The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  In America, Miguel Covarrubias’ cartoons in Vanity Fair were eulogizing Harlem, and Carl Van Vechten had just written Nigger Heaven. The Blackbirds revues and the Cotton Club were at the peak of their success. People somehow found the energy to visit Harlem from midnight to dawn, crowding night clubs where the frenzy of the jungle was added to the expert rhythms of the new dancing. Though diluted and popularized jazz had been the rage for a long time, the white people were now seeking it at the source. “Negroes” came downtown to teach the Charleston and the Black Bottom in private apartments. By degrees and in dribbles Harlem moved downtown and then made its way to Paris, where there were “Bricktops,” “Negro” night clubs in Montmartre, and miscegenation. It even became fashionable to “look like Negroes,” and “Negro fashions” were copied.

  In interior decoration the Chinese influence flooded Georgian rooms with bibelots of every dynasty from Ming to Tang. Large lacquer screens were placed to hide the serving lift, coffee tables were made of lacquer, and sometimes even the walls were boiseried in imitation lacquer. Chinese figures held up pagodashaped lampshades, while gilt lotus flowers sprang out of empty accumulator jars of rough glass, or a shallow floating bowl contained dried poppy heads stippled in gold paint. Large brocade floor cushions would be trimmed with bunches of purple cotton-wool-stuffed grapes.

  It has been said that a complete change in women’s appearance comes about after every war. The French Revolution led to Greek draperies, the Second World War led to the New Look, and the 1914 war preceded an utter revolution in the concept of femininity, a revolution which, with its planes, straight lines, and flattening out of bosoms and silhouettes, is not superficially related to cubism in art, nor to the tubular world of Fernand Léger. For in the aftermath of 1918 fashion began to show signs of the influence of modern art.

  Mrs. Vernon Castle may have been a slight indication of the future, since coming events cast their shadows before; but there was, nevertheless, a complete metamorphosis, in which Chanel soon took her rightful place as the guiding hand of the period. She made every woman look entirely unlike the women of the past. This time it was a complete innovation, with no reversion to any style of history. The days of grandeur and flamboyant elegance were as dead as Queen Anne. Thirty years previously it had taken ten yards of material to make a skirt; now it took perhaps a yard.

  Chanel was the first designer to make her clientele feel that it was smart not to look rich. Comfort and freedom were opposed to straight-jacket luxury and were expressed in the simplicity of the new uniform.

  The standard explanation of these styles is that emancipation had become the slogan of the post-war period. In 1920 women had been given the right to vote, and their new-found freedom was expressing itself in dress. Together with their recently acquired legal, economic, and political equality, they wanted to look as much like young men as possible; Chanel helped them. In the Edwardian age women had been magnificent, handsome, statuesquely beautiful, but they never felt the desire to appear youthful. Now youth and boyish beauty became the idea and the password. Lillian Russell and the Gibson girls had turned into Rosalind in the Forest of Arden. Skirts crept upwards like the mercury column on a midsummer’s day, hair became shingled or Eton-cropped, ever shorter, hats more and more bell-shaped until, by the late twenties, the accepted look had become as standardized as a prison uniform, and there was scarcely any difference between the styles for a child of eight, a flapper, or a woman of eighteen, twenty, or fifty-eight.

  It was La Rochefoucauld who once said that few people know how to grow old. In the twenties they didn’t have to. Women became younger and younger, as though fashion had decided to reverse time.

  The personification of the new type of woman was the Duchess of Peñaranda, a Spanish beauty who appeared wearing a short white tunic with a deep scooped neckline and a skirt that stretched barely to the knees. She wore sunburn stockings with white satin shoes whose Spanish spike heels were fully six inches high. Her hair, brilliantined to a satin brilliance, was drawn back as tightly as a bullfighter’s. The Duchess’s complexion matched her stockings, for she was burned by the sun to a deep shade of iodine. Two enormous rows of pearl teeth were bared in a white, vital grin, complementing the half a dozen rows of large pearls as large as pigeons’ eggs that hung about her neck. The uncompromising simplicity of this sunburned body and white dress, coupled with the straightness of her back and neck, was quite dazzling.

  The Duchess of Peñaranda was one of a whole coterie of women who, in Paris during the twenties, invented their own styles, and the dressmakers kept an eye on them, rather than the reverse. Being women of taste, ingenuity, and a certain artistry, as well as having a private income, they were able to make a work of art of their games of invention.

  WITH APOLOGIES TO “FACELESS FREDDIE” AND HIS SKETCHES OF MRS. REGINALD FELLO WES

  The Honourable Mrs. Reginald (Daisy) Fellowes was among the outstanding members of the coterie. Half French and half American, her Gallic bent predominating, she lived for the most part in Paris, though making occasional cross-Channel trips to England. Mrs. Fellowes was much publicized as the best-dressed woman in the world. Such a title would seem to imply frequent changes of wardrobe; but, on the contrary, she earned the distinction more for the brilliance of her studied simplicity. Other women would often be furious to see her wearing the same dress perpetually for day and evening wear. It was Daisy Fellowes who invented the sequin coat cut like a man’s dinner jacket. She wore it with audacity and a green carnation sprouting from the buttonhole, until, indeed, she wore it out. But whatever the occasion or the clothing, Daisy Fellowes always had a scrubbed classical look, an unparalleled air of slickness, trimness, and cleanness. Her hair was sleeked back whether it was cut very short or folded in a tight knot. Her general appearance bespoke no fussiness: she had the air of having just come off a yacht, which she very likely had.

  Daisy Fellowes enjoyed making other women appear foolish, and would wear plain linen dresses when everyone else was dressed to kill. These linen suits, though simple in tailoring and often of identical shape, were ordered in dozens of different colours and complemented by barbaric jewels—handcuffs of emeralds, necklets of Indian stones, or conch shells of diamonds. She even more jewellery with her beach suits. At the races, while her rivals would be wearing enormous picture hats of chiffon or transparent straw that sprouted fireworks of feathers, Daisy Fellowes might turn up hatless. The effect, of course, succeeded in making the others appear overdressed and slightly ridiculous. Mrs. Fellowes enjoyed her “appearances,” though often they were as inconsequent as a masquerade. At an hour when most luxurious women, in appropriate dresses, were being driven to cocktail parties in purring limousines, she would be seen on foot, turning a corner of the Place Vendôme under a cloudless sky, on her way to a secret date, wearing a neat coat and skirt, with an umbrella under her arm. The piquancy of the picture created its charm.

  On an occasion when she wished to appear at a court in Buckingham Palace, Mrs. Fellowes was determined not to conform to the usual white or pastel shades that women wear when presented. To provide herself with a suitable excuse for widow’s weeds was not difficult: like most Frenchwomen, Daisy Fellowes had a widespread family tree, and a little cursory botany sufficed to discover, on some outlying limb, the recent death of a fifth cousin twice removed. With the funeral established, she appeared at court in a dangerously short black jet dress adorned with a black train and set off by a spray of black Prince of Wales feathers on her neat head.

  Once she went to a supper dance wearing a black tulle dress decorated with puffs of great ostrich feathers, and was subjected to the rare and embarrassing incident that every woman dislikes: another member of the party was wearing the same outfit. Calmly, while talking to the others, Daisy Fellowes equipped herself with a pair of scissors and cut all the feathers from her dress. When she rose to move onto the dance floor, she waved the bunch of cut feathers nonchalantly, like a fan. This was her way of han
dling a situation with aplomb.

  Perhaps it was Princess de Faucigny Lucinge who was most responsible for introducing an exotic note into the twenties. Her natural individuality made it inevitable that she should shine among the unusual women of the period, and even today there are indirect signs of “Baba” Lucinge’s contributions to style or decoration.

  English by birth, she had been Miss Baba d’Erlanger before her marriage. Her scarlet-haired mother was well known in England as an avant-gardiste of interior decoration, and the family house in Piccadilly (which had once belonged to Lord Byron) was full of witch balls, shell flowers, mother-of-pearl furniture, and startling innovations picked up for a song at the Caledonian Market. Even as a child Baba was a natural cause of wonder, though she never seemed to mind or note the fact. When she promenaded through London she was escorted, not by the typical English duenna, the “nanny,” but by a wonderful mameluke, all turban and coloured robes, who followed her footsteps like a page. As a young girl Baba wore dresses of gold tissue; later, when she married Prince Jean Louis de Faucigny Lucinge, her wedding dress was described as “molten gold.”

  Baba always looked rather like an Arab urchin, her pointed, dark face betraying a light touch of melancholy. She put black paint under her eyes and grew her nails very long, enamelling them dark red. Her youth and beauty allowed her to expose her enigma even on the sunniest beach. She would wear a tarbush, or pillbox money hats, and pinned bunches of jewelled grapes to her bathing suit.

  As a young woman, Baba Lucinge was almost inseparable from Paula Gellibrand, a great beauty, who had been discovered by Baba’s mother. By nature Paula was a completely unaffected, somewhat hearty schoolgirl type, but by some freak of fortune she was endowed with an appearance of extraordinary sophistication. Her enormous blue eyes were surrounded by a halo of dark mushroom-coloured fatigue, giving her the appearance of always being heavily made up. The huge crown of her perfect egg-shaped head lent her the look of a Modigliani. Her hands were of an extraordinary flexibility and length. With her gold hair and white skin Paula Gellibrand was the perfect foil for Baba’s dark Orientalism. Under the influence of Princess d’Erlanger, Paula became even more exotic of appearance, putting Vaseline on her eyelids, wearing coifs like a nurse, and, for her wedding, was dressed in the style of a nun.

  Another friend of Baba Lucinge was the diminutive Madame Lilia Ralli, a Greek lady with a Parisian taste. Throughout every change of fashion she has converted the Paris dicta to her individual idiom of chic. It is not always easy to maintain an individual style once one has created it, but Madame Ralli has an unfailing sense of fashion, enormous enthusiasm, and sound theoretical sense. She seldom wears an elaborate dress, but relies for her self-adornment on elaborate hats, accessories, and jewellery. She is the best example I know of the woman who is so well-dressed that, for the past twenty-five years, people have not noticed what she is wearing but have known that she looks exceptionally well. Only the initiates of the highest realm of fashion philosophy can appreciate the spontaneity of her natural gift and her elaborate attention to every detail of her appearance. Her sense of contrast can be judged by the fact that, although she is always changing the colour of her hair, she never wears nail polish or varnish and attempts no more than the most spasmodic or cursory indications of make-up.

  Lady (Iya) Abdy invented size. She stands over six feet tall and, by wearing a cape of sable that flowed to the ground, huge felt hats, or floating velvet dresses that matched her pale trailing hair, has always done everything she could to make herself even more enormous.

  Of all the exotics, one could scarcely overlook the Marquesa Casati, with her death-white face, orange hair, and black eyes, belladonna eyes that were rimmed not only with black paint but black tape as well. Yet when Luisa Amon from Milan first married Camillo Casati, a great huntsman, the Master of the Roman hounds and president of the Jockey Club in Rome, she was considered by all those who first saw her at the Meets of the Hunt to be the mousy little wife of the Master. Little did they expect the transformation that was to take place. The mousy hair burst into flames, the eyelashes spread like peacock feathers, she dressed in a style entirely of her own invention, in incroyable sheaths made of imitation fur, her head half hidden beneath a black lace-and-satin coal scuttle. She acquired a Tunisian slave named Garbi whom she dressed in exotic undress. She became so extravagant in her behaviour that the noblest families in Rome flocked to her house in the Via Piamenti. At a dinner given by her for Princess Lucien Murat to celebrate the canonization of Joan of Arc there was a scandal that one of the guests had cheated while gambling at cards. The Italian aristocracy were entertained in rooms in which snakes writhed on the polished stone floors. At one time she kept a large brown monkey in her salon. A friend complained, “How can you have such a horrid smelly creature at such close quarters?” The Marquesa pulled a branch of dark-coloured lilac from a vase, poked it through the bars of the animal’s gold cage. The monkey snatched at the lilac and the Marquesa triumphantly exclaimed, “Now do you see why I have a monkey? Don’t you think that is beautiful! Isn’t it like something in a Chinese painting?”

  THE MARQUESA CASATI, WITH APOLOGIES TO BOLDINI, 1909

  But the Marquesa Casati’s taste was by no means to be ignored as merely eccentric. Though her houses were arranged less for comfort than beauty, they had influence in their emptiness, their use of alabaster—huge vases, lit within, were filled with roses (hence the alabaster lamps we see today)—and her lighting also came from behind lumps of amber or rock crystal.

  At Le Vésinet, outside Paris, she bought the Palais Rose, the former home of the Comte Robert de Montesquieu. Boni de Castellane later copied this house in the Avenue Foch, and, while married to Anna Gould, gave fabulous entertainments there. The Marquesa made it into an exquisite setting for her exotic personality. Her life became a search for beauty. One day she telephoned a friend to ask if he would please go shopping with her because she felt the desire for “something orange.” The entire day was spent in the pursuit, with the Marquesa mumbling, “I know exactly the colour this object must be!” They looked in vain in all sorts of shops where they sell materials, jewels, lacquer (though of course never where they sell oranges) until at last the Marquesa found in an antique shop a Fabergé cigarette case of orange enamel. Then, at last satisfied, she returned home.

  For street wear she had tiger-skin top hats, or huge gold paper baskets turned upside down on her head, draped with lace and worn with trailing black velvet dresses. Once she came to visit me in the country, in the dead of winter with snow on the ground, wearing an enormous cowboy hat, white flannel trousers, and gold sandals.

  At fancy dress balls the Marquesa Casati excelled herself, often wearing costumes designed for her in the highest flights of Léon Bakst’s fantasy. She once went to such lengths as to gild a black man who accompanied her as part of her entrance. Another appearance was made escorted by a live leopard on a chain. What might perhaps have been her most extravagant disguise never quite came off. Count Etienne de Beaumont had planned a ball, and the Marquesa Casati decided to appear as an electrically equipped Saint Sebastian. She was to wear armour pierced with hundreds of arrows, each studded with glittering stars that were to light up when the Marquesa appeared. On the morning of the ball, in a little side room at De Beaumonts, she had arrived with her host’s permission, bringing a fleet of servants, an electrician, and stoves for boiling water to make cups of tea or coffee while the elaborate preparations for her appearance were in progress. At last, her maquillage complete, her hair fixed in an aureole of ringlets, the Marquesa was pulled into the tights and the armour was fixed on her with a padlock. But at the moment of being plugged in a disaster took place: the costume was short-circuited, and, instead of being lighted up with a thousand stars, the Marquesa suffered an electric shock that sent her into a backward somersault. She did not recover in time to appear at the party, leaving a note at the De Beaumont house that stated simply, “Milles regrets.”r />
  But the Marquesa herself is a woman of few regrets. She never had any financial sense. When she ran short of money and a gondolier had to be paid for his services, she would hand him a pearl bracelet. Thus it is not surprising that, having run through several fortunes, she found herself stranded in a London at war with her own country, penniless but for the help of few loyal friends. Far from the sun, the warmth, or the luxury that she knew, the Marquesa still found life full of fascination and interest. Even the squalors of poverty-struck London could not break her spirit: to this day she possesses the grand manner, though her shoes may be frayed or the lace on her hat may be torn.

  Knowing the Marquesa’s innate distinction, I once asked her whom she considered the best-dressed woman she had ever known. “Cécile Sorel, without a doubt,” she replied. “She knows more about clothes than any other living woman. She has known how to dress since the eighties. Not only does she know how to wear clothes in the grand manner, but she can take a needle and scissors and make them in the grand manner herself.”

  One day during one of the gloomiest winters of the war I went to call on her to bring her to my home for luncheon and found her sitting in her room on the top floor of Byron’s old house in Piccadilly, which had latterly been turned into flats. She was at a table in the middle of the room, adding kohl to her darkened eyes, wearing the same black velveteen costume that had been her uniform for the last ten years.