Without the central guiding tenets of surrealism, Schiaparelli seemed to be floundering. She was not going to follow Dior’s lead, except, perhaps, to adopt his longer skirts. But in the meantime she seemed to lack a unifying rationale for her work, one that was so clear before the war. She had not developed ideas to continue, for example, the successes of her circus, commedia dell’arte, musical, and other “theme” collections. Influences from the Regency period or bustles from the Gay Nineties hardly constituted a unified concept. Hubert de Givenchy, who worked with her for four years from 1947 to 1951, was mystified by the apparent randomness of her ideas. He said she would tell him to take a sleeve from one outfit and a collar from another and do something with it. To him this seemed very strange, given the carefully contrived silhouette at the core of the New Look. Or she would show him a traditional folk costume from Egypt that he said was “almost impossible to reproduce,” give him three swatches of fabric, and ask him to develop a design.
True, there were flashes of brilliance, as always. In November 1946, a few months before the Dior opening, Schiaparelli showed a short-skirted dinner suit in black crepe faced in the front with a wide strip of pink taffeta that ended at the back with a large bow. The trim was embroidered with jet beads in a baroque, meandering pattern and was absolutely stunning. Other handsome pieces included a black-on-bronze striped satin evening jacket that was cut away at the front and assumed a bell-like shape over the hips. This was twinned with a full-length, black-on-bronze damask with a pattern of huge tulips. There was a much-reproduced strapless black evening dress, cut away in front to reveal part of a pink satin bra, much ornamented. In a flash of her old form, the decorations looked suspiciously like clusters of curling caterpillars. This proved, Newsweek wrote in 1949, that Schiaparelli had “reasserted her mastery.”
All this was taking place in a world of rationing, continued shortages of fuel and materials, and high political unrest. In Seven Ages of Paris, Alistair Horne explained, “There was constant fear of a Communist, Soviet-backed takeover.” There were constant strikes—at one time three million workers across the country walked out—and Paris was paralyzed. But the public’s mood changed in December 1947 after the Paris-Tourcoing express was derailed. Sixteen people died, and it was revealed that Communist miners had sabotaged the train. There was universal revulsion, Horne wrote, and the tragedy became something of a turning point. Actual civil war had been avoided, but it was a near thing.
The window display on the Place Vendôme, plus model, in 1949 (illustration credit 12.2)
Schiaparelli was as affected as everyone else. There was a crisis in July 1949, as she was preparing for her winter collection. She wrote, “[A] winter collection is made during the sweltering heat, so that the sight of furs and woollens makes one faint, and in the old classified buildings in Paris there is no possibility of installing air conditioning. We sometimes have to carry blocks of ice into the middle of the room.” The midinettes chose that moment to go out on strike. Two weeks before the opening of her fall collection, on August 4, nothing was ready. Schiap decided they would open anyway.
She wrote, “Some coats had no sleeves, others only one. There were few buttons, certainly no buttonholes, for these were difficult to make. Sketches were pinned to the dresses, pieces of material to the muslin [prototypes] to show what colours they would eventually be. Stately evening dresses cut in muslin were made to spring to life with costume jewellery. Here and there explanations were written in a bold hand. It was the cheapest collection I ever made, but it sold surprisingly well.” One of her best sellers was the peek-a-boo evening dress with the pink embroidered bra. “And it had its effect, for the next day all the girls were back at work.”
Elsa Schiaparelli had become a grandmother. Three days after Dior’s famous opening, on February 15, 1947, Marisa was born. There is a charming photograph of the baby, presumably in Europe, where she was taken by her parents for her christening a few months later. She lies on a fur-lined chaise longue wearing a flowing white christening dress and an odd, ecclesiastically shaped hat of white beaded satin that is ever so slightly askew. Her smiling mother kneels on the left and her equally delighted father stands in the background. Her grandmother kneels on the right. She is looking, not as one might expect, at the baby or even the photographer, but somewhere out of the frame, with a grave expression. Marisa, with her tip-tilted nose and rosebud mouth, gives promise, even at this budding stage, of becoming a beauty. She would become one of the most highly paid models in the world. Berinthia, always called Berry, would be born a year later, on April 4, 1948.
Since Schiaparelli was constantly entertaining or being entertained, in social circles in which single women did not easily travel alone, escorts were a necessity. On the other hand, she had reached the enviable stage of life when being seen with her and introduced to the rich and famous was an ambition of its own, especially if you were on your way up. So her escorts were often her protégés. One of them was Ronald Inglis Paterson, a young Scot whose father wanted him to be a doctor or a clergyman, but who preferred the world of fashion. Paterson entered a London newspaper fashion competition and won first and second prize. It was 1938, and the judge was Elsa Schiaparelli. Paterson always characterized her as “a terrifying woman,” but there is no doubt she did much to advance his career. She took him everywhere and introduced him to everyone, including Dalí, Cocteau, Bérard, and that even more desirable milieu of potential clients. Paterson went on to become a successful London designer; he died in 1993.
Other longtime escorts, in the category of respectable and undemanding friends, included the Italian actor Count Tullio Carminati, whom she had known for years, and Adrien Désiré Etienne, known as Drian, a successful artist who painted, drew, made lithographs and was a commercial illustrator. Drian’s style resembled that of Paul César Helleu, that is to say, somewhat flowery and ornamental. He may have been part Italian, and how they met is unknown, but he had numerous exhibitions at the Galérie Charpentier during the 1930s and 1940s and spent the war in Paris. Drian, who never married, played an unassuming role in the background of Elsa’s life—he is often photographed with her—and was a frequent guest, whether at dinner parties or, in one case, when she decided to hire a yacht and sail to Greece. During the trip Drian made a detailed travel diary, to which she had access when she came to describe their madcap adventures, as she does at length in her memoir. Needless to say, they never reached Greece.
Another protégé in a category by himself was the brilliant and handsome Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy, from a talented French aristocratic family in Beauvais that traced its line back to eighteenth-century Venice. His maternal grandfather was Jules Badin, artist and owner-director of the historic Gobelins and Beauvais tapestry factories, and his maternal great-grandfather Jules Dieterle was a set designer. The war had just ended when Givenchy arrived in Paris at the age of seventeen. His consuming goal was to work for Balenciaga. But he was turned away at the door (they later became close friends), and ended up making sketches for Jacques Fath. From there he went to Lelong, working alongside the unknown Pierre Balmain and Christian Dior. He arrived at Schiaparelli’s in 1947 and was immediately hired as a sketch artist, providing ideas that were then corrected and altered in muslin before being entrusted to the final fabric.
Schiaparelli and her old friend the artist Drian, sitting on the floor of her living room, 1950s
While Givenchy did not see much logic in Schiaparelli’s haphazard approach to style, they took an immediate liking to each other. Pretty soon Hubert was an integral part of her peripatetic social life, going from the ballet and the theatre to dinners and balls, as well as on buying trips to New York, as they did in the autumn of 1950. Givenchy said, “I was a little bit the boyfriend.” Given his youth, his formidable height of six foot six and her diminutive stature, they must have made an unusual entrance. Schiap began to give him more responsibilities. For his part, he began to introduce logic and order in
to some of her wasteful buying habits. He said that most houses might buy six or eight meters of fabric, enough for a few garments. She would buy a hundred and then end up with storerooms full of unused materials. He began to think up ways to use them in assorted blouses and skirts. He was a powerhouse of talent, Bettina Ballard wrote. “When, for example, the silhouette began to hang free from the body in what eventually became the chemise line, it was Givenchy who gave it the long, triangular seam cut that made it more than just a sack. His hand with hats was daring and fresh, often tongue in cheek …” He was a magician with bags and jewels. And he would work without stopping, trying to do everything himself. He was also tactful. When he began organizing Schiap’s postwar boutique, he was taken aback to find a little girl’s dress that used snakes as its embroidery motif. It was discreetly removed, and Schiap never noticed.
Hubert de Givenchy discussing the merits of some fabric with a fashion editor in 1952 (illustration credit 12.4)
Johnny Galliher, Elsa’s frequent escort, in Hollywood after World War II, with Ilona Massey (illustration credit 12.5)
Givenchy had planned to stay with Schiaparelli for a year and ended up staying for four. He would periodically say he was leaving and Schiaparelli would keep offering further incentives to stay. He said, “She was angry when anyone left. It was a good salary, terrific contacts—why would anyone leave?” And he had a very high regard for her talent. She was extremely kind to him, and they agreed on many levels even if their approach to their art was very different. She had a kind of reserve that made her very difficult to know. He said, “With her there was always something hidden.” In that respect she resembled Chanel, whom he also knew well, who was a fantasist. One evening when he and Balenciaga were on their way to dine with Chanel, Balenciaga said in his quiet way, “I wonder what new story she will have for us tonight, or whether she might even tell the truth.” Givenchy said there was the same evasiveness in Schiaparelli, a lack of the forthrightness he so much valued in other friends. For her part, she must have known what a formidable talent this young man possessed and also what a potential rival he represented. When he left in 1951, at the age of twenty-four, she looked at him and said, “You will bankrupt me.”
Givenchy said “there was a moment” when Schiap was very amorous toward him. But by 1953 someone else had entered her life. Bettina wrote to Gab di Robilant, Schiap’s old friend, that for the past ten days Schiap had been in “the most radiant humor we have ever seen and looks young [she was then sixty-three], pink, healthy, neat and pretty. If it’s love or quite a big cheque … no one knows. I do hope it’s a combination …” It was certainly love. He was John Galliher (pronounced Gall-yer), a slim, black-haired American of medium height who came into her life more or less at the same time. Galliher was the son of a prominent Washington, D.C., lumber merchant, the second of five children. He went to Lehigh University, served in the Navy during World War II, was promoted to lieutenant commander, and arrived in Paris to work on the Marshall Plan in 1948. He is described as slight but sinewy, with a pair of brilliant and searching blue eyes and “the profile of a Greek god.” From youth he had a marked ability to make influential friends. He met Evalyn Walsh McLean, newspaper heiress and owner of the Hope Diamond, while he was still a teenager and dated her daughter Evalyn. At war’s end he moved to Los Angeles, where he shared a house with Diana Barrymore, daughter of John Barrymore, and the poet Blanche Oelrichs, who wrote under the nom de plume Michael Strange. “Johnny,” as he was universally known, was introduced into filmland by Elsie de Wolfe, became a special friend of the reclusive Greta Garbo, and began to display a gift for mingling with, and entertaining, the rich and celebrated that would last for the rest of his life.
Quite how Elsa met Johnny is not clear. It could only have been a matter of time, since they had so many friends in common: Daisy Fellowes, Mona Bismarck, Marie-Laure de Noailles, to name a few. What set Johnny apart from other playboys was his allure. Friends have remarked on the special way he would look at people with his penetrating blue eyes and make them think that he or she was the most important person in the world. He was a great joker, always ready to laugh, and could talk about almost anything. He danced, he swam, he was a lifelong yachtsman, and pretty soon his parties were sought after because he knew so many people. His manners were impeccable. He consistently made the best-dressed lists. New York magazine called him “the pure essence of style.” He was an enthusiastic lover of both sexes—Diana Barrymore claimed to have had a love affair with him—and he had the further charm, in a world where stinging remarks were common, of never having a bad word to say about anyone. In short, he was a remarkable figure, one of the few people who were Elsa’s equal in intellect and different enough in temperament to coax her out of a bad mood or penetrate her icy silences with an irresistible quip. He became prematurely gray, and so even though he was twenty-five years younger, the difference in age would not have seemed too obvious. Everyone knew Johnny, so wherever he went, she would be swept up in the same glow of approval. A moment came, Givenchy said, when she asked Johnny, “Why don’t you move in with me?,” and so he did. “They were seen everywhere and everyone thought they were lovers.” Givenchy doubted it, but perhaps Bettina Bergery’s observation was closer to the mark. If anyone could have replaced Willie or Mario in Schiaparelli’s life, that person would certainly have been Johnny Galliher. But this curiously interesting figure, so accessible to so many people, was no easier to know well than was Schiaparelli herself. In 1954, when he went back to New York, she stayed on in Paris. Galliher never married, and died in New York of cancer in 2002 at the age of eighty-eight. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Elsa and Johnny Galliher in 1949 at a ball in the Parisian Academy of Fine Arts (illustration credit 12.6)
However it ended, the Galliher affair must have been a profound disappointment to Schiaparelli. Givenchy said, “She would have a dinner party in her basement bistro, her cave, with friends. After they left I would kiss her on both cheeks and say, ‘See you tomorrow.’ ” He thought she had “a normal woman’s instincts” and a great need for warmth and affection in her life. At the same time, she kept people at bay. She was rebarbatif, a bit of a bulldog, setting up barriers so one did not dare approach her. He would bid her good night. Then he would watch as she, a lonely figure, went up the stairs.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
A BIRD IN THE CAGE
Natalie Barney, that American lady of leisure who wrote poetry and aphorisms, gave splendid parties in her secluded garden on the Rue Jacob, and knew everyone and went everywhere, was bored. Why don’t we all meet at Schiap’s as usual? she wrote to Bettina in the winter of 1952. They could assemble at about three in the afternoon and go on to refreshments somewhere and maybe a movie, “or whatever we are still fit for?” The confident reference made it clear she had not bothered to ask their hostess first. That would not have concerned Schiaparelli, who, as a new decade progressed, was refreshingly casual about such things, giving her friends the run of the house. In theory a select group of Brazilian and Portuguese friends had a standing invitation to dinner in her cave once a week. The hostess would officiate, sometimes providing a simple spaghetti meal and sometimes something more ambitious, like curry or ox tongue with port. That was the plan, but in practice all kinds of other people might arrive, from artists and musicians to actors and journalists.
After dinner they might stage an impromptu skit or a burlesque, using whatever was handy, from kitchen utensils and lamp shades to Schiap’s own clothes, jewels, and fur, even her underwear. Some guests were shocked. “How is it that you allow these wonderful but crazy people the freedom of your possessions?” the normally monosyllabic Greta Garbo wanted to know. Schiap did not mind a bit, because they were all so good about putting everything back, or so she said. So whenever Barney, Bergery, and friends wanted to show up, the door was always open.
As Bettina Ballard wrote, Schiaparelli surrounded herself with arti
sts, musicians, and writers who crossed ideas with hers. She was also kind to newcomers, not always the case in that brutally competitive world. Even Ballard, who did not like her “hard chic” and her pretensions, bought one of her jackets and allowed that a Schiaparelli customer was noticed wherever she went, “protected by an armour of amusing conversation-making smartness.” Susan Train, who met her when she first went to work for Vogue in postwar Paris, thought she was “a little bit gruff.” She said, “She was bound not to be easy to work with, because creative people never are.” She was very kind and sweet to her when she was a young editor. “I remember her as being very decided. There was nothing wishy-washy about her.”
Rosamond Bernier, who was also sent to Paris by Vogue after World War II, said, “Schiaparelli wasn’t a cozy person. She dressed rather severely in black, with turbans, and was very direct and practical. When I needed some working clothes she made me several dresses with dickeys that could be detached and washed. And when I needed a ball gown she would be terribly nice and lend me whatever I wanted.
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