Chapter 10 #2
‘Oh I will, don’t worry,’ Audrey replied.
All at once, she felt light, the burden of memory lifting from her.
She’d go and have a coffee, and then browse more of the stores she loved here.
She’d read a description in Alice’s notebook about being sent on an errand to a prestigious fabric shop, early on in her time in Paris.
The shop had once supplied some of the best couture workshops of the time, including Fontaine’s.
It hadn’t been situated in this district, but on the other side of the river, just a few streets away from the site where Fontaine’s atelier had been.
Audrey had already briefly visited both sites, but there was nothing left of either.
Here, the atmosphere was much more conducive to helping her feel her way into the draft of that part of the book.
For Alice had made a very good friend in the fabric shop that day, a girl of her own age who she hung out with a lot after that, and who was the reason she was able to go to the showing of Fontaine’s first collection.
And now Audrey could concentrate on thinking about that and her book, and nothing else.
It was just as she’d hoped. After she’d had a coffee, she spent a couple of very happy hours exploring various shops, taking notes and immersing herself in a very particular world that at its base hadn’t changed all that much since Alice’s time, especially in the more traditional stores like Tissus Reine.
It was a pleasure watching everything that went on: all the little gestures, the expressions on customers’ faces as they examined fabrics or shyly showed photos and sketches of designs to assistants to get advice on patterns, the practised motion of the big scissors in skilled hands as the assistants cut lengths from bolts of cloth spread over large tables.
She wandered through the silks, murmuring their evocative names to herself.
Moiré, faille, satin, taffeta, charmeuse, habotai, crepe de chine, organza, tulle, georgette, brocade, chiffon, shantung, jacquard, damask, gauze.
These names always made her feel as if she were reciting a magic spell.
All of it flooded into her senses and her mind, making her feel on fire, inspired, her earlier turmoil forgotten.
She ended up buying more things—a length of the most glorious flame-coloured printed silk chiffon to turn into an evening wrap, as well as some lovely Murano glass buttons from Dam Boutons.
And, in a tiny boutique in a street just off the fabric district, she found a gorgeous wraparound dress in the softest sea-green jersey, decorated on the hem with a band of flower-patterned silk, and fell in love with it at once.
It had been made by a talented local seamstress, the shopkeeper told her, and that made it feel even more special.
After that, she took the Metro to the Pont Neuf to check out the stunning resurrection of the famous department store, La Samaritaine.
In the late 1920s, it had been one of Alice’s favourite stores, but by the early 2000s, it was just a shadow of its former self and closed down.
Audrey had read about the ambitious restoration, which had taken many years, but nothing prepared her for the sheer splendour of the renovated building.
From the grand facade to the spacious interior with its carved ceilings, graceful wrought iron staircases and superb Art Nouveau and Art Deco mosaics—all of it had been recreated so skilfully, so superbly, that for a while all Audrey could do was wander around staring, taking pictures and marvelling at it all.
And now that it was back to its former glory, she could just imagine Alice and her friends there; though in their day, it would have been much more crowded, as it had catered for a wide range of customers, from society ladies to shopgirls.
Today, it was a hushed showcase of luxury retail, from high-end designer fashion to personalised champagne, superb jewellery to classic perfumes, as well as a hair salon, a rooftop restaurant and a boutique on the ground floor selling quirky souvenirs.
Less busy with customers than the other department stores, it also had more than the usual complement of tourists exclaiming and taking pictures; but Audrey knew that the discreet work of designer shopping was going on behind the scenes in private viewing and fitting areas.
Finally back at the hotel, footsore but happy, and carrying her purchases, Audrey kicked off her shoes and opened her laptop.
She transferred the day’s notes and photos from her phone, and then began roughing out the draft of a chapter.
It was absorbing work, and in the hours that followed, she forgot everything else as her fingers flew rapidly over the keyboard.
In the grim winter of 1942–43, in the dark years of the German Occupation of France, author and journalist Germaine Beaumont wrote an article for fashion magazine, L’Album du Figaro.
Entitled ‘Le poids des choses légères’—literally ‘The weight of light things’, but referring to the importance of light things—it is notable for its lyrical depiction of what a ‘Paris gown’ represents.
‘So slight a thing, so light a thing,’ she writes, ‘and yet it is the sum of civilisations, the quintessence of equilibrium, of moderation and grace, because a Paris gown is not really made of cloth, it is made with the streets, with the colonnades … it is gleaned from life and from books, from museums and from the unexpected events of the everyday. It is no more than a gown,’ she goes on, ‘and yet the whole country has made it.’
Some people have seen in those words a form of defiant criticism of the Nazi occupiers, who had signally failed in their attempt to force Parisian designers to move to Berlin, thereby hoping to move the capital of fashion from France to Germany.
Others have interpreted it as an attempt to justify those same designers who kept on working when others of their number had shut up shop altogether during those dark years.
But others still have seen it simply as the most perfect encapsulation of how Paris, in its classic role as supreme creator of ‘the light things’, had forever put its distinctive stamp on the philosophy of fashion.
By extension, it is also a timeless evocation of the power of those ‘light’ things which are seen as frivolous by some and yet bring so much pleasure, as well as consolation, to so many.
It’s not just a question for the idle rich, or for those able to own original haute couture, either.
You might have a stressful or unsatisfactory job; your intimate relationships might not be what you’d hoped they would be; you might have manifold challenges of different kinds.
And yet, when you see that dress or those shoes or that outfit in a store, be it high-end or much humbler, whether it is startlingly new or charmingly vintage, your heart skips a beat.
And as you look at yourself in the mirror of the fitting room and see that it’s not only a perfect fit but that it also allows something beautiful in you to shine out, then that makes your heart lift with hope and joy.
And that can be transformative, even if only for a brief moment, even if only when you are inhabiting the beautiful thing that has made you see yourself in an unexpected way.
Because of the way she had been brought up, Alice had known that already, well before she arrived in Paris as a nervous but excited seventeen-year-old, to live in a room at a pension and take up a position as an apprentice fashion illustrator.
But in Paris, her sense of it sharpened, along with an expanded knowledge of the sheer scope of the world of fashion.
Madame Dumas, who owned the illustration business, worked closely with department stores and smaller couturiers, and oversaw a large team of professionals, men and women, who produced the hundreds of drawings that had to be created each week.
Alice was the youngest there and though she was on good terms with the other workers at Dumas Illustration, they were older and had very different lives from hers.
They were acquaintances, but not friends.
However, she soon made a very good friend, Rose-Marie Fabre, known as Mariette, who worked in a fabric store called Tissus Tellier, just across the river from Madame Dumas’s workshop.
Alice had been sent to the store on an errand and had struck up an acquaintance with the young sales assistant who served her.
Mariette, the youngest of four sisters, was only a few months older than Alice and like her had obtained her job through a family connection, via her eldest sister Annie the deputy manager at Tissus Tellier.
Mariette and Alice hit it off straight away.
They shared a Southern origin—in Mariette’s case, it was Toulouse—and a liking for picnics, parties and promenades in the gardens while exchanging confidences about the latest young man who appealed to them.
And what both of them shared above all was a love for the ‘light things’, especially the feel of the glorious evening-dress fabrics on the tips of your fingers, the lovely artistry of line and cut and seam that turns a piece of material into a second skin for a woman, making her feel that anything is possible in the best of all possible worlds, even if just for a few enchanted hours.
The girls might not have been able to afford original couture for themselves, but they spent many happy hours browsing and occasionally buying in the great department stores, such as La Samaritaine, Printemps, Galeries Lafayette and La Belle Jardinière.