The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  Perhaps, by way of illustration, one could say that Madame Errazuriz’ tendencies had a certain affinity with the Whistler inspired appreciation for empty rooms with blue and white china and an engraving on the wall, with perhaps a Japanese screen in a corner. Doubtless her taste must have been greatly influenced by her long stay in England. It was certainly more classical than that of the decades through which she lived, and the indelible impression, though it influenced the cognoscenti in her own lifetime, has only latterly become apparent to many people.

  Madame Errazuriz detested anything condemned to immobility. “A house that does not alter,” she would say, “is a dead house. Once must change the furniture, or at least rearrange it continually. This perpetual renewing is the beauty and strength of fashion. In a house where nothing budges, the eye, too long accustomed to the same scene, ends by seeing nothing.”

  To this end Eugenia Errazuriz loved bartering and exchanging objects with her friends. On once occasion Madame Errazuriz saw a beautiful eighteenth-century bergère chair at a Spanish inn and returned home full of excitement. “It’s the most lovely bergère in the whole world. I am going to sell something and buy that bergère, because I am very old. I am going to put it next to the window so that I can look at the world outside and never move.” With her great niece and great-niece’s husband she went back to the inn to look at the bergère. It was an exquisitely bold and simple chair painted white. “I don’t like the material. If ever I get that chair, I’m going to find something blue to cover it. I must exchange something for that chair.”

  “No,” said the husband of the great-niece. “We will buy the chair for you!”

  Delight, kisses, embraces; the chair was covered in blue and white material and placed by the window. A month later her niece came to tea and noticed the absence of the chair. Madame Errazuriz was embarrassed. “I couldn’t resist a change,” she said. “I saw something I liked even, better, so I sold the chair to Emilio Terry.”

  True to her philosophy, Madame Errazuriz was a great furniture mover, one of the few (together with Drian, the painter) who had a genius for knowing exactly where to place furniture in a room. With her unerring eye for proportion she could even tell at a glance if a chandelier was hung too high or too low, according to the unwritten measure that governs such things.

  Another of Madame Errazuriz’ beliefs was that simplicity extended to nooks and drawers as well. “If the kitchen is not as well kept as the salon,” she would say, “if there are masses of old things lying about the bureau drawers, you cannot have a beautiful house. Throw out and keep throwing out: elegance means elimination.”

  No photographs or miniatures stood on her tables or hung on her walls. Instead, they were fixed inside the drawers of a commode that opened onto a fascinating gallery of souvenirs of her rich and varied life, including a photograph of the portrait Sargent made of her when she arrived in London from Chile, a very young woman with a small beak of a nose and raven hair.

  A gratuitous genius, Madame Errazuriz never became a professional decorator, giving advice only to relations or close friends, such as the Jaucourts, her great-niece, Madame Lopez-Wilshaw, or her nephew, Tony Gandarillas.

  To these intimates she also aired her views on the subject of dressing. One day Patricia Lopez-Wilshaw (who is rightly considered to be one of the most elegant women in Paris) came to see her wearing a yellow coat and a small back hat trimmed with a yellow bow. “That yellow bow is wrong. You must either be dressed in one colour or in many colours, but never wear a repetition of colours. You can mix colours, but it is a great fault to repeat them. And your stockings are not good—they are too thick. You must always buy the best in life; you must always try to find the best quality in the world.”

  With other friends her word was often: “Put very few things on. Don’t buy five middling-good dresses; much better to have one good one from Balenciaga than a lot for the sake of variety.”

  Madame Errazuriz’ interior-decorating doctrines found wide acceptance and influenced many decorators, including Jean-Michel Frank. If Frank had lived, he would perhaps have been the great decorator of the future. It is he who should have decorated the United Nations Building. Better than anyone he knew how to cater to a period in which, with few domestic servants and the cost of upkeep at a premium, ingenuity must be used. Jean-Michel Frank invented new surfaces and fabrics, tables made of parchment banquettes upholstered in sackcloth, and walls covered with great squares of raw leather. He designed low sofas and tables, even encouraging people to sit on leather floor cushions, while sheepskin or raffia were recommended carpets. He prevailed upon Giacometti to design some lamps which are among the most beautiful of modern household objects. Frank had, in general, a unique feeling for measure and correctness in his arrangements. He was that rare genius who could give elegance to modern furniture and modern decor; though even Frank never succeeded (nor has anyone since) in giving to a room decorated entirely with modern furniture a personal, individual feeling.

  As an old woman, Madame Errazuriz returned to Biarritz. Always vague about money, she spent ten times more than she posssessed. She now found herself in somewhat straitened circumstances, though relations and friends were always nearby to help her, while her great-nephew made certain that each day she had a quart bottle of champagne. “Ça me donne de la vie,” she said. Each night she went to bed early and was up betimes, working barefoot in the garden from six until noon, at which time she put on a pair of high-heeled shoes. Until her death Madame Errazuriz still wore exaggeratedly high heels.

  Her great-niece has described how she would go to say good night to her. Madam Errazuriz sat in bed, wearing a nightgown with full-length sleeves and a high collar fastened tight round her high neck with string. “Don’t look at the lines of my hand,” she would say as her niece kissed her hand. “The lines are fading away. I’m so old: I know I’m not going to live long.” She had the peasant’s acceptance of life and death, imbued with a deep religious faith.

  During the difficult years of the Second World War, Madame Errazuriz wrote to her nephew: “I am getting very thin, but I am not hungry. It is only age, thank God. Though I feel the ravages of fatigue from time to time, that is only natural and I have no other miseries. I received a big lump of money from Chile, and hope that if I succeed in being tidy it will see me through to the end. I work very hard in the garden with the wish to see it looking picturesque, and it is improving. The plants that produce food increase. God helps the people who have confidence in Him. That is my faith. The month of February has been dreadful. I live in the drawing room and even sleep in it, as it has a stove which gives real heat and the sofa is my bed and I sleep well. How tiresome I have become telling you about my life. Don’t send me anything except some black wool to make myself a sweater.”

  About the same time she wrote a typical letter of advice to a close friend: “I know your house will be perfect, for it will possess the three most important elements—harmony, elegance, and tidiness. Nothing patched up. I would like to have seen the carpet on the floor where the bright blue chaise longue stands. Don’t ever sell it. It’s a beautiful object. Picasso loved it and it gives tranquility to the other objects in the room. Put the other carpet you bought from me at the foot of the bed. How I should like to see all your things! Put all your new things in your bedroom. You already have the Picassos in your drawing room which will take your eye and make you see nothing else. Here, I have painted and washed everything in the house myself, and in the big room I put my bed just arrived from Paris from Etienne de Beaumont. The spring is so beautiful, and I love my house as it looks very clean and very poor!”

  Towards the end of Madame Errazuriz’ many years in France, her favourite great-niece, Madame Lopez-Wilshaw, went to stay with her in the house of Biarritz and described the old lady (with hair like white silk that she washed in rain water) wandering barefoot among the rosemary bushes and the lavender in her garden. “Everything in Aunt Eugenia’s house smelled so
good, everything was so clean,” she said. “The bathrooms had such wonderful soap, and lots of rose-geranium salts. The towels were thick, heavy ones with fringes and smelled of lavender. It was so peaceful to be with her, almost the peace of a convent. She was such a simple human being. Everything in her life had quality and simplicity—never anything complicated. On Sundays and Thursdays a French and a Spanish priest would come to luncheon. Aunt Eugenia knew the Spanish priest was somewhat of a gourmand, so she would say, ‘I’m going to do a special chicken for him. One must have a little vice if it gives so much pleasure and doesn’t harm anyone.’ After lunch they talked so intelligently about all subjects, particularly about literature, music, and painting.

  “It was always such fun to be with Aunt Eugenia. She always looked at you with such kindness, she was so full of human sympathy.… We discovered we both hated the hydrangeas that grew so profusely around Biarritz, and so we decided to cut off all those horrid pink and blue heads. Aunt Eugenia said, ‘I didn’t dare do it before, but now you’re here we can do it together.’ ” Armed with scissors, the two women went out into the garden. “ ‘I particularly hate the pink ones,’ Aunt Eugenia said as she snipped away. ‘Look how much better they are just green!’ ”

  PABLO PICASSO

  In 1949, at the age of ninety, Madame Errazuriz realized her memory was failing. Out of discretion, and perhaps with a remnant of youth coquettishness, she did not wish her friends or relations to see her at a disadvantage. Settling up her affairs, she gave away many presents, including her Picassos, took an airplane for the first time, and flew back to her native Chile. There, two years later, Madame Errazuriz was badly hurt in a motorcar accident. She did not wish to live any more; in Chile she was lonely. “To be ninety is a nuisance. I am tired of living. It is enough.” Refusing to eat, she gave as her reason: “I wish to help God to take me out of this life.” And so Madame Errazuriz died.

  The tastes that this remarkable lady and her disciple, Jean Michel Frank, left behind them are still being widely propagated throughout the world. In Paris, Madame Castaing is triumphantly successful with her high prices and the influence of her sober schemes of decoration whose basic values have come directly from Madame Errazuriz and which now have overwhelmed all the antiquaires on the Left Bank.

  If the lady from Chile ever had a secret, it was as simple as the fact that she was utterly individual. Only the individual taste, in the end, can truly create style of fashion, since it is not concerned with following in the wake of others. Hence, whatever an individual taste may choose, be it a stepladder or a wicker basket, will always be based on a deep personal choice, a spiritual need that truly assessed and gives value to that particular ladder or basket. The beauty of the things is somehow transmitted through the personality of the one who chooses. It is in our selection, after all, that we betray our deepest selves, and the individualist can make us see the objects of his choice with new eyes, with his eyes. The sheep, who follow taste without a hope of ever achieving it, never arrive at such distinction because they do not really cultivate themselves or their potential individuality.

  In the history of taste, Madam Errazuriz remains a shining example of the personal, the only thing that ever really matters. Though her name may perhaps be forgotten in a hundred years, she is one of the not too numerous people who, even if they become historically anonymous by not have been creative artists in an enduring mould, are still true artists in terms of selecting and giving meaning to the things that make up the daily tenor of existence.

  CHAPTER XI

  LOW BAROMETER

  PAQUIN was dying hard. Patou, a great showman, had just displayed in his winter collection a black and yellow dress with the first long skirt that had been seen for many years. The fashionable ladies with beautiful legs went into revolt—never would they appear at such a disadvantage as to cover their legs. But six months later every woman would be entranced with the new “slinky” look. Molyneux’s showrooms were crowded to the doors with his favoured clients ordering no less than fifteen of his semi-short dégagé day suits or the long supple evening dresses. Gertrude Lawrence, a past mistress in the art of making clothes “spin,” was now to be his greatest advertisement. In Molyneux’s polka-dotted pyjamas or white satin sheaths she would look “divine”; but then Miss Lawrence was always a wonderful exponent for everybody connected with the making of all sorts of clothes: by wearing a mink coat over grey flannel slacks she could create an epoch.

  Looking backwards, the thirties, from the point of view of the arts, fashion, and the general course of life itself, strike one as being perhaps the least interesting of recent decades. Heavy wrought-iron doors, Knole sofas, their backs bound with bandages of metal galon and their adjustable ends held insecurely by tasselled knobs, were placed cater-corner in even the smallest rooms. Ecclesiastical touches were brought into the homes, with loot from churches being used in a most indiscriminate manner. Cigarettes were kept in disembowelled books, lampshades were made of old music parchment with a scrap of Kyrie Eleison on it, almost anything could be given a pseudo-antique look by the simple expedient of applying a coat of yellow varnish. In literature a proletarian influence reigned heavy, with John Steinbeck, James T. Farrell, Erskine Caldwell, and John Dos Passos as popular favourites in America. Most of the young intellectuals in England found it fashionable to be left-wing. Many young men went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War, and since issues were not as clear then as they are today, youthful idealists, with the best of intentions, made bedfellows of the Communist cause.

  EDWARD MOLYNEUX

  THE THIRTIES’ STANCE

  There were a Chicago World’s Fair and a New York World’s Fair, both heralding the beginning of the acceptance of modern architecture with its straight lines, plain materials, and obviation of detail. Interior decorating then went “modern” with a vengeance, but the mass-produced “modern” furniture was to be as impersonal as anything that had previously been turned out by Grand Rapids.

  MADELEINE VIONNET, 1953

  From the visual viewpoint of clothes, the thirties was undoubtedly a drab period. Perhaps someone may be able to recapture the feeling of excitement that women’s fashions engendered in their day. But looking at them now, one can see only an uninspired modification of the revolution of the twenties: the boyish bob had vanished, but women’s breasts were still flat, and the longer skirts and slightly higher waistlines seem merely mechanical additions to the short, tubular dresses they had displaced.

  There were, of course, some remarkable dressmakers working at the time, but the one who made the greatest contribution of them all was Madame Vionnet, who started her establishment in the twenties. A parrot-like little woman with a shock of white hair, Madeleine Vionnet herself wore somewhat masculine clothes and a trilby hat. Vionnet was a genius in the way she used her materials. With her scissors she changed fashion, inventing the bias cut (or the cut on the cross), which is now one of the primary principles of dressmaking. Our contemporary dressmakers would do well to study her craftsmanship, observing how she employed fabrics in ingenious ways. When the fashionable silhouette was flat, Vionnet worked in the round, evolving a harmony between the supple curves of the feminine body and the hang of drapery that was to be fluted as a Helenic column. She made a Greek dress in a way the Greeks could never have imagined, for there was nothing archaic about her lines. Everything Vionnet created had a cling or a flow, and women dressed by her were like moving sculpture. Through her use of materials she exposed the anatomy of women for the first time. Apart from the revelation of the bias cut, this designer was also responsible for the halter and cowl necklines and the handkerchief-point dress. With such innovations Vionnet revolutionized the epoch. For twenty-five years her influence on the technique of fashions has remained.

  Madame Vionnet, who had once been a forewoman at the house of Callot, was never a great colourist, and her materials were nearly always of nondescript tones. She seldom resorted to trimming on her creations, nor
would she ever allow padding of any sort on the hips or shoulders. Everything had to hang naturally and normally, while artifice of all sorts was discouraged. Her women, therefore, had to provide their own trimming and needed well-formed busts and hips.

  Though Madame Vionnet retired from business in 1939 and considers that high fashion no longer exists as in the days she knew, she is, as the doyenne of the couture world, active behind the scenes in France today, and always at the time of collections is in Paris to give encouragement and advice to the “real craftsmen” of whom she has been the inspiration.

  Social historians might perhaps point to the stock-market crash of 1929 as the significant epitome of a feverish, fun-struck age. Certainly, with ruined millionaires throwing themselves out of windows, it marked the end of an age of plenty and ushered in a depression that was to last for a whole era, with the advent of breadlines, the dole, and a staggering economic crisis.

  Women’s fashions, in the name of practicability, comprised street suits of indeterminate shape and length, “formal” pyjamas, “tea gowns” with horse halters round the neck, and the creations, so un-Parisian in taste, of Schiaparelli.

  Yet Schiaparelli was, in her own way, something of a genius. She injected a healthy note into the thirties, inventing her own particular form of ugliness and salubriously shocking a great many people. With colours that were aggressive and even upsetting, including a particular puce that she referred to as her “shocking pink,” Schiaparelli began her revolution.

  Schiaparelli used rough-looking materials—oaten linens, pebbly crashes, and heavy crepes—put nylon and other new materials to good purposes, and was the first to use synthetic fabrics for her dresses. Mrs. Diana Vreeland of Harper’s Bazaar once sent a Schiaparelli dress to the cleaner’s. The next day she received a telephone call informing her with regret that the dress had been put into the cleaning fluid and there was nothing left of it. Mrs. Vreeland, who unbelievingly insisted on seeing the remains, was told that was literally nothing at the bottom of the pan.