by Cecil Beaton
A Frenchwoman remarked at a futurist exhibition: “C’est d’un mauvais goût épatant!” For futurism, with one eye cocked to the Orient, had swept into the home. Wide zebra-striped cushions were placed at the ends of an orange- or purple-covered sofa, lotus blooms floated in shallow bowls, black carpets were thick beneath a guest’s feet, walls were painted emerald green or were covered with gold and silver paper that ordinarily would have been put inside a tea cabinet, and sharply angular furniture was made out of lemonwood. The ash from a Pera cigarette would fall onto the thick pile of a black carpet.
From the Russian ballet brilliant colours passed to musical comedy and revue. As a schoolboy, one of my greatest thrills was to go to see Miss Ethel Levey. She was a remarkable and fascinating American jazz artiste with an aquiline nose that, in profile, made her look like a ram. She would strut the stage on her very trim little feet like an exotic bird and was able to do high kicks above her head with consummate ease. Ethel Levey invented the jazz ruse of singing with her arms stretched wide, pecking her head at every turn to make a sort of syncopated frieze.
It is certain that through her artistry Ethel Levey created a sort of refined barbarism, singing with the deep contralto of a sophisticated coal heaver. Her sense of rhythm was unsurpassed by even the Southern blacks. She possessed enormous éclat, and there was something indefinable about her provocative personality: her particular form of chic was unique, a quality that intrigued all artists. It was not surprising that Diaghilev once asked her to appear as Zebedie in Schéhérzerade.
Ethel Levey inaugurated many fashions. When she first wore a top hat to ride in the Bois she was ridiculed; but soon every other woman wore a top hat for riding. Virtually her “trademark” was the omnipresent slave bangle on her ankle, and she claims that by never being without at least half a dozen golden bracelets hung with coins and charms she originated costume jewellery.
One of the costumes that Ethel Levy wore in a revue which had been designed for her by Bakst was of mustard, yellow, white, black, and emerald green—such a combination of colours as I would never have thought possible. Bakst also helped her with the decoration of her London house in Gloucester Terrace, which was extremely daring for its epoch.
Jules Bertaut has remarked that the ballets russes were a note in the history of French æsthetics. The influence they wielded was certainly not confined to France alone. What could be more stark than a revolution that overnight guillotined prettiness and set exoticism upon the throne? Or what more startling innovation than the replacement of the pastel colour schemes of Comelli by the violent beauty of Diaghilev’s world? From Comelli to Bakst is the difference between an aquarelle and an oil painting.
PAUL POIRET
The reigning dressmaker in this new harem world was Paul Poiret, who with his blazing hyperthyroid eyes and short beard looked to the young Cocteau “like some sort of huge chestnut.” Both innovator and a reactionary, a fashion tyrant and a generous, idealistic dreamer, Poiret was a complicated personality, perhaps the most paradoxical in many ways that fashion has known in our day, when couturiers have come into their own as arbiters of taste. To appreciate his revolutionary influence on the prevailing mode, one must consider the kings he dethroned.
Worth was probably the emperor of the presiding geniuses of Paris fashions during the Edwardian period. That had been an age of “ceremonial” fashions,” and the velvets, lamés, and broadcloths had been worn with an almost religious pride. For in spite of the latest outward signs of gaiety, the Edwardian age was still a ceremonious one, sustaining much of the spirit of Victorianism in its continuing regard for bourgeois manners and ethics. The men, too, in their frock coats, with beards and Ascot ties studded with great pearls, comported themselves as if for a ritual rather than celebration. Presiding over this world, Worth, Doucet, and Linker had little notion that they were soon to be ousted by a revolutionary who was to sweep all before him with his violent influence.
AN AGE OF “CEREMONIAL FASHIONS”
Paul Poiret’s origins were humble. The son of the owner of a small textiles business, Poiret had at a very early age demonstrated his facility for improvising costumes. As an umbrella maker’s assistant, he stole small pieces of silk in order to dress up children’s dolls in the Oriental taste. It was during a two years’ sojourn with Doucet that the youth served his apprenticeship as a dressmaker, an apprenticeship that was terminated when Doucet, sensing that the young man’s talent warranted something better than a subsidiary display, advised Poiret to launch forth on his own. Poiret, however, was to hide his light for a time at the Maison Worth, until at last his rebellious spirit gained the sense of authority it needed to start an upheaval that revolutionized fashion.
THE EDWARDIAN AGE WAS STILL A CEREMONIOUS ONE
I FREED THE BUST BUT I SHACKLED THE LEGS
“I waged war upon the corset,” boasted this irrepressible dressmaker, “and, like all revolutions, mine was made in the name of liberty—to give free play to the abdomen!”
“Yes, I freed the bust, but I shackled the legs! Women complained of being no longer able to walk, nor get into a carriage. Have their complaints or grumblings even arrested the movement of fashion, or have they not rather, on the contrary, helped it by advertising it? I made everyone wear a tight skirt.”
Modesty was one of the qualities completely lacking in the young anarchist, and he was willing to let his theories be heard from the housetops.
“The taste for the refinements of the eighteenth century had led all women into a sort of deliquescence,” he complained. “On the pretext that it was ‘distinguished,’ all vitality had been suppressed. Nuances of nymphs’ thigh, lilacs, swooning mauves, tender blue hortensias, niles, maizes, straws, all that was soft, washed out, and insipid was held in honour. I threw into this sheepcote a few rough wolves—reds, greens, violets, royal blue—that made all the rest sing aloud. I had to wake up the good people of Lyons, whose stomach is a bit heavy, and put a little gaiety, a new freshness, into their colour schemes.”
Baron de Meyer wrote in Vogue magazine during the 1914 war, “It is astonishing how, during these last few years, colour seems to have been used indiscriminately, almost felt as a necessity, perhaps to counterbalance in some way all the sadness and mourning that pervades Europe. Never have we heard more of a shortage of dyes, never were they more scarce and costly, and yet, never have we had such an orgy of glowing oranges, greens, or reds as during these last months.” The shopwindows of Marshall and Snelgrove displayed colour schemes in emerald green and blue, and Monsieur Cartier mixed coloured jewels together for the first time, announcing, “Je trouve ici un grand avenir pour le vert et le bleu.”
We may find a partial explanation for the rise of Poiret in the parallel advent of the Russian Ballet, which naturally turned many enthusiasts to Orientalism. Yet Poiret himself vehemently denied any eclectic influence of Bakst, and I have been assured by his nephew, Monsieur Bongard, that there was no real or substantial link between Poiret on the one hand and Baskt and the Russian Ballet on the other. This is somewhat reminiscent of the cubists’ denial that they had ever seen African “Negro art” before launching their movement.
To enter Poiret’s salons in the Faubourg St. Honoré was to step into the world of the Arabian Nights. Here, in rooms strewn with floor cushions, the master dressed his slaves in furs and brocades and created Eastern ladies who were the counterpart of the Cyprians and chief eunuchs that moved through the pageantries of Diaghilev.
Poiret had no respect for “good taste.” He forced his victims to wear chin straps of pearls, slung them with white foxes, stabbed them with fantastic ospreys, imprisoned them (as one hobbles the forelegs of a horse to prevent him from running away) in harem skirts. Wired tunics like lampshades were hung round the ladies’ hips, heavy capes enveloped them, and they were laden with tassels and barbaric jewels. This violent Orientalism, which shackled and bound some Paris’ most respectable women, was even more extraordinary when one con
siders that Poiret himself had at the time never been out of France.
Thus, Poiret, the egocentric genius, ruled despotically for nearly twenty years. His activities were widespread. He designed clothes for the stage and claimed that he was the first designer to cooperate with the scenic artist. He created perfumes.
In the field of interior decoration a school and workshop were opened. There was, at this time, a penchant for indoor trelliswork, geometric edgings and borders to plain walls, stylized or Hispanian roses on cretonne or cushion—a taste for what might be termed a “gazette du bon temps” or a “depraved Kate Greenaway.” Poiret was accessory directoire to this crime. Much of the furniture he encouraged was ugly, in the art moderne vein, with colours of pink and yellow and salmon. Yet he launched special fabrics for curtains and draperies that are still used today. Many excellent artists were commissioned to design materials for him, and Dufy invented for him certain mordant dye processes. Thus the best of Poiret’s influence has filtered down to us in many indirect ways.
If he was rude and tyrannical, Poiret was also lavishly generous, taking groups of his friends to North Africa in his yacht, or giving fabulous parties where the guests received valuable presents. In his spare time he developed a passion for astronomy, together with an interest in serious painting, his art collection including Dufy, Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Matisse.
Eventually, however, the splendour of his reign dwindled; his daring and wit and Arabian Nights magnificence slowly began to lose their hold. By the end of the twenties Poiret was more or less an exile from the field of fashion. His nephew tells a touching story of the early thirties, when the designer was occupying the two top floors of the Salle Pleyel, with no money to pay the rent. The young man had taken Poiret to lunch, and his uncle spoke of some businessmen who were coming later that day from Liberty’s in London to discuss a transaction whereby he would design some prints for mass copy and cheap distribution in England, receiving ten thousand francs in advance for his work. On the strength of this deal the uncle then invited the nephew to lunch the following day. When Monsieur Bongard duly arrived, he remarked that his uncle looked extremely fatigued. “Yes,” replied Poiret, “I am, and little wonder. I have spent the night with Venus!”
He explained that he had been up all night looking at the stars through a newly acquired telescope. The ten thousand francs had been entirely spent on the telescope and upon a refrigerator which he now began to display with pride, naïvely explaining its mechanism, and opening its door to reveal innumerable chilled bottles of champagne from the remains of his wine cellar. They drank the champagne and conveniently forgot the lunch.
During the war, under German occupation, the aging dressmaker moved to the South of France, where his poverty became so intense that he wore a suit which he had ingeniously cut himself from a beach peignoir. He had little or nothing to eat and often sat in the restaurants, hoping to charm the patron into giving him lunch or a bottle of wine. Any occasional money was flung to the four winds as rapidly as it came his way, and almost immediately he would be penniless again.
The cultivated Poiret, with his fantastic memory and his passion for astronomy (didn’t the Persians have a passion for astronomy too?), still rude and truculent, and proud when he could ill afford to be so, spent his declining years inveighing against the new ways of the world.
“The last of the truly elegant ladies,” Poiret might sigh sadly, “was Forzane, who invented a new silhouette for women, with poses rather like a kangaroo. Do you remember her mornings in the Avenue du Bois, with her immense parasol? She could have been sketched as an ellipse. Since her, there has been nobody.”
Poiret was right when he asserted that modern women are afraid of wearing fashions which have not gained public approval. He saw, and stated clearly, that wealth and luxury are not necessarily the enemies of democracy. Fear or reticence are the real fifth column and can be stultifying in their influence.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. LYDIG
AS FANTASTIC as any character in romantic literature, Mrs. Rita de Acosta Lydig graced the opening cycles of the twentieth century with a perfectionism that would have been rare in any period since the Renaissance. A woman of unusual intensity, she lived up to the extraordinarily high standards and ideals that she had set for herself, paying dearly in that most difficult of all causes—to make oneself a work of art. That she achieved her aims was a tribute to her original and dynamic personality. Yet Mrs. Lydig was in some ways a tragic figure, playing out her life in a setting that was not hers by choice: through circumstances, she had become a legendary woman of fashion but was destined to remain a displaced person in fashion’s glittering world.
Rita de Acosta was born in the security of 1880, the eldest girl of a family of seven children. Her father, a political exile from his native Cuba, had settled in New York a few years previously, marrying a beautiful and distinguished member of the Spanish family of Alba. No doubt the Spanish blood was to account, in part, for Mrs. Lydig’s passionate and intense devotion to the art of living, just as it was to provide her with a natural cosmopolitan outlook that would permit her the free development of her rare æsthetic tastes. All that was lacking was money, and by an inevitable contingency the wealth that allowed her unique combination of talents to mature came to her.
MRS. LYDIG, FROM THE ALABASTER PORTRAIT BY MALVINA HOFFMAN
When scarcely more than a child Rita married an eccentric multimillionaire, William Earl Dodge Stokes, a sportsman who was apt to be too ready to bring out his gun. It was a misalliance in every way. The groom was not only old enough to be Rita’s father, but displayed such parsimonious habits that he wore the same overcoat until it turned green from age. Perhaps it is a proof of the attraction of opposites, or merely a justified irony, that Stokes should have married a woman who possessed such an innate gift of extravagance. Under the circumstances it was scarcely surprising that the marriage lasted only four years. In spite of his parsimony, Stokes gave his young wife the largest divorce settlement that had ever been granted at the time, thus enabling her to give full rein to her luxurious tastes. The liberality began at once and was to lead Rita to become one of the most fanatical spendthrifts of her age. Three years later she married Philip Lydig, an unimaginative man who belonged to the best clubs; it was by his name that she gained fame as “the fabulous Mrs. Lydig.”
Mrs. Lydig needed but little time to perfect l’art du salon and soon became a remarkable hostess. She dominated her round table with the authority of a virtuosa, manipulating the conversation and demanding of her friends, both artists and raconteurs alike, the best that was in them. Floating from group to group in her magnificent drawing room, Rita Lydig would encourage her friends to shine with a wave of her hand or an admiring, an understanding word. As she passed on, another group would feel the thrill of her master presence, reacting to some electrifying phrase with renewed spirits. Malvina Hoffman observed: “Whenever Mrs. Lydig appeared there was a quiver in the air; and wherever she appeared she made the occasion her own, or else she wasn’t there.” Someone else has appended: “It was as if, when the felts of a piano are worn down, no sound comes when the keys are struck; but Mrs. Lydig, with her long brittle fingers, could always pluck the most wonderful sounds from the keys.”
During the years between the turn of the century and the twenties Rita Lydig must have spent more money than any personage of a royalty household. When she travelled, it was in the company of seven servants—hairdresser, masseur, valet, personal maid, secretary, chauffeur, and footman. On arrival at the Ritz Hotel in Paris or Madrid, her rooms would at once become transformed by the objets d’art, bibelots, flowers, pictures, and statuary she inevitably brought with her. Her luggage comprised fifty trunks as large as coffins, containing a more fabulous wardrobe than any that has been bequeathed to us during this century.
Yet Rita Lydig was the least ostentatious of women. She could never have been accused of the slightest vulgarity, for her taste in all thin
gs was infallible. Of the value of money or material things she had little sense. Her only desire was to surround herself with beauty in all its forms. If a friend admired some object in her possession, Mrs. Lydig was apt to give it away regardless of its value, for she had no knowledge of the worth of an object beyond its æsthetic appeal.
Her passion for collecting was both fastidious and eclectic, ranging from laces, furniture, bibelots, and jewellery to interesting people connected with music, science, philosophy, painting and the theatre. It must be admitted that, when it came to artists and notabilities, Mrs. Lydig was something of a snob, preferring only the greatest. Bergson and Clemenceau were friends and correspondents; Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane, Caruso, Paderewski, Mary Garden, Toscanini, and many poets, writers, and painters would make their headquarters in her home whenever they were in America. Not a few of these artists treated her house as their own; and since Mrs. Lydig was incapable of restraint, especially in the encouragement and propagation of talent, she would pay out huge sums whenever an unfortunate artist found himself in financial difficulties. On one occasion she put on a play for which the entire Garrick Theatre was redecorated; and when she arranged for the first New York exhibition of the paintings of her compatriot, Zuloaga, the whole of Duveen’s gallery was transformed. It was Mrs. Lydig who brought Jacques Copeau, Louis Jouvet, and Valentine Teassier, among others, to perform in America. With the best talent of the day appearing at her parties, little wonder that invitations to the house of this brilliant and witty woman were eagerly coveted.