The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  STRIPES WERE POPULAR

  By the winter of 1916 these extremes had been somewhat modified, though femininity in the form of frills and fichus did not utterly disappear until a stubborn peasant girl from Auvergne in turn created her revolution.

  These were the changing years that preceded and ushered in the even more changing twenties. To an older eye the death of Edwardianism must have boded no good, and a decade or so later there were to be those who would look back fondly on “The Black Asscot,” the Castles, and hobble skirts, witnessing the advent of the jazz age with horror. But from our present vantage point, even the twenties are beginning to charm some of us once more. Time not only heals, it reconciles.

  James Laver has written well on the theory of the relativity of taste itself in his Taste and Fashion, and has even established a table to indicate the probable historical perspective on a given fashion as time ultimately brings it round to be reconsidered as romantic and beautiful. The implications of such a theory are less disturbing than a similar view of history, such as Toynbee’s cyclical conception of the world. That empires rise and fall we agree; but to conceive of the breakup of Western civilization, as we know it, is more difficult to enjoy than the idea that all fashions, their hour come round at last, will be magical and alluring when seen through the rose-coloured glasses of the ages.

  CHAPTER VI

  ARABIAN NIGHTS

  IT IS difficult to speculate upon the social or psychological reasons that prompt the periodic revivals of Orientalism in our diametrically opposed Western culture. But maybe the real significance of a Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, or the opening of a King Tutankhamen’s tomb, is that the West has an absolute need to inject not only the colours of the East into its pallid spectrum of browns and greys and blacks but also its qualities of the bizarre and the alien.

  Whatever the reason may be, Orientalism had in 1909 affected European fashion many times before it again struck at the heart of London, Paris, and New York. This time it was to come via Russia, with the young Diaghilev and his artist Bakst as the spearheads of the invasion. A rising Paris couturier, Poiret, was to filter Bakst’s imaginative élan down to the public itself; or, acknowledging that Poiret may have been the innovator when he claims that his personal Orientalism preceded that of Bakst, we may say that Paul Poiret exploited a parallel vein to the fantastic Orientalism which the Russian Ballet was to foster. As a matter of fact, Poiret’s obsession with the East continued to impose itself on the world of fashion for a long time after the influence of Orientalism had waned. It is a tribute to his stubborn genius that he sent women off to the races wearing turbans and padded kimonos embroidered in gold peacocks, and perversely made them accept his taste when time had already bypassed the spirit that animated it.

  Diaghilev’s talents were rare for any period. He was one of the baker’s dozen of powerful personalities who have helped to foster the arts since Renaissance individualism. The vision, initiative, and daring of such men of taste have often stamped the style of their age with the authority of a king applying his signet to sealing wax. These impresarios (and how that word has become vulgarized today) leave imprints which are not soon forgotten, influencing æsthetic trends for many years afterwards. None has ever surpassed the achievement or influence of the remarkable Sergei Diaghilev.

  So much has already been written about Sergei Diaghilev that he threatens to become a legend under our very eyes. Though he has been dead only twenty-four years, the world that he represented and the splendour that he materialized out of thin air already have an odd quality of history. His capacities for organization, combining music, painting, and the dance, created modern ballet as we know it today and fostered a public consciousness which has largely helped to breach the gaps caused by the difficulties and obscurities of modern art.

  This extraordinary figure, so quiet and discreet, known intimately by a handful of initiates, moved in the rarefied world of Monte Carlo and the most carefully winnowed circles of London and Paris. Yet today, audiences throughout the seven continents of the world, whether consciously or not, are applauding his taste and the results of his wonderful talents, for no one man has ever had a greater æsthetic influence on the years that immediately followed his death. Perhaps the reason for this is that Diaghilev, in his own lifetime, had an uncanny instinct for predicting the newest tendencies. His instinct was so avant-garde that, years later, audiences are accepting Diaghilev’s discoveries as reflecting the spirit of their own age.

  Those who knew the impresario could scarcely forget his arresting physical personality. He was a grand seigneur in every sense of the word, in dress, speech, and manner. Beneath the slow-motion gestures, the quiet air, and the utter lack of pretentiousness, Diaghilev’s authority manifested itself the moment one came into his presence. That presence was as much public as private: he was not averse to appearing in public and could often be seen dining out in Paris and London, or drinking apéritifs at Florian’s in Venice, usually in conversation with Lifar or one of the artists allied with the Ballets Russes, perhaps a composer, director, or scenic designer whose efforts would be under discussion.

  To the observer, Diaghilev must have looked rather like an imposing seal, with his long, wide mouth, flat teeth, and sleek, plump body. His cheeks would be powdered, and the chinchilla hair was liberally streaked with white. Inevitably the spectator’s eyes came to rest on the immaculate and aristocratic hands with their calm gestures. In attributes of dress he was perhaps something of a dandy, always immaculate beneath his fur-collared coat, and usually wearing a pearl tiepin.

  DIAGHILEV

  The man behind this impressive physical façade was always something of an enigma, even to his intimates, and became considerably more of a mystery after his death. Not that he was shy—far from it. Diaghilev was on intimate terms with every member of his company, charmed them with his frank manner, tamed them with his authority, and could be ruthless if the occasion demanded. His intimates had the impression of a simple person with a schoolboy sense of humour and a lively curiosity about other people that often took the form of unusual interest in their intrigues: he adored bedroom gossip. As for his own private life, he made no secret of it and could often be seen having kipper or haddock suppers at the Savoy Grill with the latest favourite.

  Like all truly original and powerful personalities, he disregarded criticism. His taste was impeccable, and he was as much a man of the world as an artist of the world, bringing the same refinement of choice to ordering a meal as he would to commanding a new concerto. He knew where the best intimate restaurants were, just as he knew where to find the most provocative sets and costumes, or whom to go to for a ballet concerto. His way with waiters was as knowing as his way with a temperamental star.

  But whether dinners or ballets were at stake, Diaghilev had little business sense in any ordinary meaning of that expression. Indeed, his utter lack of vulgarity could hardly have allowed him one. But as though to compensate for that, he had untold energy at his command with which to raise money for each new ballet season from the patrons who, unknowingly were contributing to one of the last great expressions of culture that the leisured classes were to produce.

  Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev was born in the czarist Russia of 1872. As a wealthy young Russian aristocrat of impeccable and varied taste, he had edited a remarkable art magazine which showed unmistakable signs of the master’s originality and indicated his flair for discovering unknown painters. Later his interests were to turn suddenly to music, and later still he was able to fulfill his dream and combine these two early passions by creating the Russian Ballet.

  Before Diaghilev’s advent there had indeed been wonderful Russian dancers. As a single instance, the fame of Anna Pavlova was already independent of this great impresario, and she had made a number of grand tours before the Russian Ballet dazzled Paris with its opening seasons in the years immediately preceding the First World War. But the popular ballets at that time were very different from t
he great romantic age of ballet which, some fifty or sixty years previously, had launched Taglioni and Carlotta Grisi and had given to its repertory such unforgettable works as Giselle and the Pas de Quatre. The ballets in the first decade of the twentieth century were, indeed, little more than advantageous vehicles to display the technical efforts of the leading virtuosi. Little artistry went into their presentation of these ballets, and the décor and mise-en-scene were utterly banal.

  An ordinary person entering this scene of balletic desuetude would have been discouraged and downhearted. But Serge Diaghilev was a man of vision, and paradoxically, in his own aristocratic, impractical way, he was enough of a businessman to bring that vision into being. His many friends included rich patrons of the arts. Like a magician materializing a little world out of a hat, Diaghilev gathered together the necessary funds to launch such a spectacular luxury as the Russian Ballet.

  His personal tastes served him well in the enterprise, for he loved the old while manifesting the keenest interest in the new. This combination of traditionalism with a taste for the modern was to create a new ballet such as had never been seen before—a ballet where mime would be as important as the dance itself and where music, décor, and costumes, far from being relegated to the status of supernumeraries, were to become an integral part of the complex æsthetic expression.

  To carry out such a programme, Diaghilev sought the aid of Stravinsky, whose new music had already aroused both enthusiasm and criticism. For the décor and costumes there were Benois, Sert, and Léon Bakst, whose work had been featured in Diaghilev’s art magazine. Bakst’s vivid colours, extravagant materials, and flamboyant exoticism were destined to light up the international sky for quite a long spell, and their influence on fashions led to a whole new phase of dressmaking. Together these three giants brought the dream into its initial realization.

  The early seasons of the Russian Ballet in the several years preceding the First World War are still spoken of with bated breath by those who were fortunate enough to see the miracle of Nijinsky leaping fifteen feet to the stage as the Spectre of the Rose, or Karsavina as Cleopatra being fanned by Nubian slaves. Working in close collaboration with Bakst, Diaghilev had wrought a miracle. For the first time the colours of a modern painter were brought to the scenery workshop. The emerald-green curtain of Schéhérazade and the cobalt-blue walls in Carnaval were quite staggering in their impact.

  Great dancers seemed to appear from nowhere, created by the master himself. The fantastic assembly of talents that he coordinated gave a note of history to each new season. Diaghilev went forward on a wave of new discoveries, never willing to rest on his laurels. Each time the curtain rose on the première of a work, he produced a surprise. But it was never surprise for its own sake; rather, each ballet asserted the changing and dynamic flow of creative values. Diaghilev never followed Thamar or Petrouchka by a ballet of its own type; on the contrary, new talents were continually being unearthed.

  But any portrait of Diaghilev, however condensed in scope, would be incomplete without an awareness of the colder side of his nature. Possibly this stemmed from some Asiatic, some primitive vestige in his sophisticated heritage. Diaghilev, so sensitive, so vulnerable to youth and beauty, possessed also a banked ruthlessness that could be fanned into overt cruelty. For many years he and Léon Bakst were the closest of friends, and it was through association with this designer that Diaghilev first acquired his greatest ballet success.

  Suddenly he broke off relations with Bakst. Bakst was at a loss to understand the reasons, for there had never been any quarrel or misunderstanding. The impresario explained to mutual friends who came to find out why he had rejected Bakst: “Léon Bakst has done his best work for me already. I do not consider he will be able to produce anything of interest to me any more.”

  In defence of the heartlessness of his behaviour, Diaghilev went on to explain: “I live only for the ballet. Everything must be sacrificed to that. I feel that Bakst is becoming old-fashioned. I want to have my new ballets decorated by younger men—Picasso, Derain, Rouault, even Pruna. No, I am through with Bakst.”

  The shock of this breach of friendship may well have caused the illness from which Bakst died a few years later. It could be of little solace to the artist who had created the visual splendours of Schéhérazade and The Sleeping Beauty that, after his death, Diaghilev suffered agonies of remorse. Those who know or read of this incident can draw their own moral. It would seem that art, however important, is not life itself: and to set up a code of “art for art’s sake” can at times prove equally as inhuman as any political dogma which is fostered and held above human values themselves.

  The extraordinary reign of Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet lasted less than two decades, ending with the impresario’s death in 1929. Yet one can safely say that ballet has been feeling upon those years since Diaghilev withdrew the life force that had been the Russian Ballet’s mind and heart. It is sad to think that at that time the impresario had to rely solely on private patrons and subsidies, while his seasons inevitably showed a financial loss. Today, throughout the world, ballet companies have been commercialized, to the benefit of many a business tycoon. The art of the dance has latterly become as popular as Gilbert and Sullivan and is no longer a high-brow institution or in any sense special. The Sacre du Printemps has given place to festival ballets, and Alicia Markova is a star able to compete with the most renowned comedians on gala programmes.

  Since the death of Diaghilev we have found nothing new in ballet, little that is new in the dance or in painting. One wonders whether this is because Sergei Diaghilev is not here to make the discoveries or whether he died in 1929 because there were no further discoveries for him to make. Each age is heard to murmur that “somewhere has passed a glory from the earth.” Yet even the most open critical examination would indicate that the tremendous activity in art that opened the twentieth century has slowed almost to a standstill. It may well be that factors of environment beyond our control influence the productivity of art. One would like to think that art can blossom in any soil and at any time.

  We can be grateful to Diaghilev for the influence he created and for that which has survived him. Nowadays it is not at all uncommon to see modern painters of note working on the décor for a ballet or a play. But until Diaghilev appeared on the scene no artist of even the stature of a Bakst or a Poiret had designed for the theatre. It took a Russian aristocrat, singlehanded, to lift the stigma and open the field of designing to the highest talents. Alas, the lowest talents have profited as well, like the jackal at the kill. There can be no doubt but that the dance sequences in any mediocre Hollywood musical comedy are today reflecting, in a watered-down and bastardized fashion, the innovations that the master launched forty and more years ago.

  IDA RUBENSTEIN, 1913

  Even in respectable ballet we find the restatement of the æsthetic principles that were utilized by Diaghilev. It was that impresario who discovered George Balanchine early in his career; and today Balanchine, of all living choreographers, is one most worthy, perhaps, to wear the master’s crown.

  In the highest and lowest fields of artistic creativity, we find that we are still living off dividends from the past. Life thrives mysteriously out of death, roses spring from dung heaps, and all modern art seems to stem from a few powerful artists or personalities whose influences have echoed down the years. Perhaps Diaghilev, in his turn, was influenced by certain others whose names are unknown to us. There is nothing new under the sun, and in art as in evolution, each new manifestation is merely the last link in a chain that stretches back to the beginnings of human consciousness, when the cave men were scratching their first drawings of bison on the walls of primitive caves.

  The new exoticism that Diaghilev had launched was well personified by Ida Rubenstein, whose dancing was perhaps not respected by him, though he felt that her grace of line and movement more than made up for her lack of technical skill. She mimed her way through Cléopatre and a numbe
r of other thousand-and-one-night ballets. An incredibly tall, thin woman, the proverbial “bag of bones,” Ida Rubenstein’s slender height allowed her to wear the most outlandishly remarkable dresses, often with three-tiered skirts that would cut up almost any other figure. In private life she was as spectacular as on the stage, almost stopping the traffic in Piccadilly or the Place Vendôme when she appeared like an amazon, wearing long, pointed shoes, a train, and very high feathers on her head, feathers that could only augment an already giant frame.

  It was her habit to put kohl round her eyes, while her hair was often dressed like a nest of black serpents, giving her an appearance which was not far removed from a mixture of Ichabod Crane and Medusa.

  Schéhérazade was Bakst’s great moment and to this day is the one ballet of Orientalism that is still successfully performed, though lacking the splendour of the original production. With the excitement engendered by the dance and the vivid colours, a whole debased and bastardized spirit of Orientalism was let loose. Costume parties and fêtes followed in the wake of the new sultan’s dream. Society women gave tableaux vivants dressed as Eastern slaves, with gold bangles on their ankles and headache bands over their eyes. Baron de Meyer took photographs of ladies in Paris and New York in a flash of gilt tissues and the metallic brilliance of the Orient. London’s society beauties were caught by the objective lens of less romantic cameras doing nautch-girl poses, with metal cymbals on their fingers and bells on their toes. A fashion world that had been dominated by corsets, lace, feathers, and pastel shades, soon found itself in a city that overnight had become a seraglio of vivid colours, harem skirts, beads, fringes, and voluptuousness. Later there would be bright futuristic scarves of checkered or harlequinade triangles and squares, all of which could be traced back to Bakst.