The Master of Us All: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World

by Mary Blume

  “Balenciaga, who was the most discreet of men and the kindest of friends to Chanel, heard these ignominies, all because he had refused a photo! I remember I went to have lunch with him and he asked me over the telephone if I had seen the article. No, Cristóbal, I said. I know you saw it. Well, yes, I did. Is this your idea of friendship, not to tell me about it? If I didn’t, it was to spare you pain. But it was for you to tell me. Well, you were told and at least it wasn’t I who told you. That wasn’t very friendly of you, he said.

  “So I go to lunch and I find Cristóbal in tears. How can that have happened? The gifts we exchanged, the things I did for her. He wept and wept and said, I am leaving for Spain, I cannot bear such things. He went to Spain and stayed a fairly long time.”

  Everything that Chanel had given him, including her full-length portrait by Cassandre, was sent back. When she died in 1971, Balenciaga went to her funeral (Women’s Wear photographed him), but Givenchy refused to accompany him. “I asked him, How could you have gone? He said, You know, in life there are things one must forget, the ills that people have done to you. May she rest in peace, paix à son âme.”

  4

  To a tough cookie like Chanel, Balenciaga’s vulnerability seemed a weakness; his staff knew it was his strength. He was friable by nature and so they made his house into a cocoon where he could work undisturbed and they welcomed to the salon only those who were welcome. “We don’t want women who are just curious,” his directrice, Renée Tamisier, who had all the allure of a prison wardress, would say. Balenciaga’s isolation and his prices—the highest in Paris—gave the house a reputation for exclusivity and snobbery, but Balenciaga himself, being one of nature’s gentlemen, was by definition beyond snobbery, even if many of his clients and staff were not.

  His newly enlarged and refitted premises weren’t dainty in the Dior style and hardly welcoming to the casual passerby, but in their voluptuous austerity they were totally in keeping with the man and his house. The entrance was via the boutique, which was well set off from the street, with a black-and-white marble floor, pilastered walls, chairs where clients could await their chauffeurs, and showcases that were horizontal rather than upright so their contents could not be seen from outside. Flanked by Chinese statues of two life-size bronze deer, a cordovan leather elevator patterned on an eighteenth-century sedan chair silently lifted clients to the third floor salon where access was guarded by the scowling Mme Véra, who was the house’s trilingual bouncer, not too well washed in Florette’s opinion, and who, along with the usually invisible but omnipresent Mlle Renée, established the reputation of the house of Balenciaga as a rude, high-hatting place. Beyond Véra, two rows of black-clad vendeuses—there were eight by then—waited at their desks. Only one of them smiled: Florette. This was such a rarity in the house that the New York Herald Tribune’s Eugenia Sheppard dubbed her “the smiling one.”

  The boutique serves as the set for a fashion shoot

  Even the shop windows, decorated by Janine Janet, gave no hint of commerce. Balenciaga forbade the display of merchandise, with the result that Janet created sculptures for them that were in their way as ravishing and original as Balenciaga’s own work—mythical creatures and fantastic figures called Le Parfumeur, Le Couturier, or La Modiste. Her last one was called the Tower of Babel.

  Janine Janet, born in Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, and thus at home with materials not usual for shop windows, such as shells and barks and branches and old nails, was married to a painter, Jean-Claude Janet, whose work had hung in the show windows of Hermès. Annie Baumel, the brilliant window dresser at Hermès, suggested in 1952 that she go to Balenciaga, which she did, addressing herself to Mlle Renée, who ran everything. Mlle Renée gave her some bedraggled ostrich plumes to stick in the window.

  One evening, gazing disconsolately at her first window from the street, Janine Janet was joined by a stranger in dark glasses who asked why she was using such moth-eaten feathers. Because she had no choice, she replied. “Just go tell them you want three dozen of their most beautiful ostrich feathers,” he told her and identified himself as M. Balenciaga. He then took her for a coffee at Chez Francis, at the bottom of the Avenue George V, told her to see the collection so she would know what he was about, confided that he, too, detested ostrich plumes, and gave her free rein to decorate the windows as she pleased. “His two orders to her were that they should represent luxury and should not display any goods that were for sale,” her widower said in their rambling third-floor walk-up in the unfashionable Tenth Arrondissement of Paris. Janine died in 2000. Jean-Claude, who died at the age of ninety in 2008, kept all her old Balenciagas, including one that she told Balenciaga she had bought on sale. “You mean to say we have sales here?” he said, astonished.

  Janine Janet

  A window designed by Janine Janet

  Janine’s work having become instantly fashionable (Cocteau had her design the costumes for his film Le Testament d’Orphée), the Janets entertained artistic Paris at small dinners where she cooked excellent spicy dishes. “Balenciaga was always lifting the pot lids and asking what she was making,” Jean-Claude said. “One could enjoy oneself with Balenciaga. His conversation was usually about the couture and his clients, but not in a gossipy way. He knew nothing about art, though he did know antiques. He didn’t travel but was interested to hear about where we had been.”

  Florette was friendly with the Janets but not part of their circle. She and Payot no longer had their martinis with Balenciaga, now that he had reached the heights, and Florette called him Monsieur, although she could always put him at his ease. “One morning I came in very early and there was Monsieur Balenciaga, in a hairnet. He was terribly embarrassed. I said don’t worry, my husband’s hair frizzes too, and he does the same thing.” Payot’s hair was short and very straight.

  The working relationship between Balenciaga and Florette became even closer, a neutral film of familiarity, for Balenciaga, taking the place of intimacy. “He would criticize me for my gaiety because the house style was somber. But sometimes I could make even him laugh, although it wasn’t easy. And people liked my gaiety, look at the results in my order book.”

  Those results came from very hard work and long hours. “Sometimes Monsieur Balenciaga and I were the only ones still there. I would be preparing dresses for the next day, checking appointments, doing my sums, and telephoning clients, which was important because at about seven p.m. they would be at home, resting and preparing for the evening. So I chose that time to call and say I saw Mme So-and-So and we spoke of you, all that sort of little blah-blah, it was part of my work, the other vendeuses didn’t do that. It was very important to catch clients at a relaxed moment and maintain a real contact outside the Avenue George V.

  “One night Monsieur Balenciaga came out of his studio and said, come in, I want to show you something. On the floor was a big piece of fabric, black crepe. He got on his knees, took out his scissors, and said, Florette, this is a dress we are going to present at the collection, which was two days later. There will be only one seam and it will be a dress you can sell to everyone.” Barbara Hutton, her biggest client, ordered the dress in three colors.

  It was Florette, with her sunny tact, whom Balenciaga ordered to eject a famous milliner and potential copyist from the collection (“he saw everything that went on in the salon through a peephole in the curtain”), as well as a woman who talked through the show. “But Monsieur, I can’t make her leave,” Florette replied, “she’s one of our best clients.” “Then just tell her to shut up,” he said. And it was Florette who served as a guinea pig for what became one of his trademarks, the wide black satin belt with a large bow at the front, which in its first version was pink.

  “The salon was full of buyers. He called me in and when he called you in you were always a little frightened because you thought you were in for criticism. He had a spool of pink ribbon next to him, he cut it, put it around my waist and made a marvelous bow. Then he opene
d the curtain. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do so I took my courage into my hands and went to talk to my buyers and then I left. He wanted to see how it would look on an ordinary woman, not a mannequin, and he must have thought we’ll see what Florette does.”

  He must have liked you very much, I said when she had told me this story. “Sûrement,” she replied. He clearly respected her eye, even when it disagreed with his. She never liked the saris he made in 1965 or the dresses that she called “too flamenco” and sometimes didn’t even take numbers off their hangers to show to clients. “He knew about it and wasn’t pleased. But I would say they are not for my clients.”

  Balenciaga had seen to it that Florette’s desk was the one closest to the entrance to his private studio. Sometimes he called her into the studio. “It was never for a question of taste but to ask if a certain client liked this. He knew he could trust me. He would say, Florette’s right, she’s always right.” The other vendeuses disliked her deeply.

  And she disliked them all, with the exception of Odette Sourdel, the seconde, or assistant, of Lili, the only vendeuse, said Florette, one could talk to. “They all hated each other,” Odette said, still narrow-eyed and sharp at the age of ninety. “It is not possible to get along when you are working on commission—it is a horrible way to make a living.” She came to Balenciaga in 1948, family reversals having forced her to abandon her art studies. The name Balenciaga meant nothing to her, but because she spoke English she was hired two days before the summer collection. “Although I wanted to do it, it was very hard and I cried a lot.”

  Ramón Esparza and Florette at a St. Catherine’s Day party

  D’Attainville publicly rebuked her for wearing flat heels, but Balenciaga, making a rare appearance at a Saint Catherine’s Day party, came up to Odette where she was standing alone and said he had heard that he and a Basque friend of hers had the same ski teacher at Lech in Austria. “So he started talking to me about skiing while everyone stared.” Except for Florette, she says, he didn’t like vendeuses, rather grandly viewing them as living off his talent, which they were: “Maybe he spoke with me to avoid talking to them.”

  For a house that was considered the best managed in Paris, the vendeuses were rather a rum lot. Lili, who was Odette’s boss, was Russian, a self-proclaimed royal. “Once she was talking about the Revolution with a client and said she had escaped thanks to her cousin. The client said, Oh Lili, we are related then. Lili completely lost it and burst into tears to avoid more conversation. One day she said to me, You know how to draw, make me a coat of arms. I asked, How? Just copy the Duchess of Windsor’s crown with my initials, she said.”

  The duchess was Lili’s client. Even Florette admits that Lili was a good vendeuse, though she despised her familiar ways: “She would sit down with clients,” she said disapprovingly. She was shifty and odd, so why did Balenciaga hire her to begin with? “Because she spoke English very well,” Odette said, “and because Russians were well thought of. Had she come from the Auvergne it wouldn’t have worked.”

  (From left to right) Maria, Mlle Renée, Lili, and Florette

  Each vendeuse had her system for snagging, or even poaching, clients. Sometimes Mlle Renée assigned them: it was she who gave Bunny Mellon, who in Odette’s words bought mountains of dresses, to Alice, who was Renée’s petite amie, though no one was supposed to know. Alice also had the Baroness Guy de Rothschild and Rita Hayworth.

  The veteran vendeuse Marthe got Mona Bismarck, who had known her from her Paquin days. Maria, the friend of Balenciaga from Spain who had had a doomed affair with a toreador, had Marlene Dietrich. Margot, who inherited Mona Bismarck when Marthe retired, was not a good vendeuse, being lazy, and like the others was jealous of Florette’s earnings and contemptuous of her willingness to work with mere manufacturers and buyers. “She said to me with all your running around you’ll get blisters on your feet,” Florette recalled. “I said it’s better than getting them on my behind.”

  * * *

  Some of the vendeuses thought the premiers d’atelier were just jumped-up seamstresses, wearing black dresses and pearls as if they were as good as vendeuses although, unlike the vendeuses, they had to use the employees’ entrance. They were in fact a lot more powerful than the sales staff: it was best to stay on good terms with them to squeeze in clients, to get a rush job done, to persuade them to use their great skills on an unpromising body. Lili would go to the workrooms on Saint Catherine’s Day with her guitar and sing Russian songs to the seamstresses; other vendeuses, says Florette, would tip the premier for quicker service. Denis, she said, was easily bought, although he was so grand that he was nicknamed the Emperor and was often mistaken for M. Balenciaga when he swanned in his white smock through the fitting rooms. “He would approach clients with scorn,” Florette said. “I made fun of him but he worked extremely well.”

  There were ten ateliers, each holding between thirty and fifty workers. Three were for the flou—or soft—fabrics, five were ateliers tailleur for suits and coats, two were for hats. Each premier was also a fitter and had his or her own style. Florette would choose the atelier according to the client and the dress: “Some were very good, some gave a bit more, some were perfect but a bit dull.” The favorite of Odette and Florette, and of Balenciaga, was Salvador, a very nice man who had trained with Balenciaga in Spain and had Courrèges and, later, Ungaro as assistants. “He worked very quickly and gave great chic to his clothes. Denis was a bit flat,” Florette said. In the flou, Suzanne was quick and perfect, although she once threw a handbag at Odette’s head because Lili had messed up her schedule. “Claude was very sensible, she had less style, which was better for some clients,” Florette said. “Lucia was a perfectionist to the point of keeping clients on their feet forever, so I had to find clients who didn’t mind standing for an hour looking at themselves in the mirror. It’s surprising how many there were.”

  Workroom sketch with fabric swatch, 1951

  During the clients’ fittings (there were three), the pins were stuck in following a code shared by the fitters and vendeuses. “The vendeuse never touched a pin during the fitting, but sometimes we could spot a defect the fitter hadn’t noticed,” Florette said. “You know how if you give something a quick glance you see more than if you have studied it intently.” The dresses were so well finished that they were just as beautiful inside as out: “The hems were attached to the dress with a piece of chiffon, not just tacked on as at other houses.” This gave an almost imperceptible rounded, rather than flat, finish to the hemline.

  The ateliers worked in silence and didn’t mix with each other. The lowest grade was the arpète, a fourteen-year-old errand girl with a magnet around her neck with which she picked pins up from the floor and then washed them. Balenciaga would hire only untrained seamstresses who would then laboriously work their way up the hierarchy: petite main, seconde main débutante, seconde main qualifiée, première main débutante, première main qualifiée. Once this was over the worker might rise to second d’atelier and then to premier. It could take a good twenty years, and even then not all the candidates were suited to dealing with clients. Those who seemed likely were sent to Balenciaga’s Madrid house for two years so they could make their mistakes in private.

  “Yes, it was a hard place, it was tough, but it was right,” says Coqueline Courrèges, who joined Salvador’s atelier as a petite main in 1951 and met her husband, André, there. “You punched the clock and if you were three minutes late, fifteen minutes were deducted from your paycheck. You had to be there, needle threaded, spools in place, ready to sew. One never dared open one’s mouth, you had to understand everything with your eyes.”

  Coqueline Courrèges saw M. Balenciaga only once in her years working in his house. And she never saw a piece she had worked on in its finished state, not even on one of the house models. Nor did the other seamstresses. Florette found this intolerable and would invent an errand to get one of the girls, however briefly, to the fitting rooms. “There the
y were sewing with their aching backs and earning nothing, and it was their only chance to see a dress outside the atelier. It didn’t take much to make them happy and I did it when I could. I could see it in their eyes and they would say, Qu’elle est belle, ma cliente. Because for that moment she became her client.”

  * * *

  The carefully choreographed winter and spring collections followed roughly the same order at all the fashion houses, although only at Balenciaga were the ashtrays that viewers dipped their cigarettes in made of heavy marble. Suits and daytime dresses came first, then evening wear of increasing formality and almost transgressive luxury. To capture attention, which might wander during an hour-long show, Dior wrote in his memoirs that toward the middle of a collection shocking new models would appear: “it is the custom to call them the ‘Trafalgars,’ those which made the covers or full pages of the magazines.” A Balenciaga Trafalgar might have been his glittering torero’s jacket or a detachable pierrot sleeve with a pointed top. At every house, the collection closed with a floor-length bridal gown worn by a model looking as young and chaste as possible. And then the designer (but never of course Balenciaga) would take a bow.

  By the time the clients have arrived, squabbles among their vendeuses to secure the best seats have been angrily resolved, the premiers have had their last-minute showdowns with M. Balenciaga (la manga!), and the staff has seen the night-before dress rehearsal and noted which numbers should be the great hits. M. Balenciaga is in a barely controllable state of nerves. And then out lope the mannequins, cool and indifferent in the finest clothes in Paris, languidly waving the outfit’s number printed on a card or sometimes pocketing them, as if to suggest that actual selling is not the point. They are said to be the ugliest models in Paris.