Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  When Attila, king of the Huns, crossed the Rhine with his 700,000 wild soldiers in A.D.451, panic broke out among the Parisians and many ran away. According to legend, Geneviève, a young girl from Nanterre, calmed them, promising that Paris would be saved by God. The Huns arrived, seemed to hesitate, and turned toward Orléans. Paris was saved, and Geneviève became its patron. Ten years later she saved the town again when it was besieged by the Franks and starving. Geneviève was still alive in 506 when the larger of the two islands became known as La Cité. Later the Normans appeared, and after long struggles took over the islands. They were eventually turned back by the Parisians under Eudes, Count of Paris, who was chosen king.

  During the Middle Ages people began to settle on the adjacent banks of the Seine. Famous schools and institutions opened in the shadow of Notre-Dame. In the cloister of Notre-Dame a celebrated love affair began between the philosopher Abelard and Héloïse, niece of the Canon Fulbert, that has fascinated generations of Frenchmen. At the beginning of the thirteenth century there were twenty-three convents and chapels on the Cité. Various revolutions shook the tranquillity of the small island. During the Reign of Terror at the end of the eighteenth century the prisons of the Conciergerie were crowded with hopeless citoyens. At the Palais de Justice the revolutionary tribunal pronounced death sentences against which there was no appeal.

  Near the scene of all these horrors there was a place, surrounded by the Tribunal de Commerce and the Préfecture de Police. In 1809 Napoleon created the peaceful enclave of the flower market there, though the merchants claim it was done much earlier by Blanche of Castile, the mother of Saint Louis, who founded the Hôtel-Dieu. Could be. The flower market was to give the place a more cheerful note.

  And it still is cheerful. The cast-iron stalls look like leftovers from the Eiffel Tower, and the lovely decorations are early art nouveau. The merchants, about thirty of them, have no comforts, no heat, no electricity. Their stalls are primitive, but they love the place. There was excitement three years ago when it was rumored that the flower market might be moved to the Georges Pompidou National Art and Cultural Center, under construction on the Plateau Beaubourg. The flower people were promised comfortable, well-heated, well-lighted stalls and modern surroundings. One would think the merchants would have been delighted by the move.

  Not at all. They overwhelmingly rejected the very idea. Only a couple of younger people are said to have even considered the proposal. The most stubborn merchants were those selling garden plants and bulbs at small stalls on the Quai de Corse, on the northern side of the market, where the narrow sidewalk is always crowded. But the movement in favor of not moving was also joined by the merchants on the Place Louis-Lépine, who sell cut flowers, plantes vertes, and plantes fleuries for apartments and terraces. They have been there “for generations” and don’t care about the lack of comfort. They brought petitions before the City Council, the owner of the land. Many passersby who regularly come to the market signed the petitions. They have always bought their flowers there and hope to do so until they die. Who needs heat and electricity? They are bad for the flowers anyway, aren’t they?

  “Yes, but at Beaubourg you wouldn’t be outside in the cold and rain,” countered the center’s proponents.

  “It’s not us that matter,” a resolute woman told me. “It’s the flowers, Monsieur. The flowers are happy here, and we are happy where our flowers like it.” She was quite serious and so were other merchants who listened and nodded. Anyway, the petitions were accepted, and the Marché aux Fleurs stays.

  Almost everybody seemed happy when I went there. It was a cold day, with north winds, and the men and women wore thick sweaters and had blue hands. Every morning they must put out their flowers and trees in the square and along the sidewalk; and every evening they put them back into their stalls, but they don’t mind. They are as proud of their shabby stalls as certain dynasties are of their medieval castles. It is admitted that “these types”—the promoters of Beaubourg—may succeed in getting some flower merchants for their center. But most merchants expect their loyal clients to stay with them on La Cité. I talked to some loyal clients—women ordering plants for their apartments, a few old men buying anemones—and they agreed. They consider the Marché aux Fleurs a national monument, “almost like Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle.”

  No one thinks that is an exaggeration. “Take the flowers away from Paris and what have you got?” an old man asked me. “I’ve come here every week for forty years, and I hope to come as long as I live. These people belong here, like the bouquinistes along the Seine nearby who sell old books and drawings.”

  The Parisians love the place for its sense of continuity. In 1944, during the Liberation, many agents de police barricaded themselves in the Préfecture and ran up the Tricolore. The Germans began shelling the area, and one girder in the Marché aux Fleurs was hit, but then the Division Leclerc arrived and the occupiers were chased out. No one in the Marché was very surprised. The stall holders have always been there, and they’re going to stay, period. One merchant has a sign, JEAN GANTER, GENDRE DE M. IMBERT.Elderly people remember Monsieur Imbert, and now they buy from his son-in-law and successor. The flower merchants understand human nature. Some have small signs stuck between their flowerpots, PRIÉRE DE TOUCHER AVEC LES YEUX.Please touch with the eyes only. MERCI.

  January 1977

  ALL THAT GLITTERS

  Joseph Wechsberg

  Last spring I spent an afternoon at Cartier, at 13, rue de la Paix, and have reluctantly revised my ideas about the V.V.R., the Very Very Rich. It was my first visit to the fabulous jeweler and it may be, I’m afraid, my last excursion into “the plush surroundings which were frequented by Kings, Highnesses, international millionaires, Russian princes, stars, the great ones of the earth.” Are you properly impressed? I’m quoting from a press release by Gilberte Gautier, on the occasion of the exhibition celebrating the hundredth birthday of Louis Cartier, 1875-1942, a third-generation member of the great dynasty. The firm was founded earlier, in 1847, by Louis-François Cartier, who became the court jeweler of the Second Empire. Princess Mathilde started the vogue, other members of the nobility followed, and in no time the rich bankers and nouveau-riche operators were going to Cartier to get a little gift, say a nine-carat diamond, for their lady friends—maybe even for their wives. Other customers were some doubtful habitués of the nearby Café Anglais on the boulevard des Italiens. In 1872, Alfred, the son of the founder, became his father’s partner and immediately pulled off a spectacular coup when he got hold of the jewels of “la Barucci, courtisane royale.” She needed the money, having just lost her protector. Since time immemorial, famous jewelers have made fortunes by first selling expensive jewels to certain ladies (or to their admirers) and later buying the jewels back when the ladies suffered reverses. In Alfred’s case, the profits to the firm were much needed, since it had had bad losses in the war of 1870–71. A few years later, Louis was born.

  He became the greatest Cartier, an innovator who modernized jewelry and revolutionized the art of setting by using elements of painting, sculpture, architecture, and haute couture. He was called “the couturier of jewelry,” and in 1898 he married Andrée-Caroline Worth, granddaughter of the great couturier Charles-Frédéric Worth. That year the firm moved to 13, rue de la Paix, and the place has been kept exactly as it was. Cartier’s two hundred employees (designers, jewelers, artisans, and office and sales staff) all work in the old house. From workrooms in the rear and upstairs, which have never been open to the public, came the masterpieces that made the style of Louis Cartier world famous.

  The great past becomes evident as one steps into the elegant store, with its old wood paneling. The historical jewels were exhibited in electronically protected vitrines. There were more security guards than visitors. The guards had a terrible time during the opening on May 27, when lots of people crashed the party to see the jewelry and stones, insured for seventy million dollars, and to goggle at members of l
e Tout-Paris, not insured. Everybody came, from Madame Marcel Achard to the Baronne von Zitzewitz (according to the special press release) and Madame Spirito-Santo. (I always thought that was the name of a bank in Rome.) The show was such a success that it will go to Monte Carlo and may later be seen at other branches of Cartier.

  The walls are adorned with framed warrants issued by the courts of England, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Egypt. Assorted queens and highnesses ordered twenty-seven diadems for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. His Majesty was a good customer when he wasn’t busy at Maxim’s, a few blocks away, where The Ladies from Maxim’s paraded Cartier jewels. Louis Cartier was also popular in Saint Petersburg, where he was shown a beautiful necklace that he identified at once as one that Napoleon had given to Josephine. Princess Lobanoff, known as “the princess of jewels,” was so impressed by his expertise that she ordered in her will an auction of her 280 jewels, many made by Cartier, in Lausanne under the direction of Louis Cartier. The auction is still considered one of the most important of the century. Some of the diadems and necklaces that have found their way back to Cartier in the past fifty years were displayed in the windows facing the rue de la Paix. Several passersby thought they couldn’t be genuine, “because such things don’t exist anymore.” Oh yes, folks, they do, at Cartier.

  Louis Cartier embraced orientalism as a style of jewelry and created beautiful “arabesques” in subdued shades, and under the influence of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes he created polychrome variants in brilliant hues. He was aware of cubism, naturalism, and art deco but was not overwhelmed by any style. Using combinations of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, jade, onyx, and coral and blending platinum with enamel, lapis lazuli, and turquoise, he always showed artistic restraint. He surrounded himself with the finest artists he could find. Lalique designed for him before going off on his own, Dalí once created for the firm a heart made of rubies, and Cocteau drew sketches for Cartier jewelry. The great era of the firm was the early years of the century, when Cartier opened in London (1902) and New York (1908). In 1919 Louis Cartier designed and executed the ceremonial baton for Marshal Foch. He invented the clip and created the swords for several members of the Académie Française. Other branch offices were opened in Monte Carlo (1935), Cannes (1938), Hong Kong (1969), Geneva (1970), Munich (1971), and Tokyo (1974). Cartier always goes where the big money is. Louis Cartier died in New York in 1942. Later, only the New York and London stores were run by Pierre and Jacques Cartier. Today the Paris firm is controlled by Robert Hocq, a wealthy French industrialist, whose daughter Nathalie is directrice of the haute joaillerie. Sic transit gloria … even at Cartier.

  The exposition shows the evolution of jewelry in the past hundred years, the symbiosis of precious materials and fine work. There are several “mysterious clocks,” created by Louis Cartier and his master watchmakers. They have an invisible mechanism (often hidden in the socle) and were a favorite status symbol in royal circles around 1925; they are no longer made, being prohibitively expensive. One sees birds and butterflies made of precious stones, flowers and tiny trees, the creations of gifted Jeanne Toussaint, and there is a remarkable panther bracelet made of tiny diamonds. The panther becomes “alive” when the arm with the bracelet is moved. None of the exhibits are for sale, but the firm has received several orders for the panther and will make them up. It takes a master craftsman one year to create such a bracelet. There are other dazzling pieces of jewelry: nécessaires in Chinese style enriched with emeralds, coral, jade; brooches artfully composed of diamonds and sapphires; vanity cases in gold with black and white enamel; a butterfly brooch of platinum, with diamonds, turquoises, and sapphires set in gold; and an incredible piece, twenty-one centimeters long (loaned to the show by an unidentified customer), made of one thousand diamonds set in platinum. The stones weigh over a hundred carats. Among the wonders of contemporary jewelry (and thus for sale) are a necklace made of stunning emeralds (seventy-seven carats), another made of rubies, one formed of three “priceless” emeralds, and a ring with a large, fine ruby (twenty-seven carats).

  No wonder the security was as tight as that in a Soviet atomic bomb center! The day of my visit the viewers were either fragile old ladies, who smiled sadly and knowingly, as though they recognized the diadems and necklaces (perhaps they had known the owners or, heaven forbid, had owned them themselves, though they did not look like former courtisanes), or hard-looking young women, escorted by tough characters who seemed to have made hard-currency millions recently, perhaps selling soap powder or putting up those dreadful skyscrapers that don’t improve the Paris cityscape. They hardly glanced at the masterpieces of the past that were not for sale but headed straight for the air-conditioned, modern rooms in the rear, where some incredible diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies were displayed in special vitrines, dramatically lighted. There were heart-shaped diamonds as large as walnuts (would any woman wear one?). In the field of precious, very large stones the line between elegance and vulgarity is very thin. One woman asked to try on a ring with a very large stone. The vitrine was opened, while four guards approached. The woman put the ring on her finger, where it didn’t look much better. Nor did she. Her escort was pale; poor fellow, he might have to put up another skyscraper if she insisted on having that ring. The salesman looked at his price list, operated a small calculator that he held in his hand, and told her the price, in Swiss francs, which I thought was funny. I asked how much it would be in dollars, and he consulted his machine and said, “Approximately 625,000 American dollars,” and I thanked him very politely.

  There was a stone I happened to like, not too large, almost blue, and very pure. Madame Joëlle Sylvestre, the young public-relations lady who escorted me, called another salesman. He gave me a disgusted look; obviously I was not a serious prospect. He opened his price list and informed me that the stone was clean and white, not blue, and cost 1,943,759.40 francs. Then the salesman showed us a stone he liked, a magnificent sapphire from Kashmir, for over two million francs, truly extraordinary. He also liked a stunning ruby from Burma and a necklace made of diamonds and sapphires, which could be taken apart. He said the parts might be worn “for minor occasions” if one didn’t feel like wearing the whole three-million-franc thing. They think of everything at Cartier.

  I asked him—somewhat naïvely, I now realize—whether there were still customers for these things. Hadn’t the customers disappeared with the kings and maharajas and the Russian Grand Duchesses of the feudal past? The salesman was very offended.

  “Of course, Monsieur, there are such people,” he said. “They keep us in business.” He closed his price list and walked away. We walked back to one of the old salesrooms in the front. An ample elderly woman was shown a beautiful necklace selling for some three million francs. I watched in fascination as they put it around her neck. Even the guards were smiling. At another desk an attractive young woman had apparently concluded the final step of a major purchase. She took a checkbook out of her bag and with no hesitation wrote out a check for six figures, the first being an “8,” which meant that the amount was over $200,000. She did this matter-of-factly, as if paying the grocer’s bill.

  I said good-bye to Mme. Sylvestre, who was slim and gentle and wore no jewelry whatsoever, and left the “plush surroundings,” having learned something about the V.V.R.

  October 1975

  HAUTE COUTURE

  Joseph Wechsberg

  I never pretended to understand the mysteries of women’s fashions. Like many other men, I had long suspected a sinister conspiracy among the important haute couture designers, who appeared to have secretly agreed on what the new fashions would be and thereupon issued their dictatorial edicts twice a year. How else, I wondered, was it possible that the clothes created by the various designers seemed so similar that most of us men couldn’t tell them apart? Women, of course, know a thousand differences. Anyway, they would follow the dictates, sometimes reluctantly, but more often enthusiastically, and men would pay. Th
at seemed to be the essence of the plot.

  Fellow men, I’ve changed my way of thinking after talking to Marc Bohan. I did not expect that I would ever learn anything about couture and collections, colors and styles, but better late than never.

  Marc Bohan is the artist who is Dior, who personifies the House of Christian Dior. (This sentence was written for men only, who may not know about Monsieur Bohan.) In a medium that combines the bizarre unpredictability of Monte Carlo roulette with the enigmas of feminine fancy, Bohan has shown astonishing staying power. Since 1961, when he was only thirty-five, he has designed the Christian Dior haute couture collections.

  Marc Bohan has never resorted to tricks and gimmicks in order to épater les femmes bourgeoises. Even his competitors admit he has never tried to shock the masses, and they don’t like to admit anything. Bohan has always believed that femininity and charm are a woman’s essential assets. I agree. A woman doesn’t have to be beautiful if she is a woman. (That will no doubt be called a male chauvinist point of view in some circles, but I couldn’t care less.)

  “I’ve always liked women who dress for men and not against other women,” M. Bohan said as I sat down across from him in his small private office. Bravo! Most of us men like women who dress to please us, not to compete with their women friends. We men react to women’s fashions emotionally. Women often treat the subject of clothes with cold intellect.

  Bohan’s office, three floors above the Dior Boutique, looks out on the rue François-1er whereas the hallowed haute couture salons, the paradise of the last billionairesses, face the elegant avenue Montaigne, complete with canopy and uniformed doorman wearing white gloves. One wall of the office is papered with covers and pages from fashion magazines showing Dior models wearing Bohan’s dresses—an elegant pinup girl collection if ever there was one. The only nonprofessional model on the wall is Princess Caroline of Monaco, looking young and lovely, no matter what she wears. On Bohan’s glass desk was a poinsettia, which reminded me briefly of southern California. On the wall across from his desk is a collagelike arrangement of scissors, hundreds of them, in clever patterns. The windows have vertical white shades to keep out the sun. It was raining though. The place is coldly functional. M. Bohan, who believes in self-discipline, doesn’t like to be cozy when he is working.