Straight to the Heart with Savoir Faire!

Imagery and illustration play a huge a part in our lives. Essentially we are visual people and are heavily influenced by what we see. Visuals play a huge part in advertising and nowadays especially when it comes to fashion, perfume and accessories there is a heavy reliance on “glam” style advertisements which are essentially using sex to sell. I like my imagery to get me thinking.

The below illustration by Andre Marty of a Poiret evening gown conveys two purposes. First we see the dress, and then there is the story. It is left up to the viewer to guess what has just happened. Has our young heroine been shot through the heart in a fit of rage by a jealous lover? Or has it been a stray arrow from cupid?



The below from Le Galion for their perfume “Sortilege” (witchcraft; supposed practice of magic; sorcery) is also telling a story. Is our young lady enraptured with a new beau, using voodoo to gain his attention? Or is she seeking revenge?

Martine Savoir Faire

What Savoir Faire wouldn't do for these two chairs from Paul Poiret's Martine?

Couture Savoir Faire!

As Haute Couture week comes to a close in Paris for this season I am contemplating what it used to be like. This is before we had the over the top shows, crowds of press and the innumerable cat fights as to who was invited and sitting in the front row. Shows have become a circus for a few (about 17) official members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture who put on huge money losing extravaganzas that rely on perfumes and accessories to boost them up. Now don’t get me wrong I love couture and the clothes are wonderful from an artistic point of few.

Back in the 1920’s and1930’s when there were over one hundred official members; you would think that showings were even more of a circus than what they are now. Not so. Collections were shown to a small very select group of clients and buyers before the press were even allowed to glimpse a button. They were shown in elegant salons that reflected the designer’s design aesthetic. For example the below from Poiret was more than likely decorated by Martine his design school.

The below “Salon de Présentation” from Vionnet is just stunning. I think this is the perfect room for Vionnet’s exquisite creations. Called the “Temple of Fashion", this was a collaboration of architect Ferdinand Chanut, decorator George de Feure and crystal sculptor Lalique. I love the chairs and the murals on the walls. The room is full of natural light and I imagine at night would take on an ethereal glow with the indirect lighting.

To attend a couture showing in these rooms was true savoir faire, sure beating clutching an invitation amongst the crowds and finding a seat!

Behind Every Great Man

One cannot speak of Poiret without mention of his wife Denise. Long before any fashion history novice would proclaim that Chanel (curse her, she gets all the credit) had liberated the modern woman in the early twenties, Denise Poiret was proof that Poiret had done it years before! She was unfashionably (at the time) tall and slender with Poiret saying in 1913, "My wife is the inspiration for all my creations; she is the expression of all my ideals."

Poiret married Denise Boulet in 1905, much to the shock and horror of his circle who considered her rather provincial and lacking any style. As Poiret said of his choice of wife and mother of his children. "All those who have admired her since I made her my wife would certainly not have chosen her in the state in which I found her," Poiret stated in his rather self praising autobiography King of Fashion. "But I had a designer's eye, and I saw her hidden graces…. She was to become one of the queens of Paris."

Up until recently the role his wife played in his success has been underrated. However, here was someone with enough savoir faire to recognize that Poiret was revolutionizing women’s fashion and had the panache to wear his creations with the confidence of somebody who knew exactly what she was doing. She had the audacity to spur Poiret on by being a major force in the display of some his more outrageous costumes and schemes.

For his legendary Thousand and Second Night Ball in 1912, she was dressed as a slave girl in the famous lampshade tunic, harem pants and turban, locked in a gilded cage, waiting for her master’s arrival so that he could set her free! For another fete, dressed as the Queen of Sheba in an ensemble slashed to the hip revealing her leg, she shocked even Parisian haute bonheme.

She wore his creations confidently and nonchalantly. The luxurious fabrics being an accessory to Denise herself.

After their acrimonious divorce in 1928 (Time reported, "M. Poiret charged that his wife's attitude was injurious; Mme Poiret countercharged that her husband was cruel"), she still held her ex-husband’s work in high esteem. She kept her spectacular wardrobe for posterity’s sake and it was passed down to her children and grandchildren. In 2005 most her wardrobe went up for auction, how I wish I was there with unlimited funds!

More Poiret Savoir Faire

In incredible stark contrast to his fashions and design aesthetic Paul Poiret commissioned the Villa Poiret from the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens in 1924 -1925.

This seems to be a complete departure from everything that we tend to associate with Poiret and is a testament to his innate sense of style and savoir faire. It seems hard to even contemplate that Poiret had any serious intentions of even living here considering that the building is pure simplicity in itself, something which Poiret seemed to scorn. Everything for Poiret was over the top rich and vibrant and in excess. He excited in eastern exoticism, with colours and richness running headlong in abandon in clothing and interior design schemes.

However Poiret described the design as “United surfaces, sharp edges, sharp curves, polished materials, angles, clarity, order. This is my home and geometric logic " Seems hard to imagine Poiret ever saything this.

Unfortunately Poiret never occupied the villa as he and his company fell into bankruptcy. Only occupying the lodge pending completion until 1928, the villa was finally sold in 1930 (to pay debts) to the actress Elvira Popescu, who hired architect Paul Boyer to complete the project, distorting the original plans. Popescu occupied the villa until 1985, from when it was abandoned.

Luckliy it had been bought by a prominent industrialist and is being restored to its former glory. One can only imagine what Poiret would have done with the interior had he been financially able to live there. It could have been a turning point in his design aesthetic, which might have seen his fashion also evolve with the times, instead of dying an inglorious death.

Savoir Faire Without the Corset

What can you say about a man who had such a sway over fashion and style that he liberated women from the corset of the 19th Century only to shackle their legs with the hobble skirt in the 20th? C’est Magnifique! He styled himself as the “King of Fashion” and practically dictated style before World War 1, only to die poverty stricken and in obscurity on 1944. He was influenced by many and in turn was the source of inspiration for other designers such as Schiaparelli who had closets full of his clothes.
Paul Poiret born in 1879 went on to become the driving force behind Parisian fashion in the early 20th Century. He trained with Jacques Doucet (another arbiter of savoir faire and style) and then left there for Worth (the doyenne of the haute mode), finally opening on his own in 1903. Throwing all the rules out the window of his Rue Arbor premises, he freed women from the restraints of the corset creating directoire style dresses with brilliant uses of colour, fabric and texture. Inspired by Leon Bakst and the Ballets Russe, Poiret’s style was a riot of orientalism and exoticism. Nothing was left untried. His sense of colour and texture were unrivalled, and the exotic was hunted out to try and then be unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Although appearing extremely complicated and extravagant the cut was on the other hand extremely simple, with dresses created from rectangles of fabric being draped on the body.

From abolishing the corset he went further with hobble skirts, "harem" pantaloons, and "lampshade" tunics, using the fabulous soirées he threw in his garden to promote such whimsies. His most famous soirée was The Thousand and Second Night party he threw in 1911 with himself playing the part of a sultan with his wife Denise dressed in a tunic dress playing his favourite slave girl. Apperntly she was carried into the party encased in a gilded cage, and then set free by her husband. In cases in which guests attended improperly attired, they were requested to either outfit themselves in some of Poiret's 'Persian' outfits, or leave.

His wife played a major part in his success, by being his muse, and modelling his creations.

Poiret’s aim was not only to influence fashion! He wanted to tell you how to live! Poiret's house expanded to encompass furniture, decor, and fragrance in addition to clothing. In 1911, he established the company Parfums de Rosine, named for his eldest daughter. Poiret's name was never linked to the company, but it was effectively the first fragrance launched by a designer.

He launched the Ecole Martine, named for his second daughter, to provide artistically inclined, working-class girls with trade skills and income. Martine provided furniture, wallpapers, rugs and every other decorating item for the complete Poiret look.

Unfortunately post war Europe and the public were not akin or sympathetic to Poiret’s style. New designers like Chanel (curse her) sounded the death knell for this fertile mind. Chanel designed smart functional clothes which women preferred. Poiret referred to her style as “poverty deluxe”. Legend has it that Chanel, dressed in black, once met Poiret and he asked: “Madame, for whom do you mourn?” She replied: “Why monsieur, I mourn for you!”

Poiret was out of fashion, in debt, and lacking support from his business partners, and he soon left his fashion house. In 1929, the house itself was closed, and its leftover clothes were sold by the kilogram as rags. When Poiret died in 1944, his genius had been forgotten. Luckily through a recent exhibition in New York we had the good fortune of looking upon a lost and forgotten empire.

As a footnote, one of my most prized possessions is a first edition copy of one his auto biographical works, “My First 50 Years”.