The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  As for those who play the game of fashion—and especially the creators whose vocations are involved—they are often tragic, for they do not have a sound basis, and find, in the end, that they have built their lives on shifting sands. The wiser give up the game as they grow older, for what older person is ever fashionable? Sooner or later, all fashion artists, whatever their medium, learn that the odds are against their survival. At most, they can successfully express their era for ten or twenty years; even the most famous dressmakers do not hold the throne longer. There is a curious paradox emerging from this:

  FASHIONS ARE EPHEMERAL BUT FASHION IS ENDURING.

  Mr. Aldous Huxley and other Westerners influenced by Eastern philosophy have written much about “getting out of the time stream.” This, of course, is impossible for a person involved with fashion, and it is the primary reason why fashion is often an enemy of art, just as fleeting infatuation is often the antithesis of enduring love. Only the true artist is unconcerned with time, or temporal reputations, or whether he is fashionable or not. He has fixed his gun sights on values outside time.

  Curiously, many of the same creative forces are brought into play both in fashion and art. Standards of proportion, of measure, and of simplicity are as important to a dressmaker as to a painter. But those who work within fashion’s sphere have been charmed by time and change, by the desire, above all, to be chic. They are playing a game with themselves, often a tragic game. The immediate effect is more important to them than anything else; creating something that will reflect the moment is more essential than creating something outside the time stream. The more the fashionmonger enjoys this game of artifice, the more decadent he becomes. This does not mean that an artist cannot create in this medium to brilliant effect: he can; he can become a Boldini or a Dior. But none can play fashion’s game and be entirely true artists at the same time: they cannot have their cake and eat it too.

  Perhaps only those who are claimed by fashion, rather than those who follow it, are the true exponents of the art of living. They have followed Emerson’s advice when he said: “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half-possession.”

  If this book concentrates on those who have expressed themselves, however momentarily, with “the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation,” it is because I believe that, even while writing their names on the water, they have made a triumph of the ephemeral. These are the people who know that abstract good taste counts for nothing, that the real task is always to express their own personalities. They are the heroes and heroines of fashion, who make the styles of living but are not made by them. Their personal, and even freakish, tastes are more important than common chic, and they have always gone against the current in order to arrive at something intensely individual.

  The reader is likely to find some paradoxes and contradictions in these pages. But it was Walt Whitman who wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Well, then, I contradict myself.” For fashion and style are like some alien, complicated watch whose springs and wheels often defy even the jeweller’s attempts to discover the motivation of the work. But in this, as in other respects, fashion is much like ourselves—alternately contradictory and consistent, tragic and comic, compounded of the transitory and the enduring. “Drest in a little brief authority,” we all have enough of the peacock in us not to be able to dismiss it entirely.

  CHAPTER I

  TAKE ONE HUNDRED LARKS

  DURING the early years of this century, about the time of my birth, France was producing an ornate fashion magazine called La Mode. In its pages, whose paper was of such good quality that it felt like kidskin to the touch, one might have run across an Helleu engraving, a Boldini drawing, an oil portrait by De la Gandara, or a snapshot taken at Auteuil or Chantilly of some lady whose identity would barely be suggested by her initials—Madame la Comtesse A. de N., or La Princesse B. Apart from the lady’s initiates, who were certain to recognize her, the anonymity added a romantic quality and an air of ambiguity to the game of fashion; for personal values and fashion still retained a mystery and a discretion.

  That swift tenor of change inaugurated by the First World War has carried us a long way from the Edwardian age of my birth. The distance seems, in memory, to be curiously greater than my proper lifetime. My advent into this world had coincided with first horseless carriages and electric lights. Queen Victoria had died only three years previously, and Oscar Wilde was but recently buried in the cemetery at Pêre Lachaise. Their deaths signalled the end of Victorianism, though I think Wilde would have been quite happy in England where affairs were being genially conducted to the aroma of good King Edward’s cigars. After the monotony which had blanketed London in the latter years of Victoria’s reign, there was to be a brief decade of dazzling seasons, which in their splendour were to recall if not recapture the days of Louis Phillipe and of the Second Empire. Balls and entertainments became ever more lavish. At the court drawing rooms, ladies with tall Prince of Wales feathers in their hair wore trains that swept for many yards on the floor.

  MADAME LA PRINCESSE E. DE B.

  LA COMTESSE T. DE S. E.

  The Edwardian age was a period of gaiety, when life was so inexpensive that a dandy with four hundred pounds a year could go out dancing most nights of the week, wearing lavender gloves and a wired button-hole in the lapel of his tailcoat. Theatre stalls cost half a guinea, operetta was in its heyday, and chorus girls, following the example of pretty Connie Gilchrist of “skipping-rope-gaiety” fame, began to marry into the peerage.

  LACED INTO CORSETS THAT GAVE THEM POUTER-PIGEON BOSOMS AND PROTRUDING POSTERIORS

  The women who leaned over my crib had not yet foregone the lines of the hourglass and were laced into corsets that gave them pouter-pigeon bosoms and protruding posteriors. Perched on their heads, and elevated by a little roll just inside the crown, were hats which had grown as frivolous as the milliner’s trade could make them—enormous galleons of grey velvet with vast grey plumes of ostrich feathers sweeping upwards and outwards, or they would be trimmed with artificial flowers and fruit. One of the most flamboyant and generous exponents of the prevailing styles and modes was my godmother, Aunt Jessie, who was the first woman of fashion that I ever knew.

  These ladies of the upper middle classes rolled along in hansom carriages as they paid afternoon calls. Their white kid gloves were of an immaculate quality. Over one wrist they carried a small, square gold mesh bag containing a gold pencil, a handkerchief, and a flat gold wallet which held their calling cards. If the lady of the house was “not at home,” the visitor handed the servant two of her cards with the corner turned down to indicate that she had “left cards” in person. The shining wheels of her carriage revolved on the freshly gravelled surface of the road to the next place of call, their sound muted if they were passing a door where the sick or dying lay, for it was customary to spread a thick carpet of straw in the streets before houses of invalids.

  TALL PRINCE OF WALES FEATHERS IN THEIR HAIR

  Since the Edwardian period was a link between Victorian bourgeois security and the febrile modernity that was to follow it, the age of my birth was not unlike some rich, heavy cake with, fortunately, the magic leavening to make it digestible. The manners and morals of the time, though still strict, were beginning to yield, and a taste for spice could be detected: the opulence had a note of the frivolous; the sense of luxury was, in general, more sparkling than suffocating.

  These changes showed themselves in the freer fashions of the day, though many in the upper middle classes still lived strictly by Victorian rules when it came to the exclusiveness of individual modes of dress. Exchanges of fashion confidence were unthinkable, for between the woman and her confidante, the dressmaker, there existed a relationship as private as a love affair. At times this resistance would be carried to such lengths that a lady of fashion might
send her motorcar away from the establishment where she bought clothes, simply in order to maintain the mystery of their origin. Exclusiveness of style reached the point where it caused incalculable embarrassment to both parties if an identical dress was worn on the same occasion by two different women. With all the fervour of a mid-Victorian melodrama, a scene, or possibly even a scandal, might be precipitated if it was discovered that one lady had crept into the bedroom of another at a country house party to find out from which establishment the dresses had been bought, a matter easily ascertained from the silk labels sewn into the lining.

  THE UBIQUITOUS CARTWHEEL HATS

  Set in such an atmosphere, it was only natural that the spangled chiffon, filigree-embroidered tulle, veils, billowing ostrich-feather boas, and, trimmed with clover, honeysuckle, or paradise feathers, the ubiquitous cartwheel hats, which had superseded the stiff satins, brocades with rigid iris or bulrush patterns, starched linen skirts, and prim boater hats of a decade earlier, took on an enigma comparable to that which shrouded the alchemist in his search for the philosopher’s stone.

  Perhaps modern chemistry, for all its amazing laboratories, has nevertheless lost something valuable that the medieval wizard, with an almost primitive belief in the symbols of his trade, possessed. Without mystery, magic disappears. Even our unprofessional ladies of fashion have, today, through overpublicizing, been reduced to journalistic commonplaces. If some discreet individual becomes “news,” then willingly or unwillingly she must go into the public domain and be exploited as a “celebrity.” If distance lends enchantment, then there is little distance in our contemporary world.

  The conformist way of life, whatever its virtues, infringes on one of the fundamentals of taste and fashion—exclusiveness. Formerly it was only in an overwhelming desire for difference and distinction that fashion found its incentive. Today that incentive seems to be reversed: there is a desire to seek safety in standardization.

  I was too young, perhaps, to know that the pêche Melba had just been created in honour of a great singer; or that Escoffier, the master chef himself, was still preparing chicken in champagne at the Carlton Hotel in London and stuffing capons with one hundred larks as a dish to set before the King.… But I do remember that pet Pomeranians were called Ponto, while terriers were named Egbert. Anyone who dropped the ball was “a silly duffer.” Grownup games included the Diabolo, which was played with an hourglass spool balancing on a string between two sticks. My aunt Jessie’s gramophone had a horn of crimson enamel, like some huge, exotic tropical flower, on which she played arias sung by Tetrazzini, Albani, or Caruso.

  At Madame Sherwood’s dancing school we children wore our patent-leather shoes with their silver buckles and learnt the polka and the hornpipe. The young girls were wrapped in Shetland shawls at children’s parties and carried their dancing shoes in a bag, bronze leather pumps with an elastic round them and a little bead on top. Inevitably they were accompanied by their nannies, who would roll the sausage curls of their wards around their fat fingers. These curls were like rolled-up slices of bread and butter, or the ginger brittle rolls known as “elephants’ tongues” that were served together with tea and ices. Fire stations had scarlet doors and white horses that were trained to rush out at the sound of a big brass bell, rearing and flaring their nostrils like the stallions in the chariot races of the Decline and Fall, at which the nursemaids screamed or fainted, for women were more hysterical then than they are today.

  IF SHE WAS GOING OFF TO AN “AT HOME”

  SUMMER SCENE AFTER LUNCHEON. MY MOTHER IN GARDEN SEAT

  My inward child’s eye, even as my adult vision, always sought out the detail rather than the conception as a whole. A particular trimming on a dress seen in childhood could make a profound impression on me, and certain details have remained in my memory to this day, with acute combinations of colour that have influenced my own creative work.

  Thus it was always a thrill when my mother, who was a fair reflector of the feminine fashions of the day, would come to say good night to me, perhaps going out to a dinner party, dressed in miraculously soft materials. On one occasion she wore a large special bunch of imitation lilies of the valley on her bosom, pinned to a pale green chiffon scarf. This sunburst of artificial flowers was a revelation, because I had not thought lilies of the valley could be simulated.

  I soon discovered that my mother had an entire drawerful of artificial flowers. She would fasten a clump of slightly crumpled “old-rose” coloured roses to her waist if she was going off to an “at home,” where the baritone (one singer, I remember, was named Hubert Eisdale) might sing “Down in the Forest Something Stirred.” Sometimes, when she decided to spend the afternoon “calling,” my mother would perhaps choose a huge rosette of Parma violets. When she went to Ascot, she wore real flowers—three Malmason carnations, fully five inches in diameter. To keep each of these flowers in place, a pale pink cardboard disc had been fitted behind them, with a center hole for the carnation stem to pass through.

  Like any other hostess of the period, my mother gave luncheons or dinner parties. The day of these events she would be too busy to give any but the most cursory attention to her personal appearance, though the flowers were always tastefully arranged on all the occasional tables. The masterpiece of decoration, most usually sweet peas, was saved for the centre of the dining table, which would be dotted with olives, salted almonds, sugared green peppermints, and chocolates in cut-glass bowls or silver dishes. These were the signs of a gala, as they were never on the table in the ordinary course of events. At Christmas time preserved fruit made its appearance—splintery wooden boxes of glacé pears and greengages, which I seem to remember came from elsewhere than France, possibly Sweden or Denmark. There were also tins of caviar sent from Riga, and huge blue-and-white vases of preserved ginger from India, via Whiteley’s or Harrod’s.

  The period of elaborate coiffures had not yet passed. Since she had no personal maid, my mother was usually obliged to dress her own hair. It was worn wide at the sides, stuffed out with pads and garnished with amber, tortoise shell, or imitation diamond combs. On black Mondays, after a long solitary session with her arms upraised, putting the waves and curls into place, the effect might still not please her.

  Then she would take out the rats, glancing with alarm into the looking glass as the whole business started over again. Her face became flushed, her arms would be aching, and by the time she had finished she was more than late for dinner.

  THE PERIOD OF ELABORATE COIFFURES HAD NOT YET PASSED

  On special occasions a man with a moustache and sepia wavy hair parted in the centre would come to the house with a brown leather bag. He was shown to my mother’s bedroom, where, armed with the spirit lamp or stove, he heated his tongs over a blue flame. I can still, in memory, conjure up the exciting scent of methylated spirit and singed hair, an accompaniment of the transmutation in this wonderful adult world I watched with such spellbound admiration. There were almost regular intervals of alarms and a last-minute rush for a dinner party or a visit to the theatre. My mother’s room, by the time she vacated it, looked as if a tornado had passed; powder was spilled onto the dressing table and floor, while the bed and chairs overflowed with discarded garments, trimmings, and feathers.

  Another great thrill for me was provided whenever my mother indulged her interior-decorating fancies. Sometimes this coincided with spring cleaning, for spring cleaning caused a great upheaval in those days: the whole house was taken to pieces and put back together again. Invisible gnomelike creatures appeared early in the mornings to clean out the chimneys and were gone before you had rubbed the sand out of your eyes; carpets, pictures, looking glasses, and furniture were covered with dust sheets, while for days on end most of the house was “out of bounds.” It was not unlike fumigating a ward where patients with contagious diseases had been segregated.

  At this time of year my mother might well decide to alter the colours of her rooms, choosing curtain materials or chair c
overs for the drawing room or the “library” (a room in which, strangely enough, never a book was to be seen). One springtime the schoolroom was redecorated in grey and mauve, somewhat halfheartedly after the fashion of the art nouveau movement. There were pale mauve curtains of muslin with frills on them and what must have been daring touches of simplicity in grey papered walls edged with a geometrical mauve border. The pale grained furniture included a set of tall-backed chairs of grey wood, having stylized roses carved out of their centre panels. Later, when it became my privilege to accompany my mother on shopping expeditions to Hanover Square, new vistas and wonders were opened as I watched her choose flowered cretonnes, shot taffetas, and purple brocatelles.

  With the passing of time I was not only conscious of colour and detail, but became aware of line and pattern and crystallized more developed æsthetic experiences. It was then that Bessie Ascough’s fashion plates, which appeared each day in the Evening Standard, began to excite my curiosity. Soon I was in virtual paroxysms of impatience while awaiting my father to bring home the paper in which this lady’s latest pen drawing would be ready to be smeared with my water colours or oddly smelling silver and gold paints. Sometimes, on red-letter days, Bessie Ascough sketched a picture of a lady in court dress, replete with feathers, bouquet, and train; or she might draw a robe de bal, giving a wonderful facsimile of all the embroidery on the dress. Her particular skill was manifest in the roses that she drew, roses like balloons or billiard balls, with great round centres. Often a whole cluster of them would be held by a worldly bride. At first my father may have attributed my excitement to his return from the city, though he could not have been long in remarking that the Evening Standard was the focal point of my attention. One evening he said he had forgotten to bring his newspaper home with him, and I was deeply hurt by his callousness in the face of such an important event. The next day I was told that Miss Ascough was on holiday and that her fashion plates would not be appearing for a while. Later I discovered that this was not the case at all. The truth was that my family deemed it unwise to allow these apoplectic expectancies for Bessie Ascough’s artistry to continue: the child was becoming peculiar.