The Glass of Fashion

by Cecil Beaton

  MRS. BOUVERIE

  If at times Mrs. Bouverie gives the impression of being soft, quiet-spoken, and even passive, she has a stubbornness that serves her in good stead. With her dependents, her children and lame ducks, she is always surrounded by dozens of people who rely on her to some extent. One is led to conclude that she must be more of an executive than she seems to be.

  Standing outside the world of fashion, yet respected by those who are in it as well as by her more individual friends, Alice Bouverie has truly made her own style, compounded of a sense of true values and her own remarkable European sensitivity that go hand in hand with one of the least ostentatious and most honest personalities among the rich women of contemporary America.

  When the Second World War was over and the manufacture of furniture, rather than armaments, was again considered, the “modern” style had been so incorporated into daily life as to represent no longer either threat or anarchy. Picasso, Matisse, or Klee had filtered down to Christmas cards and calendar reproductions. Eames chairs were to be found in a million New York rooms with their colour schemes of oatmeal and white and geometric patterned curtains of tweed.

  Simplicity and functionalism are fine in theory and the stripping to essentials has been a candid endeavour to use materials ingeniously and for a purpose, shying away from the cluttered and overstuffed Victorian tastes, or from neo-Romantic dreams which would be out of spirit and keeping with modern life. There are few masters of our new idiom, there is far less solid craftsmanship, and the result is often as impersonal of the cellophane wrappings that insure the hygiene of American foodstuffs.

  It is as though the soul had gone out of modern living, and the pity of it is its inevitability. In the recent past there have been wholesale periods of re-created Spanish taste, or Louis Seize taste; now we have re-created “modern” taste, for functionalism has finally reached Grand Rapids and expresses no more charm than its ersatz predecessors. One thinks of the remark of a George Kelly character in the play Craig’s Wife. Commenting on Harriet Craig’s house, the elderly aunt observes, “When I look at these rooms, they have the look of rooms that have died and been laid out.”

  But these failures in modern interior decoration are indicative of a far deeper failure in the whole range of contemporary life. We are suffering from a fatal disease which shrewd social doctors might well diagnose as the “failure of the personal.” No panacea or penicillin has been invented in recent years to stop the tide of mass production, of cheap and vulgar imitations, of conformism that strangles individuality, of sterile darkness, tasteless nudity, gimcrack workmanship, and the mass levelling process by which any original idea or its expression is quickly distorted, beclouded, pulverized, and made anonymous.

  Accusing fingers have been pointed at the machine age, though to its credit technology in itself has helped to raise our standard of living and may indeed by the only remedy for the world’s seemingly insoluble economic problems. Yet, if there are many complex reasons for our malady, they do seem to stem, directly or indirectly, from the forces that have created modern society. Nowadays time is considered too valuable to allow for such things as handcraft or a sense of the personal. Even the most outlying handcrafters have been corrupted. The African still carves his wooden statues, and the tourists may buy them, but they have little or no resemblance to the works of art fashioned by his fore- fathers. China is no longer made in China, tea comes in tea bags, cakes come in boxes, and French creams are made of artificial sugars, colours, and flavourings.

  In some aspects of modern life this synthetic tendency is barbarically amusing. Nothing is more wholesome or delicious than peasant bread prepared from unbleached flour. But in America flours are sifted, their whole bran and kernel removed; they are washed, bleached, and patted, and then are made into bread with a consistency like cotton wool and so lacking in vitamins that the United States Bureau of Standards became alarmed and suggested fortifying the very staff of life. The upshot is that today all vitamins are taken out of flour in the milling process, and are then pumped back into the bread in the form of chemical derivatives. Surely this must stand as its own ironic commentary on our scientific age.

  Yet beneath all the pressures of uniformity and depersonalization, people have a great drive for the personal. Finding little outlet in their work or the environment about them, they often turn to eccentric manifestations of behaviour. Perhaps our very crimes today are distorted personal expressions in a near-robot age.

  One of the paradoxes of mass taste is its love of the individual and the way in which it destroys the individual. It was Oscar Wilde who said that each man kills the thing he loves, and our modern life offers full expression of this. Producers cry for original plays but only want to present time-tested formulæ. If occasionally a unique personality rises to the top as a writer or entertainer, then the imitations come so thick and fast that their originals become passé and even hackneyed.

  Everywhere we find that modern life is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The golden egg was the stark beauty of individuality, and the goose was the social conditions that allowed for it. Caught in a viselike grip by forces that have grown almost beyond his control, modern man’s individuality is being snowed under by the machine-made conformism of present-day existence. Without having struck a direct blow at the West, Communism must secretly be delighted with the depersonalizing forces in our Western society, for it is exactly that which, by violence, they have imposed on millions of others. Happily, we of the West have clung to democratic institutions; we can still be personal and eccentric if we choose; and, above all, we can fight the tentacles of the impersonal wherever they clutch at us, we can continue to express the joy and the beauty of individual taste that selects, sifts, and creates the only values worth living for.

  Whenever one surveys one’s immediate time, it always becomes difficult to analyze the trends. Looking back today at the political events of the thirties, we being to see their inevitable pattern, just as the styles of the thirties emerge with a certain clarity. But the forties are only just past, and it is difficult to draw an empirical formula for the styles of that decade or for its social and political meanings. Apart from revolutionary changes in women’s fashions, the forties brought the culmination of many great scientific innovations. If one were to make a graph of man’s scientific advancement in the last fifty years, the line would rise slowly until the end of the nineteenth century, then would skyrocket into the stratosphere. Had I been born in 1800, the change by 1850 would not have seemed so very great. But from those Edwardian ladies in their landaus to jet-propelled airplanes and atomic bombs is an incredible technological leap. We have at last geared ourselves psychologically for the most rapid and radical changes, and today accept the altered pace of life.

  CHAPTER XIV

  CABBAGES, KINGS, AND FOREIGNERS

  SINCE ROYALTY by its very definition is above the crowd, it stands to reason that the fashions of kings and queens should be individual and unique, abiding by their own rigid laws and prohibiting imitation by the lower classes. In the Middle Ages, for example, only queens and princesses were allowed to wear veils of a length extending to their feet. There was a time, also, when the styles of royalty were extravagant to the point of fantasy: Richard III had elaborate coats costing upwards of twenty thousand dollars. Marie Antoinette, who delighted in being the leader of fashion, was responsible for seventeen fashion changes in women’s hats between 1784 and 1786. It was the French Revolution that inhibited arbitrary and fickle behaviour, especially in masculine attire. By the time Queen Victoria had ascended to the throne, royalty was beginning to conform to conservative bourgeois patterns.

  Queen Alexandra probably started the modern tradition that British royalty can wear anything. During her husband King Edward’s reign she would wear spangled or jewelled and bead-embroidered coats in the daytime, an innovation which has now become an accepted royal habit. Or she might wear half-length jackets covered with purple or mauve s
equins and garnished with a Toby frill collar of tulle. These were clothes which most women would have worn at night, but the fact that she wore them during the day removed her from reality and only helped to increase the aura of distance that one associates with the court.

  Though royalty is no longer the arbiter of fashion in the democratic countries, it influence is still felt today in certain European kingdoms, notably in Great Britain. British royalty generally has clothes that are best seen from a distance, and it has become virtually an established tradition that female members of the royal family shall wear pastel colours. It was not uncommon to catch a glimpse of the late Queen Mary wearing sweet-pea colours on an afternoon’s outing to Earl’s Court, or to see the Queen Mother Elizabeth wearing a pale blue outfit at a morning rally of the Victoria League.

  Queen Mary wore almost the same style for the last forty years of her life: beaded evening dress, tailored coat and skirt, long-toed shoes, and rolled parasol, with a large toque perched high on the tall dressing of hair and taking the place of a crown. As Janet Flanner wrote, “She had resisted hints from dressmakers, worn her skirts long when skirts were rising, raised hers slightly, when it was too late; her hats, during her super-sensitive sartorial twenties, caused them pain. Today she satisfied everyone, even her family. She looks like herself, with the elegant eccentricities—the umbrella or parasol, the hydrangea-coloured town suits, the light lizard slippers, the tiptilted toque—of a wealthy, white-haired grande dame who has grown into the mature style she set herself too young.” Queen Mary thus created an appearance for herself that served as an all-weather model, good for rain or shine. Wherever one saw her, everything about her neat silhouette was as compact and tidy as a ranunculus. You knew that you were in the presence of royalty; and, with true noblesse oblige, she was always reliable in her appearance, never letting you down, but turning up regularly with mechanical precision upon any occasion, however small.

  Almost as individual as her late mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, has also created her own mode of dress. By day she appears incandescent in pale hues of an immaculate powder quality. At night she appears with all the unreality of a spangled fairy doll on top of a Christmas tree. The effect she creates, wearing a huge crinoline and a diadem in her hair, is dazzling in its effect upon her devoted but dazed beholders. The Queen Mother has been particularly successful in wearing an impressive amount of jewellery during the daytime. Fortunately her daughter, Queen Elizabeth, has adopted the same picturesque styles for her evening appearance, and, with her immaculate pink-and-white complexion, the sparkles of diamond and spangled tulle give the effect of sunlight at early dawn on a snow scene.

  Royalty must dress for the crowds. Of first consideration is the fact that they are to be seen. For this reason off-the-face hats are worn; while, if possible, height is added so that those at the back of a crowd can catch even a glimpse of a felt halo or an aigrette and not be disappointed. The Duchess of Kent, who perhaps has a more Parisian dress sense than any other member of the English royal family, has learned to apply the rules dictated by the massed crowds. But years ago, as a young bride, she stirred up criticism by appearing in a carriage at the Jubilee celebrations of her parents-in-law wearing an enormous cartwheel hat of champagne colour. Unfortunately the hat hid half her face and had to be held on to with one hand. She soon learnt, however, to appreciate the requisite demands of the public, and since then her appearances in a succession of toques and feathered boaters have caused the delighted crowds to acclaim her resemblance to her great-aunt Queen Alexandra.

  It is an irony of modern man’s development that in fashion he has gone against nature, adopting for himself the drabness which, in all lower forms of life, has been relegated to the female of the species.

  This has not always been historically true, however. Until almost the end of the eighteenth century men’s fashions were as extensive as women’s: gentlemen employed cosmetics, wore wigs, and decked themselves out with paste and lace. Even today, among primitive tribes, it is the male who has the prerogative of wearing the feathers and the paint. Why, then, has the appearance of the male become so drab in modern Western society? Why should men have adopted a standard uniform which changes little with the passing of the decades, whereas women’s dress oscillates to extremes within the space of even a few years?

  The French Revolution dealt a severe blow to men’s fashions from which they have never quite recovered. During the Reign of Terror many noblemen adopted the garb of the citizens, which was in contrast to the frills, ruffles, and satin pants of the aristocrats. The changes that came about as a result of those years made it impractical and even bad taste for men to vaunt their economic status in terms of dress. Women, on the contrary, were soon to find more leisure and cheaper materials as a result of the industrial revolution. Their increasing emancipation also allowed them to assert their femininity in a broader sense than they had hitherto been accustomed to. Fashions were thus no longer confined to ladies of the highest social status.

  Many other forces caused male clothing to be reduced to a standard formula which has altered little in the last hundred and more years. Beau Brummell exerted such a powerful influence on men’s appearance that the best of male sartorial fashions today are derived straight from his innovations.

  Like many historical personalities, Beau Brummell has been highly misrepresented, even vilified. His name has become synonymous with the effete and the ornate in male attire. But if Beau Brummell spent nine hours a day in the preparation of his toilet, sent his laundry to France, or wiped his razor on pages from first editions of the classics, he was also, paradoxically, an important enough personage to alter the whole history of men’s clothing. One has only to compare the portraits of the beginning of the eighteenth century with those of a lifetime later to see the result of his authoritative imposition of a new style of dress.

  In fact, far from being a dandy, Brummell stood for the absolute simplification of men’s tastes. Until his day men wore powdered wigs, brocade coats with lace ruffs and collars, diamond buttons, silk embroidered waistcoats, and satin breeches. Suddenly Beau Brummell stressed simplicity as the only word in good taste. He wore navy-blue cloth suits with the severest of striped-waistcoats. The “Beau” despised silk, preferring linen and the best-quality serge cloths; his ties were of linen, his shirts and handkerchiefs of lawn. Instead of having his carriage upholstered with silk quilting, he chose the most refined whipcord, and a sparse little carpet on the carriage floor instead of the usual fur rug. Footmen’s clothes and the wonderfully tailored overcoats worn by the brigade of guards, with their long but ample line, are today in the tradition Brummell created.

  In his own house, like Madame Errazuriz a hundred years later, Brummell chose exquisitely simple furniture, avoiding display with the exception of a few fine gold snuffboxes. A reflection of his tastes in interior decoration can be seen today in London clubs like White’s or Boodle’s, where the decoration of beautifully proportioned rooms is limited to Hogarth engravings in frames on the walls and solid mahogany furniture upholstered in leather.

  In our own time the Savile Row tailors and their conservative Boston counterparts have kept alive the traditions of Beau Brummell, to whom Peter Quennell attributes “that indefinable air of greatness which belongs to the natural leader, the born creator.” It is generally acknowledged that London is the men’s fashion centre of the world, a status which may be explained by the British love and care for tradition, as reflected in the suits cut by Scholte, shoes by Lobb, and hats by Lock—all showing the measured thought that has been given to them.

  Not only did Brummell create today’s taste in men’s clothes, but his genius is also being expressed in the general appearance of women. For some time now women have been wearing grey flannel suits, navy-blue or black tailor-mades, white linen collars, spruce gloves, and well-cut, polished shoes—all in the Brummell tradition.

  Whether tradition in men’s clothes will ever change ra
dically seems doubtful. Yet a certain amount of alteration has made steady progress. The summer popularity of the French Riviera in the twenties gave birth to a new wardrobe of plage outfits. Sun-bathing spread in popularity, and with it came short trousers and gymnasium vests. Today it is a common sight on a summer’s day even in England to see workmen with naked torsos at work in the fields or on the roadside. But twenty years ago a child could have been arrested by an inspector on the beach for not wearing a top to his bathing costume. America has influenced many facets of men’s clothing and is responsible for the widespread use of the moccasin shoe, crepe soles, the dinner jacket worn in preference to the tail coat, and a bolder use of colour. Some of the sports clothes, the cool seersucker suits and bathing trunks surpass those of any other country.

  Even in England variations on men’s clothes have been effected in the last twenty years. The upper classes, especially in the heyday of the twenties, were responsible for a number of fads. University æsthetes of twenty-five years ago wore, for the first time, turtle-necked sweaters and beige-grey flannel trousers cut so wide that they flapped at each step and were called Oxford bags. Double-breasted jackets with tight-fitting sleeves became popular for day suits. Ultimately dinner jackets were cut in this style and worn with a dark red carnation in the lapel.

  Together with these changes in dress went a change in manner. The clipped habit of speech spread. It became extremely smart to turn the toes slightly inward. The generation of Oxford graduates that produced Evelyn Waugh and Harold Acton has affected a whole manner of speech which is precise and precious, yet has been employed by many strata of society. Even the Colonel Blimps adopted overused, effete turns of phrase, together with such expressions as “madly” and “divine” and “too.” People often remarked, “How terribly unfunny!” or “How terribly exciting!” Ordinarily unpretentious men and women became very self-conscious about the use of language, of the play on words, and started to italicize certain phrases by their inflections. “Darling” became a commonplace and no longer a term of endearment. Among those who influenced phraseology, Sir Philip Sassoon was outstanding. When he spoke, he emphasized every single syllable with a trip-hammer tongue: “My de-ah, I could-dern’t be more sorry, but I was rat-tling about like dice in a box.” It was he who coined the currently popular “I could-dern’t care less” or “I could-dern’t agree more.”