The Great Fashion Designers (9 page)

It is doubtful that the young Chanel, who broke through so many traditions back in the 1920s, would have had much time for such stipulations. But the old Chanel had come full circle, now locked in her own legend. Since her death in 1971, at the age of 88, that legend has remained intact, while the house of Chanel, driven forward by Karl Lagerfeld since 1983, has continued to flourish. Her status as an outsider may hold the key to her success. As Katell Le Bourhis, director of the Musée des Arts de la Mode et du Textile in Paris, put it: ‘She had no references, no education, no upbringing, so she was free to invent her own rules of dress.'

Further reading:
There is a wealth of writing on Chanel, from Edmonde Charles-Roux's early biography,
Chanel
(1976), to Alice Mackrell's
Coco Chanel
(1992) and Janet Wallach's
Chanel: Her Style and Her Life
(1998). Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton's
Chanel
(2005), the catalogue to the Chanel exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has some illuminating essays.
The Allure of Chanel
, by Paul Morand (translated by Euan Cameron in 2008), is also of interest.

Often overshadowed in his lifetime and beyond by his archrival Coco Chanel, French designer Jean Patou was equally influential during his heyday, which can be precisely traced from the end of the First World War in 1918 through to the Great Crash of 1929. Perhaps, like Chanel, he might have made a glorious comeback, but he died relatively young and impoverished by his great vice—gambling.

Of all his many achievements, his development of sportswear for women is perhaps the most significant. In 1921, he dressed the tennis player Suzanne Lenglen at Wimbledon in a straight white sleeveless cardigan and a short white silk pleated skirt, creating an instant sensation. This boyish, sporty look—known as the garçonne—dominated women's fashion for much of the decade, reflecting an era when women were enjoying freedom as never before, including the freedom to exercise, sunbathe and show off their legs. As with so much sportswear, many of the clothes were in reality bought by women who did not participate in sport and were more interested in showing off their Patou monogrammed cardigan sweaters to their envious friends. Patou knew this well enough, ensuring that his swimsuits, launched in the mid-1920s, included practical styles in shrink-resistant fabrics for real bathers and styles more suited for social display on the beach.

He never married but had, it appears, countless affairs and liaisons, living the life of a playboy. His perceptive biographer, Meredith Etherington-Smith, points out that Patou's boyish women contrasted curiously with his own voracious heterosexual appetites. ‘Perhaps it was simply because Patou was not deeply involved with one woman that he was able to view women objectively, yet with a sympathy that enabled him, with an obvious sensitivity, to create clothes that combined the new spirit of freedom and yet appealed to men.' If there was a muse, it was his sister, Madeleine Patou, in the early post-war years, although Lenglen and other sportswomen and actresses also came to fulfill that role. Madeleine's husband, Raymond Barbas, played an equally important role on the business side, as did the socialite and publicist Elsa Maxwell in marketing the Patou name.

Patou had an unswerving eye, but he did not create his own models. As he told the photographer Baron Gayne de Meyer, ‘I wouldn't know how to design. I couldn't even if I wanted to, for I can't draw, and a pair of scissors in my hands becomes a dangerous weapon.' Instead, he provided the raw materials for inspiration for his studio, edited the results ruthlessly and followed the process through every stage. Even at the final moment, when a model was ready to walk before an audience, Patou would frequently discard an outfit. This was notably the case for a
repetition genérale
, technically a full dress rehearsal but in reality the name given to one of his seasonal gala fashion presentations that brought together an audience of fashion editors and the most prestigious buyers and clients. It was a foretaste of the modern fashion show, although Patou's version also included a champagne supper.

Jean Patou was born in 1880 in Normandy, the son of comfortably off parents, Charles and Jeanne Patou. Charles was a tanner, renowned for his bookbinding leathers in exquisite colours, passing on a
sensibility for colour to his son. Quickly shunning the option of joining the family tanning business, Patou worked for an uncle in the fur trade before a series of stop-and-start ventures of his own culminated in the opening of Maison Parry in Paris in 1912. For two years, before the outbreak of war, he began to develop the neat sense of style that characterised his work, including the use of concealed pleating, inset godets and panels. Fashion historian Caroline Rennolds Milbank has pointed out that at this early stage he also created some of the first ‘smokings'—tailor-mades with jackets fashioned after a man's dinner jacket. By the year 1914, Patou was ready to launch under his own name, encouraged by a big order from a New York retailer, but the outbreak of hostilities with Germany put an abrupt halt to his plans. The First World War saw Patou in action for five long years, fighting as far afield as Anatolia. The psychological impact of this period was immense, and Patou's brother-in-law, Raymond Barras, was convinced that it shortened Patou's life considerably. However, Patou also learned much from his wartime experience, most notably about leadership and the importance of delegation. Back in post-war Paris, ensconced at 7 rue St Florentin, he set about making up for lost time, finally founding the house that bore his name in 1919. The long-waisted shepherdess dresses of that year and equally long-waisted folkloric Russian peasant collections of 1920 and 1921 put him on the map. However, it was his step-by-step evolution of sportswear for women, borrowing extensively from men's sportswear, that was the most groundbreaking of his achievements.

By 1925, Patou had raised skirts to the knee, selling them at his new Coin des Sports shop in the rue St Florentin, managed by English society lady Phillis, Vicomtesse de Janze. At rue St Florentin, he had employed interior decorators Sue and Mare to create a total look that was sympathetic to the eighteenth-century style of the house. Design in the 1920s, the period of Art Deco, focused on the concept of a total look, with couturiers heavily influenced by artists: Patou's cubist sweaters, introduced in 1924, were only the most obvious manifestation of this trend. The total look was reflected in the Coin des Sports, where rooms were designed to present and reflect both the fashions and the accoutrements of sports such as riding, hunting and fishing. Today, Patou's approach would be called ‘lifestyle retailing'. His Jean Patou Bag of 1928 comprised a 14-piece coordinated wardrobe, with the monogram omnipresent. Careful attention was also paid to what Patou called ‘les riens'—literally ‘nothings'—including scarves, costume jewellery, hats and pocket books.

The sweaters of 1924 were sold with pleated skirts in matching prints and printed silk scarves, creating a style that dominated for years. Like his rival Chanel, Patou believed in clothes that were practical and straightforward, reacting to the extravagances of the late nineteenth century and of Poiret's orientalist period. In his reported comments to
Vogue
and
Harper's Bazaar
, he took the opportunity to snipe at Chanel and emphasise their differences. Edna Woolman Chase of
Vogue
recalled: ‘Every time he saw her name in
Vogue
, he would compare the space given to her models with those from his own atelier.' From a modern-day perspective, however, Patou and Chanel had much in common.

Patou was slower than Chanel to make progress in America. In November 1924, all that changed when he advertised in American newspapers for three American mannequins to work in his Paris atelier for a year, sparking off a burst of media publicity. Sifting through some 500 applications, Patou rapidly decided to increase the number from three to six and went to New York to interview them in person along with senior editors from
Vogue
. One of the selected models, Lillian Farley, known as Dinarzade, recalled Patou paid closest attention to the models' ankles. ‘Feet and ankles passing the test, he deigned to look at the hip or where the hips should have been. None were wanted.' The models headed across the Atlantic by ship, the
Savoie
. During the voyage, Patou became alarmed by the possibility of adverse publicity from the more patriotic elements of the French press and sent his assistant, Georges Bernard, to meet them in the pilot boat that guided the
Savoie
into harbour. They were warned to be on best behaviour and went out of their way to delight the French press. The first collection they showed, featuring 500 styles in total on twenty models, was a huge success, particularly with the American buyers.

In design terms, Patou chose the spring of 1925 to shift emphasis to the natural waistline with a hugely applauded collection of waisted dresses in rose-beige. Colour was a core component of Patou's work. Every collection had two new colours, with precise, evocative names such as dove's-neck grey or dark dahlia. The year 1927 saw the launch of his celebrated New Blue, a deep violet. But Patou's biggest moment came with his winter collection of 1929, when he abruptly altered course, lengthening skirts and creating a new silhouette. This was his princess line, with the dress flowing from a high waist rather than hip level, the hemline dropping to below the calf. Uncharacteristically nervous, he waited in his office during the presentation: his omnipresent
directeur
, Georges Bernard, soon placated him, reporting that women in the audience were already pulling at their skirts, as if they were trying to cover their knees. It was, said
Vogue
, ‘the first dramatic change in dress that has occurred since the garçonne mode came in.' Also influential in this collection was his new evening look, introducing the bias-cut white satin evening dress as his riposte to the black dress (‘I shall fight with all my influence to banish the much too simple little black frock from the ranks of the fashionable,' he said).

While the fashion world was enthusing over Patou's new ideas, the world was on the verge of worldwide economic catastrophe. The Great Crash of 1929 marked a shift in fashion as much as in the world's economic fortunes. Overnight, American buyers stopped travelling to Paris. Patou responded with characteristic bravado by staging an extravagant party at his home in the early 1930s with the trees in the garden lined with silver foil and three live lion cubs among the giveaways. But the mood of fashion was shifting fast and Patou (along with Chanel, Lanvin and other stars of the 1920s) abruptly found his preference for simplicity out of tune with the times. The ascendance of Schiaparelli was matched by the decline of Patou. His disastrous winter collection of 1932 was a desperate attempt to regain the initiative, creating a stodgy medieval look that focused on the hips and was roundly rejected by the market and the media. Patou was also suffering personally; he was ageing visibly and his obsession for gambling was spinning out of control. He never recovered his earlier influence and died in 1936, reportedly of an apoplectic fit. Raymond Barbas, his brother-in-law, commented, no doubt a touch simplistically: ‘He died because he was worn-out. The First World War finally killed him.'

Jean Patou is better known today as a perfume house. In the 1920s, Patou developed a series of perfumes, including a trio conceived to match hair colours (Adieu, Sagesse was the scent for redheads). Sien, the first perfume for both men and women, was launched in 1929. The real breakthrough for him came a year later with the launch of Joy, conceived with Elsa Maxwell in Grasse and brilliantly marketed as ‘the most expensive scent in the world'. Each bottle is reported to contain 336 roses and 10,600 jasmine flowers. After his death, the house continued under the guidance of Raymond Barbas. A series of young designers, including Marc Bohan, Karl Lagerfeld and Angelo Tarlazzi, kept the house alive for years. In the 1980s, Patou's couture operation enjoyed several years of flourishing fortunes under the inspired creative direction of Christian Lacroix, who brought a new gaiety and irreverence to the couture scene. Lacroix eventually left to set up his own label.

Has Jean Patou been properly appreciated by fashion historians? Biographer Meredith Etherington-Smith believes not, pointing out that museums tend to focus on special occasion clothes rather than the designer's everyday creations. A Patou design was so beautifully cut and fit for purpose ‘that you lived in it until it wore out.'

Further reading:
Meredith Etherington-Smith's biography,
Patou
(1983), is an outstanding read.