white formal outfits, with their touches of silver, he seems to have adopted classical elegance as his everyday lifestyle. And thirdly, for all his eccentricities, Lagerfeld is a consummate professional. Since his arrival on the Paris scene in 1959, he has been artistic director of several fashion houses, and is credited with salvaging two of them—Chloé and Chanel—from an imminent slide into obscurity. Under his directorship, Chloe became the chic brand of the mid-’60s, and was seen hugging the figures of Jackie Onassis, Brigitte Bardot and Grace Kelly, aka Princess of Monaco.
To achieve this, Karl did much more than bring a German touch to French couture—which was, in fact, the last thing the French brands were looking for. They wanted a designer who would make their clothes look even more Parisian, and his or her nationality was a secondary consideration.
Grafting foreign talent on to Paris fashion is a complex process that was explained to me by Susan Oubari, a Paris-based Californian who works as a go-between for American buyers and Parisian fashion houses, especially during the twice-yearly rush of Fashion Week. ‘It doesn’t matter what nationality they are,’ Susan told me. ‘If a foreign designer, or any designer, is to be a success, they have to be able to work within the structure of the company. They need to get on with the boss, who will be a pure businessman, work with the creative people, and keep the financial department happy. They might be forced to compromise on some of their designs, or make way-out designs fit a very down-to-earth budget.’
And these Anglo-German designers don’t get hired just because the French think they will be more realistic about the business side of things, either. ‘The important thing,’ Susan emphasized to me, ‘is for the designer to be able to go into the archives, and mix the old with the new. They have to study old collections, understan
d what the brand is about, and look at the reasons for its past success.’
German designer Karl Lagerfeld may look like an action doll and talk like a Prussian Duke, but he is the essence of Paris fashion, known by the French as ‘le Kaiser de la mode’.
It’s rather like taking a classic car and designing a model that today’s drivers will want. The new model can’t turn its back on the past—it has to capitalize on it. Lagerfeld’s Chanel designs are therefore not pure Lagerfeld, they’re carefully crafted über-Chanel.
And the traffic isn’t all one-way. The fashion house, and Paris itself, leave their mark on the designer. Karl Lagerfeld, the longest-serving of the big-name foreign designers in Paris, has been turned into a French institution. He was invited to design a coin to celebrate the centenary of Coco Chanel’s birth, he has appeared on a special-edition French Diet Coke bottle, and he has even been awarded the Légion d’Honneur, which as the award’s statutes put it, is usually given to those who have shown twenty-five years of eminent merit in the service of the Nation’. In short, the fashion industry has made sure that the German designer has become woven into the fabric of Parisian life.
Creating le buzz
The head styliste at a top Parisian fashion house has to do more than create saleable clothing—he or she has to generate a buzz, and, again, the fashion house doesn’t care if this is a German, American or British buzz. The only important thing is for the brand name to be in the magazines and on the celebs’ backs and backsides. This is why people with their own strong image, like Lagerfeld and the eccentric Galliano, or a famous name, like Stella McCartney, are perfect. In any case, the world of Parisian fashion may all look very refined and elegant, but it is governed by hard-nosed commercial thinking of a type few would associate with France, supposedly the capital of bad service and work-shy workers.
The hardest work of all goes on behind the scenes during Fashion Week. The shows themselves don’t really have that much of an impact on ordinary Parisians—a few trendy restaurants are suddenly fuller than usual of thin people with designer sunglasses and ever-active iPhones, TV newsreaders will raise an amused eyebrow while introducing a few seconds of models gangling along catwalks, and occasionally a public space like the Gare de l’Est forecourt will be partly cordoned off so that models can prance up and down without bumping into commuters.
However, the important thing is that even someone like me, who can’t conceive how a handbag can possibly cost more than 50 euros, is aware of Paris Fashion Week. And this is thanks to some very un-Parisian backroom work by the industry. Susan Oubari explained the mechanics:
‘Before the week begins, a Parisian brand will bring in experienced sales people to cater for each different set of buyers. Americans will be hired to sell the collection to Americans, Italians for Italians, and so on. They will see a presentation given by the marketing people about the concept behind the collection, the techniques and materials used, and how to sell it into different markets. These sales people will then go away and prepare their pitches to the buyers who will—hopefully, if the catwalk show itself goes well—come to the showrooms.’
The danger is, of course, that the sellers might live up, or down, to everyone’s preconception about French service—this being the total failure to notice that someone wants serving, and/or the shrug of indifference if the customer complains. But Susan assured me that the welcome given to potential fashion buyers bears no resemblance to the reception she got the first—and last—time she dared to order a coffee while sitting at a Parisian café table laid for lunch: ‘People from the fashion house will be on hand to welcome the buyers, in English or whatever language it takes. They’ll ask about their hotel, recommend restaurants and parties, all the while gauging reactions to the clothes. The French want to make sure that all the international buyers get a magical Paris experience, so that they’ll come back again. It’s not what we imagine about France at all.’
Furthermore, like movie directors, the fashion shows will use the Opéra, the Grand Palais, the Tuileries, the Louvre, all the big monuments, getting the city to sell their clothes for them. All of which points to the conclusion that Paris’s fashion houses are discreetly undermining some key myths about the city. They’re proving that the Parisian artistic establishment does not have to be elitist and set in its ways. When necessary, Paris can treat its culture simultaneously as art—to be swooned over—and as a business—to be ruthlessly sold.
And they’re also showing that French customer service can be as good as any in the world.** But only when it really wants to be, of course.
Paris libéré
Being a Parisian fashion designer has to be a bit like singing opera at La Scala or surfing in Hawaii. You are where it’s at. You have, as the French would say, arrived. To find out how this feels, I talked to Marie-Christine Frison, a Strasbourgeoise who started her career designing handbags and accessories for Nina Ricci, and who now co-runs her own fashion company, AD&MCF.
As well as designing for other clients, Marie-Christine and her partner have their own brand, Bandits Manchots (‘one-armed bandits’), for which they are currently developing a line of postcards made of leather. Marie-Christine got the idea from seeing rolls of unused cowskin after the launch of a collection of chic handbags. It was top-quality material, dyed in beautiful colours, that was destined for the dustbin or the incinerator because the fashion house wasn’t going to use it once the season was over. Bandits Manchots bought the leather and had it cut into postcard-sized rectangles, on to which they have printed messages and tattoo-like motifs. To me, it seemed a very Parisian idea—taking a seemingly down-market concept like a postcard and raising the tone a notch. The kind of thing Jean-Paul Gaultier introduced into French fashion in the ’80s, and that Karl Lagerfeld is continuing with schemes like his limited-edition Diet Coke bottle.
I put the point to Marie-Christine as we sit in a café in the 9th arrondissement that, perhaps like her postcards, is trying its best not to look too chic, and looking all the more chic for doing so.
‘I never thought of it as a Parisian idea,’ she says. ‘I never try to be Parisian.’
‘But when you started at Nina Ricci, didn’t they tell you that they wanted your designs to be Parisian?’
‘No. They expected the designs to reflect the spirit of the brand, with a soft, romantic feel. And my job was simply to take the art director’s wishes and make them reality. No one talked about being Parisian. Sorry, this isn’t helping you at all, is it?’
‘Yes, of course it is,’ I lie, being as courteously Parisian as I can. ‘But what about when you arrived in Paris, didn’t you notice something typically Parisian about the way people looked?’
‘Oh yes. But it wasn’t because their clothes looked Parisian.’
‘No?’
‘It was more an impression that they were free. The girls all had a relaxed way of walking, as though they were free to dress the way they wanted. They had the freedom to match very incongruous things, which we couldn’t do en province. Outside Paris, you continuously have to ask yourself, “Does my shirt go with my trousers?” In Paris, you never ask that. You take a whole bunch of things that shouldn’t go together and you wear them together, and that creates a look.’
‘A Parisian look?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
Pausing only to offer a short prayer of thanks to the gods of fashion in their 8th arrondissement temples, I try to push home my advantage.
‘So Parisian fashion is based on being unconventional?’
‘No.’ Marie-Christine shakes her head. ‘Parisians are not unconventional at all, because they all go with the group.’
Damn, back to square one.
‘A while ago,’ she continues, ‘some photographers put on an exhibition of pictures of teenage Parisian girls who they had just stopped in the street. And the girls all looked almost exactly the same. They were all holding their bags the same way—’ Marie-Christine holds out her arm, croo
ked at the elbow, the wrist bent, and sags slightly under the weight of a large handbag full of school-books, and I instantly picture the crowds outside lycées at going-home time.
‘But en province, don’t girls look like that?’ I ask.
‘No. They’d love to, but they’re too coincées.’ (Meaning uptight or stuck in their ways.) ‘Provincials go to the same shops as the Parisians, the big international brands, but they don’t dare pick out very different things and wear them together. Parisians look a lot more relaxed about what they’re wearing.’
‘So it’s got a lot to do with self-confidence, then?’
‘Yes, and sophistication. Not in the sense of being elegant, but in the sense of knowing how to buy things that look almost exactly like what everyone else is wearing, but are slightly different, and probably made by the latest hip brand. It’s part of their education. They observe, imitate and adapt.’
‘So maybe this is the definition of a Parisian look,’ I suggest. ‘You select what you want from everything that’s on offer in Paris—and there’s a hell of a lot on offer—and you make it your own.’
‘Yes, but within limits. You can’t be a total eccentric like some Londoners. In Paris, there’s a kind of general dress code you have to respect. And at least teenagers are a bit creative, unlike the bobos.’ These are the forty-plus bourgeois Bohemians who don’t want to wear business suits. ‘The bobos all buy exactly the same things from the same shop. They go to L’Éclaireur [a chain of arty lifestyle shops, with a name meaning scout or pioneer] and they buy clothes, candles, furniture, everything. Bobos will even have the same air freshener in their toilet. So they’ll look laid-back, as if they don’t care, but it’s all very sophisticated because everything is expensive and it’s the latest, trendiest stuff.’
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