The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

On her appearance, too, she lavished much fervour and fantasy. Having been at thirty a vaguely plain woman with a marmoset face and only a pair of bright brown eyes to break the anonymity, Lady Mendl improved her looks throughout the years. By special dieting, by turning somersaults and standing on her head, she maintained a svelteness of figure throughout her life. She introduced pale blue hair and was one of the earliest, most successful devotees of facial surgery. In later years there was much speculation about her age, for she seemed to have become ever younger and prettier; and when she was over eighty Lady Mendl came into her own as a beauty, acquiring an almost mystical look of serenity. She had discarded all the more exaggerated fantasies of fashion. Wearing a simple black dress with short white gloves and a collar of pearls, she looked as delightful as any of the Carmontelles hanging on the boiseries of her Paris drawing room.

  From the beginning of the First World War until the late twenties the name of Muriel Draper spelled backwards signified one of the foremost powers in the American world of interior decorating. “Repard Leirum” created her personal idiom of high nonsense, a trend that was later to give rise to Carl Van Vechten and the cellophane-wrapped world of Florine Stettheimer.

  A woman of means who had lost all her money, Muriel Draper turned her hand to a vocation that was to prove both lucrative and creative. Later she would become an interior-decoration critic for The New Yorker, and at her peak was responsible for the decoration of the Deering House in Miami, which in its day of construction cost more money than any other private dwelling had cost before. This house, now a museum, was decorated in great taste, an Italian pastiche of a villa on the Brenta—the Villa Viscaia. The ground floor was open to the sea, which came in and filled the grotto-like swimming pool hung with stalactites. For the drawing room Muriel Draper created a special ceiling made of lace woven in Belgium over a period of two years.

  At work or play “Repard Leirum” was an outrageous personality. With red-gold hair, a dead-white face, and a scarlet gash of a mouth she was always spectacular in the choice of her clothes. It was she who wore Fortuny dresses for the first time in America. Her taste was a freshly outrageous revolution against the impecable criteria held by Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan, and Elizabeth Marbury, and the whole school that was based on Versailles and the Villa Trianon. It is said that these ladies were all under the influence of an American gentleman, Walter Gay, who was living in France, who was largely responsible for the prevalent taste brought from Versailles of orange trees in tubs, trelliswork, and large expanses of mirrors. Of the group, Miss Elizabeth Marbury, looking like great Buddha, was the hub, a great catalyst and a tremendous promulgator in the field of art and decoration. Allied with these ladies was the American novelist, Edith Wharton, who promoted their collective viewpoint in a book on the correct decoration of American houses.

  Diametrically opposed to the refined tastes of these ladies and armed with the sword of a new anarchic violence, Muriel Draper brought African art, and indeed, a Firbankian taste to revolutionize America.

  That her country welcomes her and found in her a responsive creative chord to its own needs soon became evident from her success. She created a salon, occupying a position of authority in New York and moving in the highest mystical and political circles.

  There came a time, however, when Muriel Draper was to fall from her peak of eminence. Through a series of mishaps, largely prompted by her uncontrolled bohemianism, she gradually lost both her money and position. But the spurt that this decorator had given to a freer expression of American taste was not soon to be forgotten, and paved the way for important new personages and trends.

  Several years previously a rich American gentleman, Robert Chanler, was establishing certain tastes of his own with considerable success. He was a painter who boldly decorated enormous screens that were staunchly painted with zebras, leopards, and giraffes. Many of Chanler’s ideas filtered down indirectly to others, who used them to advantage in helping to create the tone of the period.

  By the late twenties and very early thirties one of the most wistfully mothlike creatures that America has latterly produced was holding court among the ephemeral trappings of cellophane that became her transparent trademark. Miss Florine Stettheimer created her own world of fantasy, decorating her house with cellophane curtains, argentine cloth, or tinfoil effects, and striking a note of utterly delightful whimsey. Quite individual and apart from any cultural movement, Florine Stettheimer nevertheless was a parallel influence on the madness of certain aspects of the thirties. A talented painter, in her own inimitable idiom of a naïve fantasy that introduced African colours into a completely American fairyland, she achieved her moment of theatrical triumph by designing the sugar-spun decor and costumes for Virgil Thomson’s all-black opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, with a libretto by Gertrude Stein.

  The modern house that Mrs. Winkie Phillipson asked Basil Ionides to help her build near Folkestone in Kent in the late twenties was somewhat more modest than Sir Philip Sassoon’s Arabian Nights fantasy at nearby Port Lympne, but it was far wider-reaching in its effect. Mrs. Phillipson had been married to a Russian who was said to have kept her under lock and key. When he died she returned to England; though she never discarded her widow’s black, she married a wealthy coal merchant and proceeded to indulge her creative tastes. At first these were confined to painting flowerpots white and growing only white flowers. But soon she allowed her mania for no colour to spread indoors, and the house became “all white.”

  When Mrs. Phillipson and her husband helped to set up Mrs. Somerset Maugham as “Syrie” in a decorating business, Mrs. Phillipson suggested that Syrie’s stock of oak tables and copper pots filled with Cape gooseberries should be exchanged for something a little more startling. Soon, after a few carefully-placed piqûres from her hostess at Folkestone, Syrie caught the “no colour” virus and spread the disease around the world.

  Mrs. Maugham is a woman with flair and a strong personal taste of her own. She is also one of the most energetic women of her day. Her indefatigable strength was now given to turning the world white, not only in winter but throughout the seasons of the year. With the strength of a typhoon she blew all colour before her. For the next decade Syrie Maugham bleached, pickled, or scraped every piece of furniture in sight. White sheepskin rugs were strewn on the eggshell-surfaced floors, huge white sofas were flanked with white cracked-paint tables, white peacock feathers were put in white vases against a white wall.

  At first sight her own big, all-white drawing room in Chelsea produced a strange and marvellous surprise. There was something unworldly about the effect of those pristine white hydrangeas and white china against their white background. Everything was so immaculate and hygenic that Margot Oxford, who had been somewhat taken aback on entering the room, recovered herself enough to give the advice, “Dear Mrs. Maugham, what you need are a few old varnished maps on the wall.”

  The innovation of the white room had thus been inaugurated in Syrie Maugham’s drawing room in Chelsea. Other drawing rooms, containing wonderful museum pieces, soon followed suit. Louis Quinze commodes were bleached, and their gilt was silvered. Gilt baroque looking glasses were covered with whitewash; white Louis Seize or Empire bits were placed in conjunction with white modern furniture. Mayfair drawing rooms looked like albino stage sets.

  As with all good ideas, the white craze eventually became so much abused that one was unable to sustain a continued appreciation for the very salutary contribution that had been made. Though it may now come as a belated shock that so much good furniture was robbed of its true patina, the whiteness had nevertheless succeeded in clearing away much fustiness and darkness.

  White rooms have since taken their proper place—on sunlit promontories overlooking the sea, in California or the tropics, where they are admirably suited to their bamboo furniture, rushmatting floors, Venetian shutters, or trelliswork screens.

  Lady Colefax, a collector of interesting and imaginative people, l
ived for many years in a compact but noble Georgian dwelling—Argyll House in the King’s Road, Chelsea. Here she entertained ceaselessly, peopling the delightful rooms that were decorated with all the restraint of an eighteenth-century intellectual.

  Influenced in her taste by “The Souls” (via Lady Wemyss), Lady Colefax created an atmosphere that was without any quality of pretentiousness, regardless of where she lived. A magnolia might be put in a celadon vase on a lacquer table, but there was never a clutter of objets d’art or a plethora of florist’s flowers. She purposely avoided the inclusion of any grand pieces of furniture in her rooms, obtaining her effects through the use of off colours—pale almond greens, greys, and opaque yellows—and an over-all discretion. Everything appeared to be immaculately swept and varnished: on the well-polished oak table, the glass vases of jasmine would be freshly filled with water that was still full of oxygen bubbles. From the moment one arrived in the small panelled hall and savoured the aroma of dried rosemary burnt on a saucer, one knew one had arrived in a completely different atmosphere, refreshing as a sea change.

  When in later years Lady Colefax took to decorating professionally, her individual flair was missing, and she assembled rooms that were singularly unlike her own. With a typical enthusiasm she propagated the taste revived by Edward Knoblock, the playwright, for the Regency style. Room after room would be decorated in what John Betjeman has called “ghastly good taste”: somewhat sparsely furnished, with a couple of delicate black and gold chairs, a settee, striped curtains, and a colour scheme of yellow and grey. It is true that Regency, by combining lack of pretence with a restrained use of colour and rather sparse ornamentation, is in many ways suited to the English character. Though the style has latterly taken on a somewhat gayer guise, it is still enjoying such a high popularity that continued overuse will surely begin to pall before very long.

  THE SMALL PALLADIAN HOUSE

  Of a similar universality has been the taste during the last thirty years for the small Palladian house. Tall Georgian proportions are now so inevitable a requirement on real estate prospectuses that we must surely be due for a change, probably to the Elizabethan manor house with its thick grey stone walls, deep-set windows, and enclosed gardens.

  TALL GEORGIAN PROPORTIONS ARE A REQUIREMENT

  Considered to be the best designer of modern interiors in America today, T. H. Robsjohn Gibbings is staunchly set against the mania for antiques, for European imitation and gimcrack period creations. Mr. Gibbings has created many fine pieces of furniture whose craftsmanship perhaps could be compared favorably with that of the finest Chinese; he has also made excellent designs for mass production by Grand Rapids and altogether attracted many people to his unshaken belief in modern architecture and design.

  But it is doubtful if “modern” is “here to stay,” for interior decoration, like ladies’ fashions, has run a restless and ever-changing gamut since the first cave man brought a rock into his cave to sit upon; like fashion, any voyage to the interior is fraught with peril between the Scylla of antiques and the Charybdis of an operating-room sterility.

  But changes in taste are no grounds for rancour, since we are all subject to them. My own former preference for the drawing-room ormulu of the French school has considerably abated in recent years, and I now find myself turning to something more stark in its simplicity. Yet it is difficult to accept the “modern” without reservations, since so little modern furniture seems to possess individuality. An ideal tendency might perhaps be towards a combination of the “modern” point of view with that of Jacobean English or of Spanish taste. Somewhat bedazzled by a surfeit of gilt glitter, I find myself more in harmony with the polished woods, as dark as plum pudding, of solid chairs which have no ornamentation and are placed against the crackled, Cornish cream richness of old panelling.

  Many people are somewhat overcome by the excess of bad taste shown outside Spain and exemplified in the “Spanish style.” I have lived long enough in America to know that the cheapest and most vulgar decoration is vaguely classified as Spanish. Though pebble-dash walls, coarse wrought ironwork, and orange light have nothing to do with the real Spain, these things have set up a certain resistance. The late Mr. Hearst and others, by importing real castles from Spain, have done much to overfamiliarize that which is good in Spanish decoration. Yet when the visitor in Spain comes across the best the country can offer, and he sees it in its proper setting; there is nothing else in the world that can compare to it. The acme of pure Spanish taste does not even strike one as being particularly Spanish.

  Among the fine homes I have been privileged to see throughout my travels in Italy, France, Spain, India, China, Germany, and America, none is in nobler taste than the eighty-year-old Duchess of Lerma’s palace. This venerable building outside Toledo has been given over to nuns, and one wing has been turned into a school for children. The Duchess still retains her private quarters, but when she is not in residence, they are opened to the public together with the magnificent Lerma library.

  The Duchess herself is a remarkable woman who, accustomed to every luxury riches can provide, has eliminated everything that is superfluous from her life. Her bedroom is of a monumental simplicity, decorated only by the sunlight which, filtering through the shutters on to the tall white walls, is unending in its variety. The bed, a giant four-poster, is upholstered in the darkest green Genoese velvet. A writing table is covered with a cloth of the same material, and there is no ornament upon it except a massive inkpot of gold, innocent of all chasing or decoration. There are one or two stout, high-backed chairs of dark polished wood, a few rugs of superb quality on the stone floor, and possibly a Greco to be admired upon an easel.

  I know of no room emanating so completely and satisfyingly the feeling of the dignity of life, except perhaps that of her maid, who sleeps humbly in the adjoining room, a small honeycomb cell with tall shuttered windows and a narrow but tall four-poster bed of wrought iron, its linen hangings embroidered in the most delicate red and blue needlework.

  The Duchess of Lerma has a taste governed by the climate of Spain. It has the Spanish character in its boldness and uncompromising use of colour; yet in its respect for form and syntax it is outside the boundaries of any country. By comparison, all other tastes seem frivolous.

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE AGE OF ANXIETY

  THERE is good reason that Mr. Auden, in his Baroque Eclogue, should have called the forties the “age of anxiety.” The first half of that decade was occupied by a world war of far greater proportions than the one that preceded it, and the last half seemed already to be presaging new storm clouds for some future date.

  Yet creative activity continues even in the darkest periods of history. And in both the major and the minor arts the forties were no exception. In literature the “doubly lost generation” produced several young writers of remarkable talent; the theatre turned away from ready-made plays to embrace more poetic dramas; and influenced by T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, and Christopher Fry, plays took on a new vitality.

  During the war no one thought much about frivolous fashion, and there were no new styles. Only those which had been left over when the war began. Perhaps the standard civilian dress for the women who took their place next to men on assembly lines was the costume of men’s slacks and shirts or jerseys, with coloured handkerchiefs that tied neatly around the head like a turban. Yet, even when England was under siege and France was occupied, Paris continued to show that style could still exert itself. In view of the petrol shortage, there was no more “chic” form of transport than a bicycle, and suitable fashions in clothes had forthwith to be invented. To spite German supervision, the French fashion magazines continued publication.

  There is something touching about the persistence of fashion in periods of holocaust. Paris styles during the war—short skirts and square shoulders, high wedged boots or clogs, and cumbersome Breughel-like hats of velvet and barnyard feathers—seem to us now more hideously disproportionate than tho
se of any previous period of history.

  American designers tried to prove that they were independent of Paris, but evolved no significant fashion, marking time until the day when they could again receive inspiration from the accepted source. The moment war ended, Paris dressmakers knew that a sudden change, complete in its influence, was needed. Generally fashion variations occur slowly. It is only over a period of a decade that one can see the changing line and, indirectly, the changing times. But the New Look of 1947 provided a necessary and drastic metamorphosis.

  There were valid reasons why many women revolted against its initial appearance. In England, for example, clothes rationing was a serious business, and the few coupons permitted for basic necessities did not contemplate such an extravagant change. Nor did the new fashion permit women simply to drop their skirts, even presuming that the hem contained enough material to allow for lengthening below the calf. The skirts of the early New Look were not only inordinately long, but also quite luxuriously voluminous: the whole silhouette had been changed. Fashionable women were overnight obliged to become ballet dancers, and for the first time in many years the curves of the feminine figures were emphasized once more.

  Most women have an innate dislike of waste, and fashion changes ought, at least superficially, to justify themselves as being in some way superior to those which they replace. Nineteen forty-seven was one of those rare moments in the chronicle of recorded fashion when women staged an abortive revolt against the tyranny of a vastly expensive change that required the complete discarding of their old wardrobes. For one brief, historical instant they came perilously close to anarchy, to realizing that fashion is au fond ridiculous and perverse. Many persisted in their old ways and refused to adopt the new extremes in skirt length over padded crinolines. But once again fashion succeeded and within several seasons any woman in an “old look” dress was marked for pity and ridicule. The new silhouette that emerged with its full splendour of bust and padded hips was as intensely feminine as the styles of 1915 and in some ways bore a superficial resemblance to them. Though this New Look underwent considerable modifications, the silhouette was nevertheless to remain intact for the next five years.