Remembrance of Things Paris

by Gourmet Magazine Editors

  He was tense and shy and sat stiffly behind his desk, facing me with undisguised reserve. On a door to his adjoining studio a sign said, IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER WITHOUT FIRST RINGING.Being somewhat reserved myself, I was encouraged by his quest for privacy, which is a great luxury today. He was well dressed, with no ostentation, wearing a three-piece suit, a beautiful striped shirt with narrow cuffs, and a solid-color tie. He designs his own things. There is a boutique for men downstairs, which is very successful. For men M. Bohan believes in classic, strict lines for suits and in accessories chosen to harmonize with the individual suit. There should be no whimsy, except at home or for vacation clothes, and no compromise with style.

  I had been told that Bohan doesn’t like interviews, and I don’t blame him. He soon relaxed when I said this was not an “interview,” and he almost smiled when I assured him I didn’t want to know the secrets of his prominent customers or how much he charges a billionairess for an evening dress. He wouldn’t have told me anyway, so why ask him? Haute couture designers are as reticent as Swiss bankers and international jewelers about who pays how much for what.

  I asked M. Bohan the question that interested me most: How does he manage to divine, season after season and year after year, what women will want to wear in six to twelve months not only in Paris and London and New York, but practically everywhere?

  “These things cannot be explained rationally. There is the mystery or the mystique of creation. I have never tried to explain it, even to myself. I suppose it’s a matter of instinct, of intuition, though. Certain things suddenly seem démodé. All fashion is a reflection of the current ambience of life, of social changes, of what people believe in and want at the moment. It’s often thought that we couturiers force women to wear these new things. I couldn’t force a woman to wear something just because I like it. A few maybe, but certainly not many. A new style will never become accepted unless one guesses correctly what women secretly long for. I must sense it well in advance; I must be sure they will accept it. That sounds simple and is terribly difficult. Timing is important, and you cannot learn timing; no one has taught it successfully, though they teach almost everything nowadays. To be too early is as bad as to be too late. When I created the Long Look in the spring collection of 1970, I was too early. By the time the Long Look had been accepted in 1971, I had lost interest in it.”

  Bohan impatiently denied any suggestion of “conspiring” with his fellow designers in the creation of a new trend. Apparently the great couturiers guard their inspirations as jealously as great chefs keep theirs to themselves.

  “I’ve always wanted to please,” said Bohan. “It is better to please than to create sensation. I want women to wear feminine clothes, made of soft, feminine materials. I could never create anything abstract. I always think of a certain woman when I create something. I like to work with the material, to have it around me, to touch it. Everything must come together—the material, the design, the woman wearing the clothes, the accessories, and the ambience in which she will wear these things. If one of the components is wrong, the whole thing will be wrong.

  “Sometimes I am not sure; in fact, very often I am not sure. I don’t know exactly why something is good or isn’t. I only feel it. But then, after I see my design translated into material and see the model wearing the dress, suddenly and unfathomably I know it is good. That is the great satisfaction, but it doesn’t happen often. It couldn’t happen often.”

  Designing must be a very difficult métier. You must always notice changes, you must be subconsciously aware of the constant evolution, and you must be able to express that evolution so that a woman will feel in tune—because she dresses according to the place in which she lives, her mood, and the essence of her era. Often she is pleased but cannot explain why she is pleased. It is a metaphysical thing, a sort of sixth sense. Somebody either has it or doesn’t have it. Marc Bohan is convinced he has it; otherwise he wouldn’t be where he is today. Twice a year he retires to his country place near Fontainebleau, where “the bathrooms blend into the bedrooms” and “modern furniture is juxtaposed with wooden beams and brick walls,” and there he designs the more than eighty models of the haute couture collections and many other things.

  He doesn’t begin with conscious, definitive designs. “I start drawing. Often I throw things away as fast as I draw them. Technique is important, of course; one always tries to make things better. But technique is only a means of expressing one’s ideas. Technique must never be used for the sake of technique. I know I must create elegance and charm, but our ideas of elegance change all the time, and what was charming yesterday may not be thought so today. The creator cannot afford to remain in an ivory tower as some designers did twenty or thirty years ago. They would design abstract clothes and tell women to wear them.”

  Bohan shook his head emphatically. “I must travel, meet intelligent people, and find out what interests them. I like to talk to artists and writers. They are often ahead of other people of their time. I see shows, the ballet, movies; I look at paintings, old and avant-garde. And all the time my subconscious is working. Who can explain the secret of creation?” He gave a shrug.

  “Today all fashion is alive and full of meaning. I believe the creator must be aware of the undercurrents. We are now going through a troubled epoch, like that of the 1930s. It is no accident that people try to escape into the past and become nostalgic in their thoughts and feelings and, naturally, in fashion, too, since all honest fashion reflects thoughts and feelings. This is the answer to your question whether a trend can be artificially created. Personally, I could never do it.”

  Very often Bohan, with his inner eye, “sees” a certain design, made of a certain material, in a certain color. He cannot explain what comes first, the design or the material or the color or, possibly, the person who is going to wear the dress. “I suppose the idea comes first. Next, I try to express the idea, but I’ll be sure only when I see the dress on a person. Fashion, as you know, is a façon de vivre, a way of life, and that explains why we designers who perceive and anticipate evolution often have similar ideas, first each for himself and then all together—because we have similar thoughts and similar feelings about a given period. When I changed the silhouette in 1961 and again in 1970, the change was in the air. I was just lucky to sense it a little earlier.”

  So there goes my theory of the sinister conspiracy of the haute couture creators.

  “People know a lot today,” Bohan said. “At a time when we can see on television events happening on the other side of the globe, when the mass media intrude into our living rooms, it would be absurd to try to create abstract things. On the contrary, one must be closer to real life. Sometimes women know what they want, but often they come to me and ask me because they don’t know. It is my job to tell them, to persuade them what I think is right for them. What was the secret of Coco Chanel? Very simple. She guessed correctly what women needed and liked, and she gave it to them.”

  Coco Chanel was the only designer Bohan mentioned by name during our talk. Once I asked him whom he meant when he talked of designers who had created abstract things in an ivory tower. He shook his head, almost regretfully.

  “You don’t really expect me to answer your question, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Marc Bohan looks like a modern Parisian—competent, brilliant, nervous. No wonder, since he was born in Paris on August 22, 1926. Yes, under the sign of Leo the Lion, if you believe in those things. His mother was a milliner from Paris, his father, from Brittany. As long as Bohan can remember he has liked to draw and to create. He took art courses and cared about women’s fashions at an age when other boys cared about soccer. When he was only nineteen he did some fashion designing for Robert Piguet (where the late Christian Dior had started). For four years he was assistant stylist with Piguet, then he was assistant to Molyneux, and in 1954 he designed the haute couture collections for Jean Patou. He had known Christian Dior for a long time and admired h
im, and Dior encouraged the young man and taught him.

  Dior had met Marcel Boussac, the French industrialist, in 1945 and together they created the House of Christian Dior on December 15, 1946. In the annals of French haute couture February 13, 1947, remains a historic date, for on that day Christian Dior presented his first collection and his New Look became a worldwide success. The House of Dior has never lost its dominating position, even after the death of Christian Dior on October 24, 1957. In August, 1958, Marc Bohan, after a short stay in New York, was asked by the firm to handle the Christian Dior London collections. In 1960 he was placed in charge of the artistic management of the firm, and in 1961 he reached the top: He designed his first haute couture collections for Christian Dior Paris.

  Bohan has been in charge ever since—fifteen years, which is a long time in the fast-changing fashion business. His first show presented the Slim Look, which was a great success. So was the long coat, sometimes known as the Dr. Zhivago coat, which launched the Maxi silhouette. Some of us men thought the ladies were better off without it, but men don’t really count in the wonderland of feminine fashion, except a few men who know.

  Much has changed in the wonderland since the early 1960s, but Bohan has remained the same; he is interested in creating a balance between forms and colors, in the silhouette in its entirety. The changes have not always been pleasant. The number of women who can still afford haute couture has shrunk dramatically. Among the different houses estimates of the number vary between one thousand and three thousand, “at the most.” The haute couture department of Dior remains the firm’s heart and symbol of prestige, but no one at Dior would claim that it makes big money. Of the thousand-odd people who work at Christian Dior—in the various buildings surrounding the headquarters and elsewhere—only two hundred are employed in the inner haute couture sanctum. There the finest things, the most exclusive materials are used; no shortcuts in workmanship are permitted. The pressure is high; there must be constant renewal, yet Bohan has managed to create a continuity, avoiding all style breaks between his collections. Many women admire Dior for this constantly renewed image, for the trend toward continuity; they feel that chez Dior, plus ça change it’s always beautiful and feminine.

  The eighty-odd haute couture models, designed by Marc Bohan himself, are sold only at 30, avenue Montaigne, where the atmosphere is so refined that no one would discuss the sordid subject of money aloud; perhaps some figures are whispered. Bohan also designs the more than eighty Christian Dior prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) models, which are sold at the Dior Boutiques at prices from a thousand francs upward. These clothes are made for what is called “limited retail distribution” in fine materials (though not the finest, which remain reserved for the haute couture models) and offer a carefully planned line and the possibility of being fitted. The boutique at 28, avenue Montaigne, and the new boutique, at 12, rue Boissy-d’Anglas (opened last year “because Dior must be represented in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré district”), make possible the reproduction of a semi-individually tailored model.

  Could two women wearing the same dress meet in a Paris restaurant? Next question, please. (It once happened at Henri Soulé’s Le Pavillon in New York, though the two women were not wearing Dior. Soulé reacted with customary poise and seated the two women in different rooms.) Exclusivity is always expensive, and why not? The idea, gentlemen, is that if Madame wants a Dior dress that only she will have, she has to see the Master. Maybe he’ll design one of the eighty models for her. Maybe. In that case, she will be well advised to listen to him. Marc Bohan has been known to tell a customer, “You can’t wear that,” or “That’s not for you.”

  “Usually they listen to me,” M. Bohan said, rather wryly.

  Today the big money at Dior is earned not by the couture, more or less haute, but by the accessory and licensing departments. The accessory department alone accounts for one third of the French turnover and includes “already traditional activities” (ties, scarves, luggage) as well as men’s and women’s sweaters and bathing suits.

  The licensing department negotiates licensing contracts around the world. It is so powerful that it can propose “important new themes” to the styling department. The firm has granted more than 130 licenses for about thirty articles in over eighty countries. The most widely licensed articles are women’s stockings (in eighteen countries), men’s ties (in ten countries), scarves, lingerie, women’s shoes, men’s shirts and socks, luggage and handbags, men’s shoes, gloves, and sweaters. All licensed items have the status-symbolic Christian Dior label. This is the least expensive (and most widespread) way of wearing something with Christian Dior on it.

  All this may seem coldly commercial to you, far from Marc Bohan’s artistic dreams, but it has enabled the firm to survive while many others have disappeared. In 1947 the firm had a staff of eighty and annual sales of 1,300,000 francs. In 1975 Christian Dior (with the English and American subsidiaries and the ready-to-wear ateliers in Orléans and Blois) employed more than a thousand people. International sales reached over 550,000,000 francs. One third of the sales are in France. The Christian Dior fur atelier under Frédéric Castet, who creates the annual haute couture fur collection, “enjoys one of the world’s best reputations for quality,” for its selection, technique, and elegance.

  Christian Dior Monsieur—that is, ready-to-wear for men—was developed by Bohan himself and is now manufactured under licensing agreements and sold in the United States, Japan, Italy, Great Britain, and Brazil. Bohan has a staff of expert designers but personally approves each item in the collection. There is big money in ties, shirts, cuff links, bathing suits, and sunglasses; these articles now account for one fifth of the company’s annual business. Never underestimate the power of a man. It is to be remembered that the very first licensing agreement in the entire fashion industry was signed in 1949 by Christian Dior in the United States for neckties. The independent Christian Dior perfume company now belongs to Moët-Hennessy.

  They had shown me the haute couture department, both the elegant front and the more modest backstage, before I saw the Master. The backstage was the more interesting part. Each of the girls had an exact sketch of the model on which she was working, complete with measurements, accessories, and a sample of the material stitched to the drawing. All this was strictly top secret. The name of the customer was not marked on the sketch, only her code number. Each steady customer is represented by her own mannequin, a dummy of her body beautiful. When, God forbid, the ladies gain, both in years and pounds, the dummies are brought up to date, if you’ll pardon the expression, by material and pieces of paper pinned or pasted to certain danger spots.

  My visit took place shortly after November 25, when the midinettes of the Paris fashion houses celebrate the feast of Saint Catherine, their tutelary saint. All directrices, vendeuses, premières and secondes d’atelier, petits mains, models, and apprentices had joined in the fête. The Queens of the day (and queens for a day) are the catherinettes, the unmarried girls who will celebrate their twenty-fifth birthday within the next twelve months. Obviously a girl can be a catherinette only once in her lifetime; it’s always beautiful and a little sad, like one’s first love. In my youthful days in Paris a catherinette had the right, though not the duty, to kiss every man she wanted to….

  Ignoring the past, I walked around the room where the midinettes worked. I remember specifically an haute couture creation hanging there, prepared for a fitting. It was a raincoat made of a silky fabric, fur-trimmed and fur-lined, with a hood; it was beautiful, feminine, exquisite. It was deceivingly “simple,” the kind of simplicity that is hard to describe and much harder to achieve, and it showed the hand of the Master.

  Back to the Master in his office. He said he was going to his country place to work on the new collections. Could he, well, indicate some of his ideas? He looked at me and probably decided it was not an impertinent question. What could I, what could anyone do with his ideas?

  “We are now informal even on
occasions when we used to be more formal,” he said. “I’m giving some of my evening things an almost informal look. I find myself thinking a great deal about colors. I’ve always been sensitive to colors; I have always liked red and black. I believe the colors of the immediate future will be less somber, much brighter, and there will be stronger contrasts. Fashions will be more vital, more alive.”

  Bohan loves flowers, simple flowers like lilies of the valley but also roses. His daughter, Marie-Anne, lives in England and is pretty; until a while ago she wore her father’s Miss Dior dresses. (The Miss Dior line no longer exists.) In Paris she stays with her father at his nearby apartment where he has combined “antique furniture with modern art”—which is not a bad combination. He likes, among others, Tinguely, Warhol, Rosenquist, and Uriburu. He also likes small parties and good food. Sometimes he plays around in the kitchen, making cold cucumber soup or an omelette with truffles.

  When I got up to leave, Bohan was no longer reserved and withdrawn. He seemed almost pleased. Perhaps he’s learned not to be afraid of an “interview.” And I too had learned something—though I still don’t know how much he charges so-and-so for an evening dress. I was later told (not by him, of course) that “several thousand dollars” might be correct. The women who go to Marc Bohan to have a dress made are convinced he’s worth it. I’m sure they are right.