Parisian society dabbles in politics, music, art, spiritualism, amateur theatricals, and a host of other things, but it plunges bodily into racing. The Jockey Club of France, which controls the turf in France, is a gentleman's club, and its members are, with the exception of a few rich bourgeois, representatives of the most aristocratic houses of France. The Duc de Noailles, the Duc de Dondeauville, Prince d'Arenberg, Duc de Fezensac, Comte Pillet-Will, Vicomte d'Harcourt and a host of other men as well known are on the list of membership, and it is natural enough that the great racing events near Paris should bring out the flower of Parisian society as well as the heterogeneous crowds common to race tracks.
"Le sport," too, imported from England and conscientiously fostered for a long time before it showed signs of taking firm root in French soil, is now a conspicuous feature of Parisian social life; and golf clubs, tennis clubs, polo clubs, etc., are the chic rendezvous even for that large percentage of Parisian society which, for all its vivacity, would not, under any suasion, lend itself to active exercise. One does not look well when one exercises too violently, and costumes suitable for golf and tennis are not nearly as fascinating as those that may be worn by lookers-on. Therefore, since looking one's best is a sacred duty, and since attractive frock wearing is the Parisienne's religion, Madame, as a rule, prefers to look on. She has sporting blood, but, as we have already said, she is, before all else, "coquette."
CHAPTER II
THE TYRANTS OF THE RUE DE LA PAIX
If one would write of Vanity Fair, one must write of the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme; for the faithful worshippers of the vanities turn toward that quarter of Paris as devoutly as a Mohammedan toward Mecca. There the high priests of Fashion hold sway, and women the world over acknowledge with reverent salaams of spirit that there is no fashion but Paris fashion, though ideas as to Fashion's true prophets may differ.
Let no one speak lightly of the French frock. It has been a world power, and its story, if adequately written, would be a most absorbing and comprehensive one. Drama of all kinds has clung round its frills and furbelows. Revelations philosophical, historical, sociological, lurk in its shimmering folds. Men have died for it, women have sold youth and honour, husband, child, and lover, for it. It is Fashion's supreme expression, and, on the altar of Fashion all things precious have, first and last, been offered up.
Even the French scarcely realize the vital issues involved in the making of the Fashions, but they, at least, approach the matter with becoming gravity. Americans are said to be, next to the French, the best dressed women in the world; but there is a certain lamentable levity in the American attitude toward dress, while the French take everything pertaining to clothes seriously. One need only read a page from one of the best French fashion journals to grasp the national point of view.
Here is no mere curt chronicle of the modes. The writer's rhapsodies put our spring poets to shame. Called upon to describe a creation in pink taffeta, he dips his pen in May morning dew and invokes the muses. He soars upon the viewless wings of poesy, and, soaring, sings impassioned chants of praise; he culls his similes from all the realm of beauty, his adjectives glow with fervour, he quotes from the classics, he draws upon history and fable, he winds up with a fervid apostrophe to fair woman, – and not one of his French readers smiles. They see no extravagance in his periods. The pink taffeta was from Paquin. Upon what shrine could flowery tributes more fittingly be laid?
The artists of the French fashion journals approach their work in the same spirit. One uses the word artist advisedly, for they are really artists, those men who picture modish femininity for the Parisian fashion journals of the highest class. On this side of the water, fashion illustrators, with one or two exceptions, attempt nothing more than an accurate reproduction of the details of frock or wrap or hat. There their whole duty ends, and as for producing a clever and charming drawing, – perish the thought! The artist who can do that scorns fashion work; or, if he condescends to it, ranks it with his advertisements for soup or sapolio, and refuses to honour the pot boilers with his signature.
"They do these things better in France." There, a man may have studied seriously, may have seen his pictures given place on salon walls, and yet may take pride in being one of the foremost fashion illustrators in France. For example, there is Fournery. He is, perhaps, the most popular of the French fashion artists; he commands large prices, has more orders than he can fill, is independent to the last degree – and he loves the work, puts into it the best of the skill that he has acquired through earnest study, the skill that has won him a place in the salon, when he has taken time from his serious fashion work for such frivolous side issues.
He is a feminist, this artist. Everything that goes to make up feminine coquetry and charm interests him. He is willing to draw a picture of a fashionable frock, for the joy of drawing the woman who can successfully wear it. The "femme chic" is his chosen theme. If editors pay him large sums for gowning his women in certain costumes, so much the better.
A visit to Fournery and a study of his methods would suggest a new point of view to the American artist who thinks anything will do for a fashion sketch.
One finds a delightful studio, a vivacious and enthusiastic young man, – French to his finger-tips.
"You want to know how I do my work? A la bonheur! It is quite simple, my method. I draw first the nude figure, – from life, bien entendu. One must have the perfect figure before one can display the frock at its best, n'est-ce pas? A wooden woman cannot show off a beautiful gown. The wearer must be graceful, supple, svelte, chic. When one has the woman one adjusts her lingerie. One corsets her – but why not? The corset is an abomination perhaps, but it is worn, and there are corsets and corsets. Since women must wear corsets, let them wear good ones. The fashionable figure is not that of the Venus de Milo, but what would you? It is the fashionable figure. The fashionable gown is made to go over it. Voilà! My woman must be perfectly corsetted upon the accepted lines, but with as little violence as possible to nature's grace. Then the gown! One fits it to the figure, one makes it cling where it should cling, flare where it should flare, bring the wearer's best points into view, as the wearer exhibits the best points of the frock. One introduces an interesting background. It must be cleverly drawn, that background, a line here, a line there, nothing to distract the eye from the figure but an appropriate setting, – a glimpse of the pesage at Auteuil, the terrace at Monte Carlo, a corner of the Café de Paris, a vista on the Avenue des Acacias. – There you have it, Madame, my fashion picture. Elle est gentille, n'est-ce pas, cette petite femme chic?"
She is most assuredly "gentille." So is the "femme chic" as Drian pictures her, – Drian the youthful, who might stand at the head of our conscientiously monotonous portrayers of pretty women, were he working in New York instead of Paris. Many of those same American exponents of feminine types draw badly enough to shock the clever young Frenchman, but they would marvel at his pride in his fashion work, – for he is proud. He recognizes the importance of his metier.
It is this popular attitude toward things sartorial that has made Paris the centre of the dressmaking world. The great dressmaker may be born anywhere, but even a sartorial genius, born to dressmaking as the sparks fly upward, will not come into his artistic heritage outside of Paris. Your artistic temperament must have its sympathetic environment, and only in Paris is the artist dressmaker ranked with the immortals, only in Paris is dressmaking classed among the fine arts. Worth, the great, blushed unseen in the dark unfathomed caves of Birmingham; Beer wasted his sweetness on the desert air of Berlin; the Callot Sisters are from Provence and owe to the land of Tartarin their bold originality of invention; the Maison Drecol, famous in Paris and the foundation of Viennese fashion, was established by a Madame Wagner from Amsterdam. Once rooted in Parisian soil, these insignificant ones waxed great and famous, and their history is the history of fully two thirds of the well-known Paris dressmakers.
They are the truly great men of France, those famous dressmakers. Politicians, statesmen, generals, writers, musicians, strut across the public stage