Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68 9781350126190, 9781350215931, 9781350126220, 9781350126206

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Fashion: Visual and Material Interconnections

Series editor: Rebecca Arnold, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK

This interdisciplinary series explores the ways that the visual and material interact to create and sustain fashion cultures, both historically and today. Published in association with the world-renowned Courtauld Institute of Art, the series seeks to unpack the ways looking, seeing, wearing and being interconnect with wider visual, material and technological cultures of fashion. Through focused studies of specific themes and case studies in fashion and dress history, the series comprises exciting, new research that foregrounds fashion as a lived, emotional and sensory experience. Including both national and transnational examples, ranging from fashion film to periodicals to fashion photography, it fosters and facilitates new ways of thinking about dress as a local and global phenomenon. Titles in the series draw upon fashion studies and dress history, in addition to art, architecture, design history, philosophy, memory studies and the history of emotions. Published The Hidden History of the Smock Frock: Deception and Disguise, Alison Toplis Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945–68, Alexis Romano Danger in the Path of Chic: Violence in Fashion between the Wars, Lucy Moyse Ferreira Forthcoming Fashion After Capital: Frock Coats and Philosophy from Marx to Duchamp, T’ai Smith

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945–68 Alexis Romano

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Alexis Romano, 2022 Alexis Romano has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xv–xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design: Adriana Brioso Cover image: Dress and jacket ensemble by Chloé. Photograph by Fouli Elia, Elle, 3 May 1963. (© Fouli Elia / ELLE FRANCE) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ­A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-2619-0 PB: 978-1-3502-1593-1 ePDF: 978-1-3501-2620-6 eBook: 978-1-3501-2621-3 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

In memory of Emmanuelle Khanh (1937–2017) and dedicated with love to Vita Zagami, who provided my earliest introduction to this enigmatic industry and its hidden players.

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Contents ­List of Plates  ix List of Figures  xi Acknowledgements  xv A note on the text  xvii

Introduction  1 Prêt-à-porter and post-war modernization  4 Female identities and representations  7 1

Accessing the everyday: Prêt-à-porter, Paris and women in magazines, 1945–65  11 Fashion and Paris  16 Modernization and movement  20 Subjectivity and filmic spreads  31

2 Branding prêt-à-porter in the Fourth Republic (1946–58): Modernization, cultural diplomacy and industry debates  39 Confection, couture en gros, robe de série, vêtement féminin  42 Productivity and prêt-à-porter  46 Coordination and propaganda in the press  54 Les Trois Hirondelles and the International Style  60 3

Displaying industrial modernity in 1950s’ Elle: Readymade dress, rational space and the image of women  73 Elle’s structural depiction of time  78 Women’s wellness and the problem of spaces  87 Technology and myth  93

4

Negotiating the avant-garde in the 1960s: Stylisme, industry debates and restless images  101 Stylisme  106 Designers  109 Brands  115 Publicity  119

Retailers  121 Bureaux de style  123 Restless images: Exploring art and industry projects  126 OPjectscape  126 Movement and moving images  131 ­5 ­Expanding the urban fabric in the 1960s: Redefined bodies, dress and city space  141 Embodiment and fashion magazines  146 Housing estates and Paris: Centre and periphery  155 Unproductive women in hyper-reality  158 Fragmented bodies and non-place in imagery  163 ­Conclusion  173 Notes  178 Bibliography  209

Contents

Index  235

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Plates 1 Lise France, miniature garments, 1948, Palais Galliera, GAL2008.33.4, 8, 5 © Paris Musées/Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris 2

Clothing by Alayne, J. Divoy, Jacqueline Monnin, Algo, Chloé and Germaine et Jane. Photograph by Lionel Kazan, Elle, 1 October 1956 © Lionel Kazan/ ELLE FRANCE

3

Dress by Jacqueline Monnin (large image). Photographs by Jacques Ravasse, Elle, 10 November 1952 © Annie Rivemale, Jacques Ravasse/ELLE FRANCE.

4

Garments by Lempereur, Jacqueline Monnin and Lempereur (clockwise from top). Photograph by Jean Chevalier, Elle, 14 September 1953 © Simone Baron, Jean Chevalier/ELLE FRANCE

5 Photographs by Jean Chevalier, Elle, 14  September 1953 © Simone Baron, Jean Chevalier/ELLE FRANCE 6

Printemps, printed dress and belt, with selvedge detail, 1948–58, Palais Galliera, GAL1961.82.4. Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris, Paris, France © Paris Musées, Palais Galliera, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/image ville de Paris/Art Resource, NY

7 Anne-Marie Raimond and Madeleine Peter, ‘Aujourd’hui à Rézé-les-Nantes: 250 familles radieuses dans la maison de demain.’ Photographs by Germaine Cosiva and Jean Lattès, Elle, 25 July 1955 © Anne-Marie Raimond et Madeleine Peter, Jean Lattès, Germaine Cosiva/ELLE FRANCE 8 Dresses by Marcelle Venon, Louis Féraud, Jacqueline, Laetitia and Marcelle Venon (left to right). Photograph by Lionel Kazan, Elle, 21  February 1955 © Lionel Kazan, Studio Chevalier/ELLE FRANCE 9

Photographs by Guy Arsac, Elle, 29 August 1955 © Guy Arsac/ELLE FRANCE

10 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Elle expose une réalisation unique au monde: la maison tout en plastique.’ Photographs by Bouillaud (of building) and Lionel Kazan (of model), Elle, 27 February 1956 © Anne-Marie Raimond, BouillaudStudio Astorg, Lionel Kazan-Studio Astorg/ELLE FRANCE

11 Coat by Emmanuelle Khanh for Pierre d’Alby. Photograph by Brian Duffy, Elle, 9 September 1965 © Duffy Archive 12 Emmanuelle Khanh for I.D., dress, cotton, 1966, The Museum at FIT, 77.57.2 © The Museum at FIT 13 Garments by Chloé and Stanley (left to right). Photographs (of models) by Fouli Elia, Elle, 3 May 1963 © Fouli Elia, Edi Vogt/ELLE FRANCE 14 Monique Naudeix in an Elle Bon Magique dress, Rome, 1963. Photograph by Daniel Naudeix © Naudeix private collection 15 Coat by Christiane Bailly for Nale Junior (left page), cape by Catherine Chaillet for Benjamin Davy over a dress by Laura (right page). Photographs by Ronald Traeger, Elle, 8 September 1966 © Ronald Traeger/ELLE FRANCE. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive

Plates

16 Sonia Rykiel, sweater, wool and angora, A/W 1965, Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs, 2009.68.1 © MAD, Paris/Jean Tholance

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Figures Introduction I.1 Page from Petit Echo de la Mode, 25 March 1956 © Centre de Ressources du Petit Echo de la Mode – Leff Armor Communauté  2 Chapter 1 1.1 Ensemble by Lucien Lelong. Elle, 21 November 1945 © ELLE FRANCE  12 1.2 Dress sold at Réal. Photograph by William Connors, Elle, 21  April 1961 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE  15 1.3 Garments by Pierre Balmain, Alix Grès and Lucien Lelong. Illustration by René Bouët-Williaumez, Vogue Paris, Winter 1946 © Vogue Paris  17 1.4 Coat sold at Franck et Fils. Photograph by Robert Randall, Vogue Paris, October 1952 © Vogue Paris  19 1.5 Coat by Albert Lempereur. Photograph by Lionel Kazan, Elle, 1 October 1956 © Lionel Kazan/ELLE FRANCE  21 1.6 Coat by Fouks. Photograph by Willy Ronis, Vogue Paris, October 1958 © Ministère de la Culture/Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY  24 1.7 Photographs by William Connors, Elle, 14 October 1960 © William Connors/ ELLE FRANCE  29 1.8 Suit by Ulrique. Photograph by William Connors, Elle, 14 October 1960 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE  30 1.9 Suit sold at Prisunic. Photograph by Guy Arsac, Elle, 8 April 1960 © production Prisunic, Guy Arsac/ELLE FRANCE  32 1.10 Garments by Paulette Maïer and Timwear, Georges Rech and Nale Junior (left to right). Photographs by Jo Francki, Jardin des Modes, August 1966  34–5

1.11 Garments by Raimon, Gil Coutin, Lempereur and Paul Bon. Photographs by Knight Russell, Vogue Paris, July 1965  38 Chapter 2 2.1 Ensemble by Lempereur. Photograph by Henry Clarke, Vogue Paris, September 1953 © Henry Clarke, Musée Galliera/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 2020  41 2.2 Weill advertisement by Publicis, Elle, 2 March 1953 © Maison Weill  55 2.3 Weill Catalogue, 1950, Maison Weill Archives, Paris © Maison Weill  60–1 2.4 Les Trois Hirondelles, dress, 1940s, Palais Galliera, GAL2008.33.1 © Paris Musées/Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris  63 2.5 Les Trois Hirondelles advertisement. Photographs by Jacques Boucher, Vogue Paris, August 1956 © Vogue Paris  69 2.6 Ensemble by Wébé. Photograph by Jean-François Clair, Elle, 30 December 1957 © Claude Brouet, Jean-François Clair/ELLE FRANCE  72 Chapter 3 3.1 Garments by Lempereur, Casalino, Gattegno and Weill. Photographs by Jacques Ravasse, Elle, 10  November 1952 © Annie Rivemale, Jacques Ravasse/ELLE FRANCE. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive  74 3.2 Photographs by Jean-François Clair, Elle, 13 February 1956 © Annie Rivemale, Jean-François Clair/ELLE FRANCE  83 Chapter 4 4.1 Film still, Michèle Rosier and models, ‘Trois Modélistes,’ Dim Dam Dom (16 mm black and white, 1965). Directed by Peter Knapp, produced by Daisy de Galard  105

Figures

4.2 Emmanuelle Khanh in a promotional photograph for Balenciaga, c. late 1950s, reproduced from Emmanuelle Khanh’s unpublished manuscript, Khanh private archive, Paris © Emmanuelle Khanh Estate  110

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4.3 Emmanuelle Khanh in her own skirt pattern (right). Photograph by William Connors, Elle, 24 March 1961 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE  111

4.4 Vest patterns by Emmanuelle Khanh. Photographs by Fouli Elia, Elle, 9 February 1962 © Fouli Elia/ELLE FRANCE  116–17 4.5 Suit by Emmanuelle Khanh for Emma Christie. Photograph by Fouli Elia, Elle, 14 September 1962 © Fouli Elia/ELLE FRANCE  118 4.6 Garments by Galeries Lafayette (left page) and Emmanuelle Khanh for I.D. (right page). Photographs by Daiho Yoshida, Elle, 7 April 1966 © Daiho Yoshida/ELLE FRANCE. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive  129 4.7 Emmanuelle Khanh, Illustration, c. 1966, reproduced from Emmanuelle Khanh’s unpublished manuscript, Khanh private archive, Paris © Emmanuelle Khanh Estate  132 4.8 Emmanuelle Khanh, Illustration, Vogue (USA), January 1965 © Emmanuelle Khanh Estate. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive  133 4.9 Film stills, Emmanuelle Khanh and model, ‘Trois Modélistes,’ Dim Dam Dom (16mm black and white, 1965). Directed by Peter Knapp, produced by Daisy de Galard  136–7 Chapter 5 5.1 Garments by Galeries Lafayette, Intexa and L’Atelier. Photographs by Frank Horvat, Elle, 20 October 1961 © Frank Horvat/ELLE FRANCE  146–7 5.2 Elle Bon Magique Garments. Photographs by Frank Horvat, Elle, 20 October 1961 © Frank Horvat/ELLE FRANCE  152 5.3 Garments by Léonard Fashion and Chloé. Photograph by Guy Bourdin, Jardin des Modes, August 1965 © The Guy Bourdin Estate, 2020/Reproduced by permission of Art + Commerce. All rights reserved  160 5.4 Garments by Daniel Hechter and Jean Risoli. Photograph by Helmut Newton, layout Roman Cieslewicz, Vogue Paris, July 1966 © The Helmut Newton Estate/ Maconochie Photography  164–5 5.5 Monique Naudeix in a Sonia Rykiel knitted top, Versailles, 1967. Photograph by Daniel Naudeix © Naudeix private collection  167 Figures

5.6 Film Still, Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d’Elle (Argos Films, 1966). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard  169

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5.7 ‘Jeune femme à son balcon dans un grand ensemble de la région parisienne.’ 1966. Photograph by Janine Niépce (1921–2007) © Janine Niépce/RogerViollet  169 5.8 Photographs by Jo Francki, Jardin des Modes, March 1967  170–1 Conclusion

Figures

C.1 Garments by Ungaro and Castillo. Photographs by Antonio Miralda, Elle, 2 March 1967 © Antonio Miralda/ELLE FRANCE  174–5

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­Acknowledgements I began the research for this book as a doctoral student at The Courtauld Institute of Art, so I must first thank my supervisor Rebecca Arnold for her invaluable guidance and encouragement. Her approach to the study of dress, and the ways it is shaped and experienced through visual and material interconnections, has been a constant exemplar for my work. I’m now thrilled to be included in her new series exploring this idea from diverse perspectives. I also thank my examiners Cheryl Buckley and Tag Gronberg, for their careful reading, insights and continued professional support, and my editor Frances Arnold at Bloomsbury, who helped steer this material to publication. Those who have contributed ideas and readings along the way include Michele Majer, Rachel Worth, Caroline Evans, Gavin Parkinson, John-Michael O’Sullivan and Ellen Sampson, as well as my colleagues at the Fashion Research Network for fostering critical conversations that touched this project. Thanks also to Catherine Örmen, Sophie Kurkdijan and Thierry Maillet for their interest and dialogue regarding aspects of the French industry, and to the Séminaire histoire de la mode (IHTP), for always providing a space to share this research. This book has been enriched through access to diverse archives and museum collections, and I would like to recognize the following: in New York, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, particularly Colleen Hill a kindred research spirit. A version of Chapter 1 was published in Paris Refashioned, 1957–1968 by Hill, and so I thank her and Valerie Steele for generously allowing it to be republished here. In the United Kingdom, the Museum of Costume and Research Centre, Bath; the Clotheworkers’ Centre, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Miles Lambert at the Gallery of Costume, Manchester. In Paris, the staff at the Musée de la Mode, Palais Galliera, including Véronique Belloir, Alexandra Bosc, Nathalie Gourseau, Dominique Revellino and especially Laurent Cotta for his support and friendship; and the Musée de la Mode et du Textile, including Myriam Teissier, Eric Pujalet, Emmanuelle Beuvin and Solène Danjour-Kyvel. I am grateful to Florence Brachet Champsaur for access to the Galeries Lafayette Archive as well as for her enthusiasm and dialogue; and Bernard Weill for access to the Maison Weill archives. Thanks are also due to the staff of the New York Public Library, Courtauld Institute Library, British Library, National Art Library, Bibliothèque Forney, Bibliothèque Nationale de la France, Archives Nationales, Archives de Paris and Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris.

­Acknowledgement xvi

Acquiring images and permissions became a mammoth task during a pandemic, so I owe my gratitude to several individuals who went out of their way to help, especially Sylvie Roy (Palais Galliera) and Marc Senet (Bibliothèque Forney); April Callahan and Melissa Marra (Fashion Institute of Technology); Carol Soudri and Othello Khanh (Emmanuelle Khanh Archive); Alexandre Weill (Maison Weill); Sandie Goodman and Chris Duffy (The Duffy Archive); Tiggy Maconochie (Maconochie Photography); Vanessa Rault (Le Petit Echo de la Mode); Hugo Cador (Paris Musées); Eve Briend (Musée des Arts Décoratifs); Caroline Berton (Condé Nast); Reina Nakagawa (Art + Commerce); Daniel Trujillo (Artists Rights Society); Valerie Lesauvage and Catherine Gachet (Roger-Viollet); Robbi Siegel (Art Resource); Sylvie Marot (Lionel Kazan Heritage); and La photothèque de Elle. Several institutions have provided financial support throughout this project: The Pasold Research Fund, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Design History Society, The Society for the Study of French History, Textile Society and the Bard Graduate Center. Equally I thank the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute for enabling the completion of this manuscript during my term as 2020–1 Curatorial Fellow. I am indebted to the late Emmanuelle Khanh, for her dialogue and generosity, and for always welcoming me to her home, where the first thread of this project was sewn. My sincere thanks also go to Claude Brouet, as well as Françoise VincentRicard, Ginette Sainderichin, Jean-Claude Weill, Peter Knapp and Remy Chevalier for sharing precious information and documents. I am grateful to Claude Fauque and Monique Naudeix for their words, enthusiasm and continued conversation. I would also like to mention the following women for relaying their memories on paper: Eliane Hartmann, Floriane Zuniga, Jocelyne Milani, Marie Bessi, Suzel Gilbert, Colette Renaud, Françoise Bacquelin and Olga Le Queignec. My friends and family have lent immense support and encouragement, especially Steven Gaviño, Victoria Romano, Amanda Romano Foreman, Trevor Howe, Caitlin Murphy, Ciro Galeno and Ciara Dowling. I am grateful to Alan Audrain for his invaluable help with French transcriptions and constant enthusiasm. Equally, this project would not have been possible without the hospitality of Paula Villanueva, Simon Hebbo, Alice Barthélémy, Yragaël Gervais, Michaela McCormack Pollefoort and Kevin Pollefoort in Paris. A final, heartfelt thank you goes to my parents, Teresa and Richard Romano, for their love and support, and whose high school yearbooks and clothing were an early source of visual fascination, and my first foray into the historical moment explored in this book.

­A note on the text All French to English translations and transcriptions are the author’s, unless stated otherwise. All mentions of Elle and Vogue refer to the French editions, unless stated otherwise. Abbreviations: Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin (Cahiers) Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin (Fédération) Comité de coordination des industries de mode (CIM) Ministère de la reconstruction et de l’urbanisme (MRU) Habitation à loyer modéré (HLM) Association Française pour l’Accroissement de la Productivité (AFAP)

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­Introduction The visual and material culture of post-war France exposes tensions and shifting attitudes a propos fashion, women and national identity. Consider one page from a 1956 issue of the popular fashion magazine Le Petit Echo de la Mode, where photographic imagery of six models fill up the frame, collaged over an image of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel at the top left corner (Figure I.1).1 This fixed their location for readers, who knew to imagine the women strolling through the Tuileries garden, aided further by green graphics that signify foliage and garden paths. A triumphant femininity matched the triumphal arc, with models smiling broadly and posing proudly in their suits and coats by the leading readymade design labels Basta and Wébé. The title of the feature, ‘Ready-to-wear conquers Paris,’ re-appropriated the military meaning behind the monument, designating fashion’s geography as a battlefield. Although the magazine had featured readymade production since 1953, this editorial appeared in the slot typically reserved for haute couture, the highly regulated system of made-to-measure clothing production. Therefore, it used aggressive language to crystallize the unlikely connection between fashion and ready-to-wear as the latter worked to gain a foothold into magazines and into Paris; whilst alluding to the wartime occupation of the city, a trauma still fresh for many. Such documentation sheds new light on the typical narrative of French dress history, which prioritizes haute couture, idealizes the production of iconic designers and conflates fashion and Paris. Embedded firmly within the country’s heritage and conceptions of Frenchness, this history is not so simple to deconstruct and reassess. More widely, texts that characterize French fashion as a Parisian-based and socially prestigious model of highly skilled craft production also dominate accounts of the entire fashion system. Scholars often refer to a ‘geography of emulation,’ in which, according to David Gilbert, ‘elite fashion was simultaneously metropolitan fashion. […] The archetypal example was the couture system, which projected Paris as world fashion’s central place.’2 Authors position haute couture as central in terms of design, asserting its role as a model from which to measure fashionability for consumers or creative ideas for other clothing producers. This feeds into the scholarly tendency to centre on high fashion – which sustains elitist historical narratives – despite a growing number of interdisciplinary inquiries into everyday dress and identity in fashion studies and allied fields such as cultural

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Figure I.1  Page from Petit Echo de la Mode, 25 March 1956 © Centre de Ressources du Petit Echo de la Mode – Leff Armor Communauté

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history, anthropology and sociology. Opening up French fashion history to include readymade dress, and positioning its consumers as players and agents, would advance a more inclusive and multilayered understanding of fashion.3 With this in mind, some commentators have identified and unpacked the mythologization of Paris fashion,4 going back to the designer Elizabeth Hawes’ depiction of the ‘French Legend’ in her 1938 account of the industry.5 More recent sociological enquiries question fashion’s symbolic and cultural production of value, which,

­Introductio

according to Yuniya Kawamura, has led to the ‘centralization of fashion hegemony in France.’6 Then how does ready-to-wear function within this construction? In Le Petit Echo de la Mode, for instance, it both challenged and worked to uphold it. What can the close study of these and other resources reveal about shifts in fashion, and their cultural implications? How can it open up French dress history to alternative narratives and, in the words of Michael Sheringham, ‘less familiar sightlines’ of Paris?7 This book seeks to detach and re-evaluate fashion and Paris as ideas and as reality, employing methods and theories from material and visual culture studies, art and design history, cultural sociology and cultural anthropology. Specifically, it traces the development of the readymade clothing industry between 1945 and 1968, and connects it to France’s wider project of post-war modernization and reconstruction, and to conceptions of national and gender identities, and modernity. In leading with readymade clothing, we can begin to address gaps in French fashion history – that concern everyday dress, and women’s lives – to grasp a fuller cultural picture. Visualized in image and felt on the body, clothing is a potent and pervasive feature of modernity. Through its relative accessibility, readymade dress, known widely as confection until the 1950s and subsequently prêt-à-porter, concerns a wide populace and collective notion of fashion. This is bolstered by the industry’s heightened growth and connection to manufacturing systems and technologies during the period explored here. Shifts in its development are therefore tied to France’s construction of modernity over the course of these twenty-odd years, which was informed by transitions, into new economic and industrial systems, decolonized and urbanized landscapes, and by its perceived loss of political and cultural hegemony following the war. Modernity also comprised contradictions, notably between modernization and tradition, and prosperity and tension, felt by the individual in an increasingly standardized, mass society and by women in their ambiguous status as French citizens, enfranchised only from 1944. Marshall Berman characterized modernity as ‘a mode of vital experience  – experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life’s possibilities and perils – that is shared by men and women all over the world today.’8 Throughout the post-war period, women and industry professionals keenly sensed paradoxes between possibility, agency, limitations and fears. Perhaps, for example, the above image from Le Petit Echo de la Mode presented a conflicted womanhood to readers? – respectable and bourgeois yet bold and out in the world. ‘Stalked by its double,’ or the ways it is represented in image, fashion and the fashioned body assume symbolisms.9 In studying the presentation of fashion as image – especially depictions of bodies, dress and space – and positioning it in relation to

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historical developments, this book explores how, for viewers, fashion negotiated the contradictions of modern identity. In parallel it highlights intersections between the construction of fashion and the production and dissemination of photographic image, as the technology behind the latter also developed. The mass media had grown so sophisticated it elicited commentary from philosophers such as Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard, who wrote of its complex signs systems and processes of mythmaking, which inflated meanings behind objects of consumer culture.10 The disconnect they described between modern subject and object connects to Henri Lefebvre’s depiction of post-war alienation resulting from industrialization and capitalism. Drawing on their ideas, this book’s five chapters trace a transition from a modern to a postmodern narrative, from the immediate years following the Second World War and in the Fourth Republic (1946–58), to the first decade of the Fifth Republic (1958–).

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Prêt-à-porter and post-war modernization

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French department stores had offered readymade garments increasingly since their appearance in the mid-nineteenth century. Nancy L. Green observed that from this period, the industry constantly reinvented itself to counter the increasing rationalization of production, which affected consumers’ poor associations with readymade dress in relation to clothing tailored to one individual’s body. As such, she interpreted the history of readymade production in France ‘as a struggle over the attribution of aura.’11 This somewhat explains the above Le Petit Echo de la Mode editorial: by association to Paris, a site readers knew to read as a fashion nucleus, image makers sought to reposition fashionability, or aura, around readymade clothing. Therefore this bias has longstanding roots, perhaps reinforced from 1910, when the couture and confection industries began to hold separate syndicate affiliations. This didn’t impede the growth of womenswear, as wholesale manufacturers, or confectionneurs, began to populate the design landscape, including the Société Parisienne de Confection (SPC) from 1917, who supplied department stores such as the Galeries Lafayette.12 By the 1930s about 25 per cent of French women dressed in confection, sold in the new low-cost prix unique shops such as Monoprix; and it was well represented in the 1937 ‘Panorama du vêtement en France’ of the Exposition internationale des arts et de l’industrie.13 The Second World War deterred and rerouted much of this commercial and industrial impetus. Most devastating was the loss of many Jewish enterprises, which constituted a large faction of clothing production, during the German

Occupation and Vichy government.14 Other professionals fled to the southern non-occupied zone, where they established new centres for production, and organized associations, such as Mode Côte d’Azur in Nice.15 In 1943, another group of manufacturers, the high-end Paris-based Maisons de couture en gros, to which Basta and Wébé belonged, was created. These developments restructured the post-war industry, away from fragmented and artisanal production, to a point where it is possible to begin to discern a clearer order of production levels, as was the case in other national clothing industries.16 The narrative shaped in this book begins here, and situates the clothing industry in France’s project of modernization – of which a main goal was the creation of a mass consumer economy – and, in the immediate post-war years, economic and political collapse. The industry reinvented itself as the French State reshaped its own image, when it was largely embroiled in colonial struggles and increasingly shed its peripheral territories. Therefore the development of the industry is bound up in shifting conceptions of modernity and Frenchness, and the country’s perceived loss of cultural and political hegemony. At this time, the womenswear syndicate repositioned itself as the Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin.17 Its president, Albert Lempereur, accompanied groups of manufacturers and other industry professionals on missions to the United States in the context of the European Recovery Program in the early 1950s, as the industry faced challenges in its aims to modernize, produce and export due to wartime losses. This pointed to a shift in mentalities concerning readymade dress, aided partly by manufacturers’ new interest in publicity and branding following these trips.18 The readymade industry – with its link to industrial manufacture technologies and new polished image – became singularly relevant in the context of the Trente Glorieuses, a period of post-war economic growth fuelled by the modernization and technological determinism espoused by those such as the  philosopher Jacques Ellul, the economist Jean Fourastié and Jean Monnet, in charge of postwar economic planning. This industry development occurred against the backdrop of vast changes in women’s lives and Paris’s physical landscape, characterized by urbanization, the demolition of old working-class areas and a push to the city’s periphery and new suburbs. France’s abrupt and broad modernization, however, engendered negative reactions from citizens, as Kristin Ross summarized: ­Introductio

The speed with which French society was transformed after the war from a rural, empire-oriented, Catholic country into a fully industrialized, decolonized, and urban one meant that the things modernization needed – educated middle managers, for instance, or affordable automobiles and other ‘mature’ consumer

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durables, or a set of social sciences that followed scientific, functionalist models, or a work force of ex-colonial laborers – burst onto a society that still cherished prewar outlooks with all of the force, excitement, disruption, and horror of the genuinely new.19

It is telling that some contemporary writing on French fashion exposed the postwar immobilisme, or resistance to change which Ross described, as the industry veered away from haute couture, a fixed feature of the country’s identity and patrimony. This is true even as confection of the 1940s and 1950s transitioned to designerled ‘prêt-à-porter de style’ in the early 1960s, which can be seen as another example of Green’s reinvention of fashion by the industry. Many narratives described the first as unpopular and imitative of couture, and the second as youthful, innovative and attractive.20 For authors such as Ingrid Brenninkmeyer this point also marks the shift between couture as a dominant creative model to prêt-à-porter, in view of fluctuating social currents. While ‘mass fashion’, as she argued, was relevant for active, professional women with more social freedoms,21 Claude Salvy’s text exhibited reticence vis à vis change, described in terms of manufacture and American-style advertising:

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

In our world that is hungry for speed and the never before seen, new princes that govern us, inventors, manufacturers and distributors have a terrifying motto: produce, consume, destroy … Where will it lead us? […] The day will come where coats and dresses will actually be produced on an assembly line, like bras and cardigans. They will be welded and no longer sewn.22

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It wasn’t simply the attachment of modern dress to consumer culture and advanced technologies and away from traditional concepts of craftsmanship that gave commentators cause for concern. It also paralleled new social contexts that furthered the country’s loss of control over its image, including, as noted, decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s, leading up to the student struggles and political upheaval of 1968. Even as Bruno du Roselle, of the Fédération française du vêtement féminin, recalled the 1960s ‘fashion crisis’ in his 1973 book, a product of increasing social and sexual freedoms, and subcultural movements, he was in fact describing the emergence of readyto-wear.23 That the industry stood for wider conduits of change makes it a powerful lens through which to explore shifts in women’s experience in relation to France’s modernization.

Female identities and representations

­Introductio

As noted, prêt-à-porter developed in post-war France as women became enfranchised and their professional options expanded. This advancement could seem out of step with government messaging endorsing their traditional roles within the patriarchal codes of the Fourth Republic and under Charles de Gaulle’s presidency from 1959 to 1969.24 Historians have argued that women’s enfranchisement was lip service, a governmental recompense for their Resistance participation, and a symbol of modernization, allowing France to align itself with other Western powers who had taken this step a generation earlier.25 In line with Ross’s ideas, this incongruity revealed itself in the reception of France’s material and visual culture, to which this book adds the growing pervasiveness of readymade dress in shops and in the burgeoning mass media. Through visual and object analysis, framed against interviews and other sources, it explores the construction of women’s modern identity, as they increasingly consumed readymade dress through these means, and negotiated divergent pulls and messages. Further, in questioning their experience of readymade dress, we can unpack the link between individual and expanse, or industrial and national contexts. As Cheryl Buckley and Hilary Fawcett have written, dress is a valuable tool with which to highlight the ‘political significance of our personal experiences.’26 The magazine is a conduit between the two, aiding in the visual analysis of representations, and women’s cultural reception of fashion. Responding to wider cultural and artistic currents, image makers and journalists instructed readers on viewing modernity, and deploying readymade dress to navigate the pace and demands of modern life. As historian Jacques Godechot remarked in 1966, the fashion press functions paradoxically as ‘a reflection of opinion, [that] contributes to shaping this opinion.’27 As such, it enables the reconstruction of the visual and contextual apparatus that shaped the way in which contemporaries saw images, particularly when read in light of period writing on imagery by thinkers such as Barthes and Baudrillard. The development of the post-war fashion media can be gleaned from the contemporary philosophical comment it garnered, from Colette Audry’s writing of Elle and the Eternel Féminin trope in Les Temps Modernes in 1952 to Barthes’s 1967 article in Marie-Claire, in which he articulated the heightened importance of fashion for women’s identity, the more they were surrounded by and reflected in the mass media.28 That the magazine’s significance was remarked on by commentators in the period focused on here, illustrates the degree to which it was itself a modern, post-war consumable. Several scholars have demonstrated the success of the post-war women’s press industry and its vital role in moulding

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 8

consumer identity.29 Women’s rights activist Evelyne Sullerot even linked magazines to the rising readymade fashion culture, writing in 1963, that ‘the feminine press is in part linked with department stores and Prisunic chains rather than with Haute Couture, is obvious.’30 Through physical handling, the reader became an active consumer, and participant in this modern culture. This included access to a range of spaces. As readymade production became normalized in fashion imagery, depictions of the city also shifted, reflecting the disorientation and excitement of post-war urban renewal and change. Models’ performativity within the city in imagery holds significance. They stood for public, professional terrain, where women’s mere presence was meaningful, and contested. At times these spatial representations communicated modernism’s grandiose statements, when, for instance, magazines such as Le Petit Echo de la Mode – deemed ‘a conduit bringing the mass consumer lifestyle to rural women’31 by Rebecca J. Pulju – sought to decentralize the clothing industry and promote the easy access of women everywhere in France to fashionable readymade clothing and to Paris. In analysing the symbolic construction of Paris, women and fashion, in view of actual changes to the city, clothing industry and women’s lives throughout the long post-war period, we can trace their wider experiences through to a postmodern shift. The oral histories of two French women born in the 1940s, Monique Naudeix and Claude Fauque, add embodied and experiential information to image analyses, and against collective ideas of a particular historical moment. As Linda Sandino noted, ‘memories evoked in interviews demonstrate the connections as well as the gaps between representation and experience.’32 I view their testimonies on the culture of ready-to-wear not as representative, but as examples from which to engage with the diverse range of women’s experience, which would have been further coloured by differences of class, race, region and religion. In privileging the individual narrative as well as its location within the historical context of the 1960s, this book illustrates, in the words of Raphael Samuel, ‘the variety of experience in any social group, and how each individual story draws on a common culture.’33 In inserting Naudeix and Fauque’s own words within it, I wish to underscore how women are agents in this and other historical narratives, not only acting in reaction to wider forces of politics and consumerism. This enables a more comprehensive understanding of women’s elusive and shifting status in the post-war period, characterized by various levels of veiled tension leading up to the emergence of a more clearly articulated French feminist movement in the early 1970s. The fashion and trade press serve as vital resources in that they conserve information about industry developments, clothing and players not recorded

­Introductio

elsewhere. So in addition to their use as analytical apparatuses of dress culture, they counter the dearth of archival documentation on French readymade clothing production, notably in relation to the period preceding the 1960s, and considerable gaps in museum clothing collections and brand archives. To situate its importance at the outset, the fashion magazine in the period between 1945 and 1965 is the subject of the first chapter: it introduces the book’s main themes – women, Paris and readymade dress – as constructions and realities in the press, a lens onto the ways in which ideas are constructed by the industry and interpreted by consumers. In this format, these three elements were reconceptualized within the framework of the everyday. The quotidian garnered considerable philosophical reflection in the post-war period, and this chapter draws on Henri Lefebvre’s writing in particular to investigate how it was also part of the industry’s process of identity building. Chapter  2 contextualizes the development of the readymade clothing industry in the recovering and industrializing economy of the Fourth Republic. It traces the internal discussion of the industry and notably that of the trade group Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, and considers this narrative in relation to an external dialogue with New York, and resulting branding methods concerning manufacturers within the Maisons de couture en gros. In questioning how the industry reshaped its identity, the chapter sheds light on France’s relationship to modernization and conceptions of cultural heritage and national identity. Also in the context of national modernization in the 1950s, Chapter 3 next explores how Elle reconceived fashion within industrial modernity through visual and textual mythologization. By evaluating representations in the context of period commentary, it connects women readers to wider currents of politics and modernity, as laid out in the previous chapter. It considers their gender and consumer identities alongside their relationship to dress, space and new constructions as presented by the magazine, cross-analysing Simone de Beauvoir’s writings on women with Barthes’s and Baudrillard’s ideas on modern consumer society. Chapter 4 positions us in a new international framework in 1960s’ France, a member of the European Economic Community, and shifts focus to postmodern production and promotion. It studies the industry’s new representation of itself as stylisme, composed of designer-led brands such as I.D. and Nale Junior, during a moment of increased prevalence of readymade production. The chapter studies these brands and other players who helped develop the industry, including designers Emmanuelle Khanh and Michèle Rosier, photographers such as Peter Knapp and consulting agencies and retailers. With the generalization of industrial aesthetics, prioritization of the creative hand, and its links to avant-garde image production, stylisme helped narrow the

9

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

gap between readymade and couture production. Chapter 5 also reflects on a postmodern shift, in exploring changes to the visualization of Paris and women in fashion imagery. As such, it extends Chapter  3’s treatment of modernism in terms of spatial construction. This is foregrounded in a discussion of urban housing constructions, one-time symbols of ‘progress’ that become objects of social critique. In turn, as opposed to 1950s’ women organizing space, models are increasingly portrayed as heterotopic, marginal and fragmented, seen through the lenses of Lefebvre, Baudrillard, David Harvey and Marc Augé. Their writings are analysed in the context of Chapter 4’s study of image dissemination as well as increased television spectatorship, which affected how fashion was viewed and experienced – and we end up in a city that no longer resembles the enclosed garden of 1956 Paris in Le Petit Echo de la Mode.

10

­  ­Accessing the everyday: 1 Prêt-à-porter, Paris and women in magazines, 1945–65 The first issue of French fashion and lifestyle weekly Elle, published in November 1945, effectively set the tone for the magazine’s successive publication. Its first photograph pictured a close-up view of a model, standing in almost full length, posed with one hand behind her jacket by couturier Lucien Lelong and the other on the iron railing of a balcony (Figure 1.1). This elevated position in Paris offered an iconic view of the Seine with one of the city’s bridges in the background. Her stance and direct eye contact with the camera engaged the reader in a dialogue, expanded on in text. The intimate relationship between magazine and reader was thus fundamental from the outset. Readers became conflated with the publication itself, ‘elle’: a universal ‘she,’ but more particularly, the elegant Parisian woman. The article’s summation of ‘new elegance,’ based on ‘choos[ing] what works for you’ instead of ‘blindly follow[ing] fashion,’ offered a noticeably novel tone and construction of fashionability based on an active and independent, yet still feminine woman.1 As such the magazine sought to break from the past and launch a post-war and modern dialogue; one that foreshadowed the ideological landscape of the 1950s, in its constant vacillation between new and old. A product of the post-war period, Elle’s development closely tied in with contemporary national issues and attitudes. It filled the place of middle-range Marie-Claire, which had been suspended after the war,2 and fell between glossy, expensive magazines such as Vogue, La Femme Chic, Femina and Album du Figaro, and mainly small-format feminine lifestyle magazines in the style of Je m’habille, Modes de Saison, Modes et Travaux, Modes de Paris, Femme et la Vie and Le Bonheur à la Maison.3 Fashion was featured in these latter magazines in one or severalpage editorial format, to purchase as patterns or mail-order garments, often accompanied with one or more pages of haute couture imagery. On similarly rough newsprint paper, Elle too featured stories, advice columns, recipes and reports. Yet a fresh tone set it apart in 1945. The above text clearly distinguished the present from a past moment: ‘For women the past few years was a sad age of uniformity. Long live femininity! Long live personality!’4 Fashion magazine

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Figure 1.1  Ensemble by Lucien Lelong. Elle, 21 November 1945 © ELLE FRANCE

12

language is commonly conceived around the notion of novelty, but here, set against the context of great national changes, notably the Liberation and women’s suffrage, language assumed compelling meaning. This new discourse began to penetrate the symbolic construction of fashion that had traditionally relied on the visual interchange between Paris, women and haute couture. From the early 1950s and into the 1960s, the feminine press, led by Elle, gradually steered its discussion towards readymade dress, featuring this production more

Accessing the Everyday

predominately than haute couture or clothing patterns. Editor-in-chief Hélène Lazareff created the magazine after spending the war period in the United States working for Harper’s Bazaar.5 During this time she would have observed the considerable advances in the American sportswear industry. Although Elle first photographed readymade garments in 1948, it and other magazines were forbidden from identifying their manufacturers.6 These regulations changed around 1950, at which point Elle featured rare readymade editorials with named makers. This development was due largely to the work of fashion editor Annie Rivemale and her assistant Claude Brouet, who recalled her expansion of the readymade clothing division on her arrival in 1953: ‘I was very passionate. […] I started the prêt-à-porter section in Elle. […] In the beginning I had a small file with some sketches of the best garments then afterwards it became a wardrobe.’7 Although French Vogue, first published in 1920, stood for older ideals of elite fashion, it created a regular section on readymade dress in 1952. Another established fashion periodical, Jardin des Modes, had already taken this step in 1951.8 From about 1954 the pages of the press presented it to a perceptibly greater extent, which coincided with the arrival of a group of women in the fashion press: Edmonde Charles-Roux became editor of Vogue in 1954, and Maimé Arnodin shaped Jardin des Modes between 1951 and 1958, along with its future editor Marie-José Lépicard from 1957. Brouet, who became Elle’s fashion editor in 1965, preferred to feature readymade production because although couture ‘could be very beautiful, ideas that were very new and adaptable to the life of everyone weren’t coming from there.’9 Female professionalism in the press can be seen to have direct ties to the presentation of more practical, accessible garments. This new content, as well as the press’s informative and less autocratic relationship to readers in the mid-1950s, constituted ‘a fundamental transformation of its relationship to fashion,’ according to Stéphane Wargnier.10 By the late 1950s, magazines were tools of mass visual communication that disseminated a cohesive fashion message to shape collective consumer identity.11 Their new direction accompanied the work of manufacturers who, from the early 1950s, took steps to modernize and improve production and the image of the industry, as the following chapter discusses. Modernity was a fraught concept in post-war France, in the throes of modernization – of its design industry and cityscapes, and in the lives of its newly enfranchised women citizens. The press’s presentation of readymade clothing reflected this tension, as illustrated by ‘Paris Promenade,’ a 1961 Elle editorial. Text captured the nostalgic mood of William Connors’s photographs of models, explaining, ‘She likes to stroll in the Paris of the past and “browse” the antiques.’12 Photography’s rise in French fashion magazines coincided with postwar renovations of the city, giving meaning to Susan Sontag’s observation that ‘a

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 14

device is available to record what is disappearing.’13 The presentation of industrially produced readymade clothing in the press seemed to spur the need for such visual documentation of ‘Paris of the past.’14 Yet it was also visualized in ways that spoke to the changes taking place. For, in contrast to the model pictured in the upper right section of the page who peered at the antique glasses within a shop, the image at the bottom left depicted a woman with an outward gaze stepping into the street (Figure  1.2). This model walked away from the relics of French design, symbolized by porcelain tableware in the shop window; she looked to the present and not the past, to the freedom offered by the street and not the encapsulation of the interior, or photography studio. But she did not leave Paris, rather, her pink shantung shirtdress, or ‘robe chemisier parisienne’15 marked her as unquestionably Parisian. From the late 1950s, the fashion press abounded in images of shirtdresses, unfitted dresses typically with button closure to resemble a tailored blouse. Here, the author described the garment as ‘classique,’ but pointed out its novelty, made to look like a separate blouse and skirt with the addition of a gilt chain. Likewise, the dress, woman, automobile and the blurred presence of a hurried passer-by in the photograph became expressions of urban modernity when pictured against the architecture of nineteenth-century Paris. This chapter explores the relationship of Paris, women and readymade dress as images and constructions in Elle and Vogue, in the context of modernization and changes in women’s lives. It considers the twenty years following women’s suffrage, and traces shifts in imagery as seen, for example, between Figure 1.1, an image of a protected woman above the iconic city, and Figure 1.2, where she is situated in the midst of action. That these shifts took place in tandem with the growth of photography in French fashion magazines is significant. Alongside its main aims, this chapter traces developments in image technology, from illustrations and photography to moving imagery and relates the production of image to the construction of fashion and ways of seeing. The first section draws on symbolic production theories to establish how readymade dress, epitome of practical clothing for the ‘everyday,’ figured into the elite spaces of magazines’ pages in the decade following 1945 and those of Vogue in particular, in relation to Paris’s hegemonic fashion position. During the 1950s, Henri Lefebvre conceived the second volume of his Critique de la vie quotidienne, published in 1961, which identified the quotidian as a concern of the post-war period, ‘an age such as ours when so many things are changing, but not all and not all in equal measure.’16 Namely, Lefebvre found the everyday to be underdeveloped in relation to industrial production and technology. Disconnected from historicity and the world’s natural cycles amid rapid modernization and capitalism, he contended that everyday life had turned into a place of sheer consumption. As

Figure 1.2  Dress sold at Réal. Photograph by William Connors, Elle, 21 April 1961 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE

Accessing the Everyday

Kristen Ross has underlined, Lefebvre sought to ‘expose’ and critique the quotidian to counter the alienation experienced by individuals in the modern world.17 He also advocated photography for its capability of locating the everyday.18 In connection to these ideas, this chapter considers how readymade dress as image, and the new discourses it drew on, likewise exposed the everyday in ways that both embraced and renounced modernity. Its second section examines various ways Paris was visualized in photographs in the mid-1950s that spoke

15

to the modernization of the industry and city, and to modernism in imagery. It considers bodies that inhabited spaces, and magazines’ discourse of narrative and movement. Lefebvre shared his Marxist critique of capitalism and consumer society with the revolutionary group of artists, intellectuals and political theorists who composed the Situationist International from the late 1950s. They counted among the period’s creative thinkers who endeavoured to interweave artistic production and individual creativity in everyday life and urban interaction. In view of these cultural discourses and environment, section three carries this chapter into the 1960s and explores the intersection of movement, moving image and reality in the press, as the notions of access and autonomy became more of a reality and a problem for French women.

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Fashion and Paris

16

­aris had long been associated with luxury trades, sumptuous clothing P production and, from the mid-nineteenth century, haute couture. The connection of Paris with fashion was so intrinsic that the cover of the first issue of Vogue published after the Liberation in winter 1945–6 by Simbarakiva pictured an unpopulated, sunny Paris scene, with no allusion to dress. Readers would have nonetheless recognized that well-known view of the city as the Place de la Concorde, a site associated with monuments of French history, government, tourism, as well as fashion, for the city’s main luxury shops were located just north of this square. They might not have been aware, however, that this cover image had been intended for the September 1939 issue of the magazine, which was never published.19 According to then editor Michel de Brunhoff’s assistant Léone Friedrich, ‘All importance was given to blue skies, and to white clouds, and the profile of the square below.’20 The secondary focus placed on the city alluded to its imminent loss, as well as that of the industry, during the German Occupation. Thus, the cover image served to underline the city’s role as a fashion centre and, on another level, showed how this centralization was interwoven in wider national issues. Re-contextualized in 1945, the cover set the tone for the issue, which attempted to come to terms with the nation’s recent past, relearn its spaces and reclaim its place in fashion. As Vogue’s winter 1946 issue demonstrated, the post-war press would continue to present fashion through the lens of Paris. Take one editorial that interspersed illustrations by René Bouët-Williaumez of women wearing haute

Figure 1.3  Garments by Pierre Balmain, Alix Grès and Lucien Lelong. Illustration by René BouëtWilliaumez, Vogue Paris, Winter 1946 © Vogue Paris

Accessing the Everyday

couture garments with fragments of Parisian monuments and other notable buildings, transferring their historical weight and auratic value to the clothing, and body underneath (Figure 1.3). The city thus remained the symbolic centre in the ‘geography of fashion,’ as Valerie Steele writes, based on its ‘knowledgeable fashion performers and spectators’ or ability to stage fashion.21 Pierre Bourdieu similarly identifies Paris as a high reference point of ‘reified social space,’ which he defines as a social space, or social groupings of people, that is ‘physically realized or objectified.’22 In his theory, reified Paris possesses a majority of capital due to the close ratio of the distribution of agents and goods (Steele’s ‘performers’) in the field of fashion’s social space. Magazines visualized this centralization; as such they worked on a second level and, for Bourdieu, took part in the symbolic production of fashion.23 In his ‘ideology of creation,’ Bourdieu defines symbolic production as ‘the production of the value of the work or, which amounts to the

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 18

same thing, of belief in the value of the work.’24 In working to facilitate ‘belief’ in the work of art, magazines are among cultural ‘institutions or consecration,’25 ideas which Agnès Rocamora cemented in relation to the French fashion press in her ‘fashion media discourse.’26 They are also useful in understanding how magazines shaped the concurrent belief in Paris’s fashion centrality, and fashion as integral to accessing Paris and its exclusive spaces. And this construction formed a basis of how, through image, magazines instructed readers on how to view and experience fashion. In the 1940s and 1950s, their mythologization of Paris fashion relied on the juxtaposition of haute couture and privileged spaces such as Paris’s bridges, squares and monuments, as seen in Figures  1.1 and 1.3, so that, as Rocamora notes, ‘the Parisian fashion geography is often narrowed down to its front region, its luxurious side.’27 The pairing of garments with iconic monuments and spaces in imagery also served to equate the clothing with a Parisian timelessness and value. According to Lefebvre, anything that aspires to having ‘prestige or influence’ connects to monuments ‘so as to exploit their age-old authority.’28 They functioned as symbols that associated readers to history, and defined their bourgeois position in the ‘social text,’ or the ways Lefebvre’s symbolisms were experienced in everyday life.29 Magazines of diverse price and audience ranges drew on Paris’s authority to augment the value of their contents. The April 1951 issue of Je m’habille, for example, printed illustrations of models wearing clothing that could be ordered from the magazine, against images of Paris. In black and white, the latter resembled the visuality of the photographs that were slowly inserted in this publication from late 1949. Although the illustrations were not sized to scale and models towered over their urban setting, the imagery grounded fashion fantasy in a new journalistic realism. This example also shows how Paris’s centrality was dispersed to lower levels of clothing production, including more accessible mail-order clothing. Labelled here and in other publications as ‘tout prêt’ (all ready), it represented an early form of readymade dress in magazines, and its associated values of fast purchase and accessibility. This foreshadowed the coming decade when readymade clothing and photographs increasingly featured in the fashion press. This value shift was also the premise of Vogue’s regularly occurring prêt-àporter section between 1952 and 1955, ‘Tout Fait, Tout Prêt à Porter’ (All Ready, All Ready to Wear), as its title suggests. Still, in this and other cases, magazines borrowed such traditional urban imagery in their goal to sanction this production and appeal to readers.30 This smooth transition was also inevitably due to the use of the same photographers for both types of editorials. Take the case of

Robert Randall who, in addition to Jacques Boucher and, from 1954, Sante Forlano, was one of the main photographers for ‘Tout Fait.’31 In one image from October 1952, an elegant parisienne in a coat sold by the retailer Franck et Fils crossed the Place de la Concorde with a cool, averted gaze (Figure 1.4). Randall had used very similar visual conceits in his photographs in Vogue’s March 1952 issue showcasing models in tweed coats and suits in haute couture in typically iconic spaces, placing them variously on a bridge next to the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and in large Parisian squares (including the Place de la Concorde). The Parisian woman was another constant. In her ‘fashion media discourse,’ Rocamora shows how the contemporary fashion press regularly uses tropes such as the figure of the parisienne to foster ‘the construction of Paris as fashion center and capital.’32 Accordingly, she is imbued with Paris’s magic, and place and figure reinforce one another. As for Bouët-Williaumez’s 1946

Accessing the Everyday

Figure  1.4  Coat sold at Franck et Fils. Photograph by Robert Randall, Vogue Paris, October 1952 © Vogue Paris

19

illustrations, with women and monument visualized as singular fragments, this conflation was perhaps easy for readers to make. The trope of the parisienne continued to function in the 1950s with the addition of readymade dress. Through its use of established visual devices, this imagery subtly challenged the hegemonic position of Paris haute couture. Here, as Grant McCracken has shown, with the help of agents such as fashion journalists, ‘meaning’ is ‘shifted from the culturally constituted world to the consumer good.’33 The myth of Paris and the auratic values of its spaces and monuments transfer to garments. McCracken also contends that the fashion system transfers and ‘invents new cultural meanings.’34 Thus, with the application of an accessible and readily available (‘tout fait’) garment, Figure 1.4 is reinvested with meaning, and values linked to readymade dress, that transformed an elite parisienne into an active participant in a fast-paced society. Readymade production was the vehicle that led to a new dialogue in the press, which already reflected social changes afoot. Yet familiar imagery welcomed modernity in a reassuring way. Randall’s editorial illustrated how photographs, as Julian Stallabrass has written, ‘act as palimpsests of the present and many pasts.’35 Dress was a palimpsest itself, linked simultaneously to discourses associated to tradition and modernity, and developed alongside city and image.

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

­Modernization and movement

20

The Paris visualized by magazines, Lefebvre’s city of monuments, somewhat disappeared as they increasingly photographed readymade production in the 1950s. New urban representations were illustrated in a 1956 issue of Elle in an article that pictured readymade dress by couture en gros manufacturers, high-end garments that magazines almost exclusively presented in the 1950s, as Chapter 2 discusses. In the article, Claude Brouet described a shift in the fashion industry in which she explicitly positioned readymade production as the catalyst: ‘Bravo la confection française! The bet is won. Won by the young manufacturers of “Prêt à Porter” who rescued French confection from its routine.’36 The accompanying photograph by Lionel Kazan presented model Simone d’Aillencourt in a coat by Albert Lempereur, president of the Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, the main readymade clothing trade organization and a manufacturer who worked to improve the image of confection, as Brouet’s text implied. Kazan’s model stood in front

of blurred horizontal lines that represented the frenzied mass-populated city (Figure 1.5). Martin Harrison has traced the use of blur in fashion photography to the 1945 publication Ballet, which comprised photographs of several ballet companies by Alexey Brodovitch, art director of Harper’s Bazaar. Harrison noted ‘his use of blur to suggest motion addressed the spirit rather than the letter of ballet: the primacy of emotional qualities, of fluidity and spontaneity.’37 In

Accessing the Everyday

Figure  1.5  Coat by Albert Lempereur. Photograph by Lionel Kazan, Elle, 1  October 1956 © Lionel Kazan/ELLE FRANCE

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 22

1956, Elle’s deployment of ‘blur’ linked to this growing convention in fashion photography, and evoked urban speed, as well as the spontaneous or momentary element of time. Images in the fashion press used ‘realistic’ photographic techniques such as these to depict the changing city that from the 1950s was characterized by a new energy after its wartime occupation. The growth of mass motorized transport was a tangible reminder of urbanity. From the mid-1950s, new traffic lanes and curb parking appeared at the expense of Paris’s trees, pavements and, according to many, tranquillity.38 Lefebvre noted this shift of symbols, from monuments to automobiles, remarking in 1961, ‘Now the city is full to bursting with cars.’39 He was not alone in this observation: ten years earlier in 1951, French composer, broadcaster and acoustician Pierre Schaeffer had characterized noise ‘as one of the banes of modern life,’ largely a result of ‘mechanic progress.’40 Of the mass of modern sounds, he described ‘horns in a traffic jam’ as particularly irritating.41 The blur in imagery consolidated the speed, noise and excitement of the modern city, while perhaps mitigating fears and frustrations it generated. As such, concerns over rapid modernization were played out in the fashion press in terms of visual and textual representations of the city and readymade dress, both implicated in national industrial projects. Figure  1.5 captured well the electric push to modernize both industry and city and presented fashion that would parallel and keep up with the speed of the changing city. Such photographs ‘that achieve a truly dynamic movement,’ as Christine Moneera Laennec has argued in relation to late 1920s and 1930s fashion photography, ‘work in such a way as to evoke various mechanized processes, not the least of which was the mass production and commercialism that by this time had become central to the fashion industry.’42 It is telling that similar visual representations can also be ascribed to French photography in the 1950s, as France’s industry trailed behind that of other industrialized nations such as the United States, as the following chapter explores further. These photographs reflected the industrial production behind readymade dress, and defined it as a component of a rapidly modernizing France. The connection between confection and mechanized processes was clearly reinforced by the next set of images in this spread under the heading ‘Les robes qui démarrent’ (dresses that start up). One page pictured six images of models stacked diagonally surrounded by rows of wheels in perfect precision (Plate 2). Clothing and women were conflated with the automobile, the period symbol for urban speed and modernity, and the consumer object that most clearly referenced industrialized assembly-line production.

Accessing the Everyday

Side by side, dress and cars became shiny, streamlined and magical goods. This imagery coincided with Roland Barthes’s essay, ‘The New Citroën,’ in which he characterized the Citroën DS, which appeared in 1955, as a ‘magical’ ‘superlative object.’43 Barthes described the cars as motionless, just as stiff clothing contained the immobile models. Rather than invoking their speed or power he highlighted their ‘spiritual and object-like’ qualities in his text on the emerging culture of consumption and its sophisticated communications mechanism that invested supernatural meaning into products.44 His demystification project can be likened to Lefebvre’s goal of uncovering reality in the everyday.45 To illustrate the aggrandizing effects of publicity, Barthes portrayed the automobile as a display object: ‘In the exhibition halls, the car on show is explored with an intense, amorous studiousness: it is the great tactile phase of discovery, the moment when visual wonder is about to receive the reasoned assault of touch (for touch is the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight, which is the most magical).’46 Elle’s pages displayed a similar impenetrability: in their enclosed garments, models could not move, and wheels alone could not start (démarrer). The imagery worked against Elle’s underlying message of ready-to-wear’s newness and the change it triggered. Accordingly, presupposing a transition from homesewn or dressmaker-made clothing to confection, text instructed women readers to adapt, to renew their traditional feminine ‘routine’ (and wardrobe) or get left behind. Further, with the model’s legs cropped out of the frame in Figure 1.5, the reader could not tell if she was caught in mid-step, moving with the times, or caught off-guard, braking: a literal representation of post-war immobilisme. Kristen Ross has observed that automobile advertising in 1950s France ‘reveals a discourse built around freezing time in the form of reconciling past and future, the old ways and the new.’47 She ascribes this to France’s reception of modernization, as ‘destructive, obliterating a well-developed artisanal culture.’48 This hybrid visualization can also be applied to that of French readymade dress, which was conceived in terms of modernization as Brouet’s aforementioned text implied. In contrast, the model’s grey-brown wool coat by Lempereur adhered to the fashionable silhouette as outlined in the haute couture season. Along with other couture en gros manufacturers such as Wébé and Basta, he held on to older ideals of femininity based on elegance and luxury in his goal to promote a national and modern product. Elle, too, in its promotion of the industry, emphasized both flux and stasis. Although the women in Plate 2 were given wheels, the accoutrements to ‘start,’ the reader knew that they would remain stilted. They remained, like their shiny wheel props, objectified models. Similarly, the model in Figure 1.5 seemed to be caught between two worlds: out of step and unbalanced in her diagonal slant that sat uncomfortably amid horizontals. Just as Laennec remarked on the

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underlying tension seen in earlier images, it was unclear whether the model would be able to harness this modern, urban power or if she would tip over. A photograph by Willy Ronis in the October 1958 issue of Vogue similarly used the blurred visualization of cars as a backdrop for d’Aillencourt, here wearing an oatmeal-coloured cotton gabardine raincoat with wool lining by Fouks, a manufacturer specializing in outerwear (Figure 1.6). As above, she was plunged into the exciting modern city, yet was not physically affected by the

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Figure 1.6  Coat by Fouks. Photograph by Willy Ronis, Vogue Paris, October 1958 © Ministère de la Culture/Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

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action behind her. She stood still and looked directly at the camera in a pose that at once followed the motion of the times, represented by the hood of the automobile, whose lines the slant of her arms and umbrella echoed, yet stood firmly on old ground. This was a fissure in an otherwise flawless image of modernism, with its streamlined and sporty subject. The model served as a barrier between shelter and the rapid pace of modern life. Existing outside of the blur, which immobilized the city, she accessed the leftover, ‘residual’ parts of the everyday, as described by Lefebvre.49 His thinking was grounded in the idea that the everyday was dualistic, and encompassed both activity and product, and what is leftover. Ronis joined other French photographers who sought to capture the elusive yet familiar everyday in a changing post-war Paris.50 As a contributor to Life, Point de Vue, Regards, and, from its establishment in 1946, a member of the humanist photography agency Rapho with Brassaï, Robert Doisneau and Vogue contributor Sabine Weiss, Ronis was largely informed by photojournalism, as well as the flexibility afforded by new equipment. Through a technique that he described in 1951 as ‘chasse aux images’, Ronis used ‘his camera in the aim of catching the fleeting aspects of the external world.’51 Aided by his 35-mm Foca that allowed for photography ‘sur le vif,’ Ronis sometimes employed reportage techniques to achieve high graphic energy such as blurred motion, informal framing and closeups, that resulted in, as for Figures 1.5 and 1.6, a duality, between stillness and speed. Along with others such as Weiss, Frank Horvat and Henry Clarke, Ronis fostered the fusion of the developing fields of photojournalism and fashion photography. This meant that in the pages of the fashion press, the everyday served as a means of access to the city. The blur images attempted to capture the residual but also carve out the individual, to separate woman from the confusion of the city and from its mass population. In parallel, journalists interwove the notion of individuality in text to offset the standardization of readymade production, one of its largest drawbacks for consumers. For example, in Brouet’s above-referenced 1956 text, she exalted individual French women, whose ‘irregularities make the charm of our people’ but complicated the work of ‘mass-produced pattern cutters.’52 As such, she attributed values to French women as a measure of industrial strengths and weaknesses. The contemporary problem of urbanization added meaning to her text, which implied that women were more apt than ever to feel lost in large crowds. Brouet presented the solution in her description of the new increased size range of French confection, which would emulate the individual fit of made-to-measure garments. Her overall message thus permitted consumers to exist in the modern mass city whilst retaining the singularity attached to couture.

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 26

Protected from the modern city and ‘framed’ within the magazine page, Ronis’s model illustrates Hilary Radner’s idea of photographic containment in that she is ‘carefully posed for the camera, immobile, her body fully and conspicuously displayed, captured in its entirety;’ ‘triply framed by the page and then within the page itself.’53 Containment can be viewed here as a symbolic shield from modernity for women and the industry. The hesitant and backward-looking aspects of the above set of images corresponded to collective fears of modernity, immobilisme, as well as women’s ambiguous national position in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was as Claire Duchen pointed out: ‘women – who only ever appear in the Civil Code as wives, never as autonomous beings – are treated in an inconsistent and capricious way, as either dependent or responsible, seemingly at random.’54 Their status as second-class citizens with unequal rights contrasted starkly with rhetoric that endorsed modernization in urban planning, technology and fashion. Women may have acutely sensed this disconnection between reality and magazine text and imagery during the late 1950s, in view of the fact that no legislation for their rights had passed since they had been given the vote. From this point, alongside growing expressions of discontent seen in women’s literature and groups and, in the mid-1960s, legislation, the fashion press displayed a heightened interest in subjectivity, narrative and movement. One strand of ‘contained’ imagery can be characterized by the application of narrative, portraying women as actors but in staged scenarios that negated the reality they attempted to express. In parallel, magazines presented articles that featured ‘real’ users who performed their everyday activities.55 From its inception, Elle included photographs of the city streets, in working-class and wealthy quarters to give readers a wider and truer image of the city, to highlight not only its elite and cultural side, as did many magazines such as Vogue, but also provide solutions to difficult aspects, such as high costs of living and cold weather. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, the gap between staged and ‘real’ street scene narrowed in this and other publications as photographers drew from documentary photography in terms of graphic presentation and quotidian content. Although, as above, women were pictured as actors in accepted feminine activities, they were increasingly shown as multifarious. For example, the August 1957 issue of Vogue featured a spread that highlighted the lives of two real women, photographed by Sabine Weiss. The documentation of actual people (albeit those who belonged to the upper echelons of Paris society) in their daily lives, spoke to magazines’ interweaving elite and everyday discourses in their promotion of readymade clothing. The clothing presented, by 1950s brands such as Chloé and the couture readymade label Givenchy-Université, sold in the high-end boutiques Henry à la Pensée and Marie Martine, would not have been accessible to a wide audience. However, focus on

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the space of everyday Paris served to reposition fashion as informal and practical, to serve the needs of an active woman. According to the text, one model had chosen to wear knitted and other practical readymade garments ‘that correspond to her professional life.’56 A surgical assistant who enjoyed art, she epitomized the diverse femininity that Vogue attempted to construct. Models’ daily activities, pictured in a grid-like pattern, took them from interior, in homes and shops, to exterior spaces. Weiss employed the street as a base for the network of activities that formed the feminine domain. The street was Lefebvre’s residual zone connecting all pastimes and places that make up the quotidian. He also positioned the street as poised between public and private spheres, and considered it ‘a place of passage, of interaction, of movement and communication […] the reflection of the things it links together, something with more life in it than those things themselves. It becomes the microcosm of modern life.’57 Weiss’s series of images conveyed this duality, between action and banality, and visualized the street as the place of Lefebvre’s passage, from interior to exterior and from the mundane to the lived. Veiled by mundanity, her street also contained movement and life, just as for Lefebvre, it is where ‘the life of the large industrial city is at its most original and authentic.’58 Increasingly, the street as connector paved the way for images that use the street not only as setting, but as a signifying pictorial element. These images documented women’s existence in the everyday and non-iconic city, as opposed to their exhibition and containment. Such photographs of French readymade dress fall under ‘outside fashion,’ as Martin Harrison describes a genre of fashion photography that evolved in post-war New York and coincided with the declining influence of the European couture houses and the rise of the readymade market.59 This photographic mode is characterized by the move from studio and domestic mise-en-scène to street photography. It brought about an emphasis on movement, Harrison argues, and presented a new feminine ideal grounded in activity as opposed to a ‘passive’ contained woman.60 Through a focus on their movement in Lefebvre’s place of passage, in these pages women carve out a space for themselves in the city, armed with, as Rebecca Arnold has asserted in relation to New York of the 1930s and 1940s, ‘a particular sense of urban identity, demonstrated by a way of moving through the streets, and taking possession of surrounding space.’61 In parallel to women’s creative agency in fashion’s fabrication in the above Elle spread, the model, in Radner’s words, becomes ‘a significant author in fashion discourse’ and ‘agent in the production of the fashion spectacle.’62 By association and through the activity of reading and handling the magazine’s pages, readers themselves assumed an active value attached to urban movement.

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Women’s agency implied by their freedom of movement was echoed in magazines’ texts that positioned the fashionable woman as architect of her selfpresentation. Journalists promoted the garments as tools in women’s active styling – a clear departure from couturiers’ mandates. It thus corresponded to the 1950s trope of the busy yet efficient woman in French fashion imagery, in the context of growing female professionalism, as Chapter  3 discusses. This could be observed as late as a 1960 issue of Elle that included an editorial titled ‘Pressée mais organisée’ (Rushed by organized). The accompanying images by William Connors presented hurried women as they walked purposefully through the city’s spaces: a café, out of a telephone booth, in an office and next to the subway. Interspersed among the larger photographs in the articles were illustrations of clothing coordinated and laid out. Two examples superimposed clothing, accessories and mathematical tools over recognizable maps of central and outer Paris (Figure 1.7). This clearly equated readymade clothing with women’s wider and more rapid movement across the growing city. Coupled with the discourse of fast-paced lifestyles, this was an essential component in the new construction of fashionability, which presented a resourceful woman who efficiently moved between professional and domestic spheres. In one image, a model is caught in mid-step against the blurred visualization of an automobile, that, in turn, accentuated the speed of her movement (Figure 1.8). Impeccably dressed in a camelhair suit by Ulrique, whose boxy jacket and flared skirt allowed free use of her arms and legs, the model relied on her movement to be attractive, creative and productive. Readymade clothing was equally active in this presentation. Her suit, described in the text as ‘tailleur-va-partout’ (suit that goes everywhere) would soon take her out of the picture frame. This image represented the ‘whole’ of the previously seen parts, in terms of the model’s corporal presence. As such it attaches to conceptions of modernism, described as, in the words of David Harvey, a ‘unified representation of the world, […] a totality full of connections and differentiations.’63 In its entirety, Figure 1.8 implied the documentation of a purposeful and ‘lived’ existence. This movement in turn became the ‘plot’ of the image, signalling the activities of the model’s busy lifestyle. They clearly departed from still, posed models in visualizing women in full movement, walking purposefully yet demurely, as if there was no photographer who blocked their path. Radner explains the function of models’ displacement: She is captured only momentarily by the camera. She is an image in flight that defies stasis. The image is her ‘trace’ – it cannot represent ‘her’ as such. The formal

Figure 1.7  Photographs by William Connors, Elle, 14 October 1960 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE

The model became the trace, or the blurred movement of urban speed, as described above. Through her movement, Radner contends that the model broke from her role as representation to visualize her agency. Here, however, the model still seemed to act out rather than actualize it. Women’s agency,

Accessing the Everyday

construction of space enhances the visual impression that the model’s place is elsewhere, beyond the gaze of the camera.64

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Figure 1.8  Suit by Ulrique. Photograph by William Connors, Elle, 14 October 1960 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE

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productivity and modernity implied in these images were fraught with contradiction in post-war France. Imagery of women in hesitant or exaggerated movement concealed their ambiguous reality. Like the notion of modernism’s totality, the perfect ‘complete’ picture was a false one. Incomplete pictures, as the following section discusses, hint at a postmodern shift, suggesting that the gap between image and reality narrowed.

Subjectivity and filmic spreads

Accessing the Everyday

From the mid-1950s, ‘reality’ in fashion imagery, as argued above, was constructed by narrative and everyday Paris, bolstered by editorials that presented ‘real’ women. New means of visualizing the city, exemplified by the photojournalistic techniques of Ronis and others, captured its urban speed. These images that visualized the fragmentary moments of everyday time through blurred figures and informal cropping resonated with magazines’ interest in realism and accessible readymade dress. Such imagery also illustrated the trace of moving image technology in still fashion photography. Certain imagemakers expressly intersected the two technologies. Peter Knapp had become Elle’s artistic director in 1959. Recalling his work in the 1960s, he stated, ‘Like many others, I was fascinated by repetition and decomposition of movements. I often wanted to show the entire contact sheet as a result.’65 Other editorials employed his creative method of extracting stills from motion film to capture movement and reality. A 1960 example showcased women in clothing from the inexpensive chain store Prisunic, in the active yet banal acts of walking on sidewalks, crossing the street, leaving the market and playing croquet. Text described the scenes as ‘the latest film by Prisunic: “Fashion for the summer.”’66 Knapp instructed the photographer Guy Arsac, who had worked as a cameraman, to turn the camera to have a vertical frame of the image. He recently explained how, as still cameras didn’t have a film advance motor, a model would typically have to repeat the same movement in the same place several times. Whereas in this photo shoot, according to Knapp, ‘The model could cross the street in five seconds, [and] I had 120 images. So the work wasn’t to take a photo but to choose the best shot from a large number of images.’67 One page clearly visualized the process of image recording, in presenting two photographs of the same model, Nicole de Lamargé, in sequential moments, her quick movement enhanced by that of the blurred passers-by behind her (Figure 1.9). This was reinforced by the 35-mm film roll on the top border of this and every page, which also instructed viewers on how to look, and receive the onlooker’s gaze. In reading, they might have imagined themselves filmed as one of the models walking on the streets of Paris. Like the above 1940s illustrations of models against monuments, this was another means of readers’ spatial access yet, informed by new practices of looking in the context of increased television viewing in France of the 1960s, readers may have conflated moving imagery and heightened realism. Likewise, Brouet recalled this shoot and connected movement, reality and readymade dress: ‘One time I remember that Peter Knapp

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Figure  1.9  Suit sold at Prisunic. Photograph by Guy Arsac, Elle, 8  April 1960 © production Prisunic, Guy Arsac/ELLE FRANCE

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said that we were going to make a film […] To have the girl in the process of crossing the street. […] we went as far as that, to make a film rather than photos to really show how it was in life.’68 Moving imagery thus influenced photographers such as Knapp, Connors, William Klein and Fouli Elia, who sought to express reality, between fleeting and extended action, the residual moments of everyday time. Knapp also fostered this filmic visualization through page layout, as did his successor as art director Roman

Accessing the Everyday

Cieslewicz. Take Connors’s above-mentioned 1961 editorial (Figure  1.2), which distinguished itself both from traditional full-page spreads in fashion magazines and those that showcased women posed against the backdrop of the iconic and beautiful city, seen, for instance, in Randall’s 1952 photograph (Figure 1.4). Instead, Connors seemed more interested in interactions between average women and city spaces. The image was cropped to be long and narrow, seemingly interrupted by a text panel and the start of another paragraph that continued onto the next page. This filmic layout, marked by intermittent, continuous imagery, presented elements of the city to the viewer as though cropped from a larger picture, moments of a longer period. The editorial drew on visual techniques of Nouvelle Vague cinema, at its height in the early 1960s, in its depiction of fragmentary time and everyday reality.69 Readymade dress was appropriate in this spread, which showed the fashion of glamorous women in their daily lives. They were on display but not posed as fashion models, just as film directors sought ‘naturalism’ over ‘arranged’ visual compositions. This was the basic premise of this cinema, signalled earlier in Alexandre Astruc’s 1948 essay that predicted of the age of the ‘camera-stylo.’ That is, Astruc envisaged a cinematic form that resembled a language rather than a spectacle, forgoing ‘the image for its own sake, from the immediate and concrete demands of the narrative, to become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written language.’70 Many French directors applied these ideas, which included the use of non-professional actors and the scenario-dispositif over pre-established scripts. For instance, in Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Agnès Varda included a sequence in a café with simultaneous conversations of secondary characters and extras in her goal to document reality, while also capturing Lefebvre’s residual everyday. Fashion images that were cropped snapshots of everyday life also inadvertently employed Astruc’s concepts. A double-page spread by Jo Francki in the August 1966 issue of Jardin des Modes collaged together four different images of the same model, visualizing the everyday acts of reading a newspaper, walking and looking around the city (Figure  1.10). This layout evoked the simultaneous, immersive quality of everyday life, remarked also in Varda’s café scene, where secondary, ambient noise took attention and importance away from the plot’s central action and players. Like the cinema’s abstract plotlines, photographs such as these by Francki, Arsac and Connors hinted at a narrative. The imagery, as Charlotte Cotton described cinematic photography, triggered readers’ collective unconscious and imagination, so that ‘meaning is reliant on investing the image with our own trains of narrative and psychological thought.’71 Through the input of the reader in Figure  1.2, for

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Figure 1.10 (above and opposite)  Garments by Paulette Maïer and Timwear, Georges Rech and Nale Junior (left to right). Photographs by Jo Francki, Jardin des Modes, August 1966

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instance, a narrative had the potential to unfold, one that probed the psychological state of its female subject. This interest in subjectivity differed from 1950s narratives distinguished by containment, forced action and totality. Albeit ambiguous, the narrative began by negotiating her access to the city, her step into the street made easier by the front inverted pleat of her readymade shirtdress, ‘to walk easily.’72 Through filmic viewing and in complicity with the model – the universal elle – readers could internalize and replicate this movement. The elastic and soft characteristics of dress were a constant factor in editorials that portrayed models in the act of spatial interaction. Much clothing during this

Accessing the Everyday

period allowed for heightened movement, made from supple textiles including jersey and other knitted fabrics, or in shorter, unstructured silhouettes. The pullover ensemble worn by the model in Figure  1.10, for instance, was extolled in text for its ‘slim, supple, comfortable’ qualities, which made it ideal for wearing ‘in the street.’73 As such magazine discussion of movement was foregrounded in clothing’s fabric and construction, as Vogue’s February 1961 prêt-à-porter themed issue attested. Not only were garments presented as ‘in movement,’ as the cover clearly stated, an editorial within implicated the magazine and reader in this scenario, with its title, ‘Vogue sets you in motion.’74 The author described a suit by Chloé, as enabling movement, through the ‘elasticity of [its] pink wool crepe, the

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casualness of [its] open jacket’ and the ‘ease of [its] skirt, gathered at the waist.’75 The accompanying images were by William Klein, who had worked in moving imagery by the time.76 Imagery blurred together the repeated photograph of models, playing with exposure to give the illusion of their motion. Yet, as opposed to earlier imagery that portrayed readymade dress as a tangible tool of models’ physical action and productivity, this text considered movement as metaphorical, as a surrogate for women’s internal questioning and decision-making:

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Being in movement is a question of choice. You will get there by wearing easy skirts, fluid lines, supple fabrics. Your time is one of movement, don’t forget it. So, renounce all that isn’t of your period. Before choosing, always ask yourself: ‘will I feel at ease in this dress on the gangway of a plane or getting into a car?’ Vogue tells you: think ‘movement’, and your choice will be the right one.77

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Thus Vogue framed its article on movement around a discourse of choice and wellbeing. In this way, it connected to writings and documentaries on women’s lives during the 1960s, which sought to ensure women’s knowledge, with which they could make reasoned decisions concerning family, career and health, as Chapter 5 discusses further. This was also an essential message of the Mouvement démocratique féminin (MDF), founded in 1961 to ‘help women achieve their liberation and their advancement and give them the means to make choices and achieve fulfilment according to their individual qualities, in the family, in their profession, in society, in the country.’78 Alongside the MDF and other groups who looked to foster women’s awareness of their realities in the early 1960s, the possibility of progress loomed closer in governmental and other discussion of women’s rights and autonomy. This notably included an increasingly vocal family planning movement and attempts to amend the marriage law, to give women more independence within that institution. These developments coincided with a strand of fashion photographs characterized by the integration of walking and looking in anonymous Paris spaces. Models were portrayed as curious: in looking around, they sought to understand banal places, the limits of space and their own bodies within it. In contrast to the more formal and constricting garments of the 1950s, seen, for example, in Kazan’s 1956 photograph of a hesitant model in a stiff wool coat (Figure  1.5), later clothing fulfilled ready-to-wear’s claims of comfort and practicality, facilitating women’s movement through uncertain, narrow and difficult city spaces. While in imagery, models observed their surrounding space in heightened subjectivity, and interacted with it as though involved in a mental dialogue, illustrating Nancy Forgione’s theory on the ‘process of walking’ in the

nineteenth century, ‘with its phenomenologically coherent intertwining of body, mind, and vision.’79 This theme was also apparent in 1960s cinema. In Cléo de 5 à 7, for example, the protagonist Cléo undergoes a psychological journey as she walks and rides by car through Paris. According to Steve Ungar, the film followed a ‘spatial logic that traced Cléo’s itinerary through Paris as a near-loop.’80 In fashion imagery, walking similarly seemed to accompany a process of exploring a changing city. The city in flux is an apt metaphor for the French woman of this period, who was tasked with absorbing myriad information concerning her identity and rights. Readymade dress, by this time characterized by a new group of named designers – who would have been familiar to consumers – accompanied women and eased their journey. By the mid-1960s, magazine readers were used to interpreting movement in imagery in connection to choice and agency. This may have informed their reading of a 1965 Vogue editorial, which displayed many small photographs by Knight Russell of women in different spaces of the city, variously walking, pausing, looking away and looking at the camera (Figure 1.11). This depiction of a maze-like city with endless pathways and possibilities, visualized through multiple images on one page, illustrated the diversity in choice and conversation. In his 1967 essay ‘Semiology and Urbanism,’ Roland Barthes highlighted creative cerebral aspects of city existence. He likened interacting with the city to a discourse: ‘the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak to our city, the city where we are, simply by inhabiting it, by traversing it, by looking at it.’81 Each woman moved and conversed with the city differently. Models walked without a defined purpose or end point, and let themselves be guided by a dialogue with the city, in ways that resembled the dérive, or drifting, the Situationists’ invention for manoeuvring the city and subverting the demands of the structured everyday, described by Guy Debord in 1958: Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll. In a dérive one or more persons […] let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.82 Accessing the Everyday

Like Lefebvre and Barthes, Debord sought to rid the everyday of control by laws of industrialization and consumption, concepts he cemented in Society of the Spectacle (1967). Drawing on Lefebvre’s ideas of the creative potential of the everyday, Debord and the Situationists encouraged the construction of situations such as the dérive to foster imagination, creativity and communication. In the

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Figure 1.11  Garments by Raimon, Gil Coutin, Lempereur and Paul Bon. Photographs by Knight Russell, Vogue Paris, July 1965

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above imagery, models likewise inventively and subversively tested space as a means of reflection for future action. With the marriage law finally amended in 1965, the first legislation for women’s rights since suffrage in 1945, they had no choice but to move further forward. No longer contained within interior space or closed Paris, women, exposed and real, were in movement and transition, faced with the potential for their own transformation.

­  ­Branding prêt-à-porter in the 2 Fourth Republic (1946–58): Modernization, cultural diplomacy and industry debates The autumn 1953 issue of the trade publication Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin reported on an important fashion industry event: the presentation of the winter collections of Les Trois Hirondelles, a label and grouping of French readymade clothing brands in the Association des maisons de couture en gros, to American Buyers at New York’s lavish Waldorf Astoria. An accompanying photograph pictured a model showcasing a coat by member brand Basta, described in the text as ‘highly acclaimed and purchased.’1 The Maisons de couture en gros, established ten years earlier in 1943, grouped high-end confection houses.2 The occasion attested to the growing dialogue between the French and American readymade clothing industries since the end of the Second World War and, as the journal sought to indicate, marked an achievement for the French through the success of brands such as Basta with American Buyers. Indeed, the country had been striving to modernize and compete on the international market, following the examples of their foreign counterparts, since before the war. Industrialists and politicians also realized clothing could be used as cultural capital and a tool in shaping national identity, which was, according to scholars, a main goal of the Fourth Republic.3 This chapter contextualizes the readymade clothing industry against this new government, in relation to the country’s recovering and industrializing economy. Its development was largely shaped amidst sentiments of technological shortcoming and the urgent need to modernize and compete with foreign industries when, over the course of the 1950s, the country strove to reclaim and reframe its political and cultural hegemony. It was not surprising that the Cahiers, voice of the main trade organization for readymade clothing, the Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, recounted the voyage to New York. That a high fashion magazine should document this industrial happening was, however, exceptional: the brands’ New York visit was the focus of a spread in the ‘Tout Fait, Tout Prêt à Porter’ section

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of the September 1953 issue of Vogue. The magazine photographed American models, dressed in the brands’ clothing, against New York’s iconic spaces such as Times Square and, according to the text, ‘in view of the Statue of Liberty, in front of Manhattan’s skyscrapers’ or ‘in the shade of newly-built buildings: the “Lever House,” and the “United Nations” currently being finished.’4 Text and imagery gave magazine readers the impression of constant and modern construction, bolstering Europeans’ widespread characterization of New York as a powerful political and economic force (see Figure 2.1). Marshall Berman wrote that much of New York’s construction in the twentieth century has served as a performative symbol of modernity on the international stage, ‘conceived and executed not merely to serve immediate economic and political needs but, at least equally important, to demonstrate to the whole world what modern men can build and how modern life can be imagined and lived.’5 New York’s position as epicentre of sportswear and modern industry and city was underscored by its political and economic might. Readers could insert themselves into the symbolism of modern life, as Berman described, as it was filtered through the magazine. This ran counter to fears of Americanization by the general public, in place from the interwar period. For one, Georges Duhamel’s influential anti-modernist satire that presaged a future world of American influence in terms of mass-mechanized commercial systems, standardization and materialism helped codify French views of the United States from the early 1930s.6 These concerns remained following the Second World War, in the context of increased American presence during Europe’s reconstruction and the Cold War, as critics such as Georges Soria sought to illustrate.7 Vogue’s imagery assuaged these fears and, through fashion, included France in a modern narrative. In addition to formalizing New York’s new importance and meaning to French fashion during the Fourth Republic, this article also illustrated the strengthened ties between different areas of the industry, notably between the fashion press and the trade. This chapter traces the internal discussion of the latter and particularly that of the Fédération, mainly through a reading of its Cahiers. This reveals its problematic relationship to modernization, and the negotiation of aura, individualism, productivity and rationalization within these debates – which shed light on wider notions of national identity. This organization sought to coordinate the industry’s different sectors, including textile producers, manufacturers, retailers and the press, to foster communication and improve production. This chapter also questions how New York challenged Paris’s fashion hegemony, as studied in the previous chapter and, through government-led missions, influenced French industrial operations, including labour and production techniques, magazine dialogue, and new branding and publicity efforts. These industry, government and cross-cultural dialogues would shape the representation of the newly designated

‘prêt-à-porter’ over the course of the 1950s. Through the branding of Les Trois Hirondelles, for dissemination on national and international levels in particular, the chapter argues that France attempted to renegotiate and, through prêt-à-porter as opposed to haute couture, reinvent its fashion industry at home and abroad.

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

Figure  2.1  Ensemble by Lempereur. Photograph by Henry Clarke, Vogue Paris, September 1953 © Henry Clarke, Musée Galliera/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 2020

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Confection, couture en gros, robe de série, vêtement féminin

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Although this chapter studies the push to develop in the period following the Second World War, modernity and modernization are constant concerns in the clothing industry, fuelled as it is by new technologies and creative innovation. This is intensified during moments of technological and political shift. Nancy L. Green, for instance, has noted that France’s ‘language of modernization,’ in regard to the women’s developing late nineteenth-century readymade clothing industry, was ‘fuelled by a recurrent phobia of decline.’8 In view of global competition and economic nationalism, this language expressed the industry’s cautious desire to modernize by ‘reappropriating a language of art, even within the context of mass production.’9 With this approach, industrial professionals sought to align the readymade industry to that of haute couture in order to ‘legitimate the more standardized product.’10 A similar language reflected developments and ideology in the clothing industry following the First and Second World Wars, both periods of industrial development and economic recovery. The negotiation between the aura of the unique product and industrialized mass production, as commentators such as historian and journalist Lucien Romier endorsed during the First World War, was reflected in debates over industrial etymology throughout this time.11 As Marjorie Beale has written in relation to the period encompassing 1900 to 1940, ‘The French were profoundly ambivalent about the potential impact of industrial modernity on their culture. This ambivalence expressed itself in a constant demand for the integration of tradition and modernity.’12 These contradictory pre-war notions framed the reconstruction of the clothing industry after the Liberation. Jean-Claude Weill, who entered his family’s clothing business in the mid1940s, discussed how in the 1930s ‘there was absolutely no industry. There was nothing at all. It was homeworkers that produced according to their capabilities, four, five, seven items per week.’13 Led by Robert Weill and his son Jean-Claude after the Second World War, Maison Weill had been producing coats, suits and dresses from the late nineteenth century, and their national importance can be gleaned from their inclusion in the Pavillon de la Parure in the Exposition internationale des arts et de l’industrie, held in Paris in 1937.14 They also belonged to the Fédération du Vêtement. Formed in 1929, the group sought to unify the professional organization of the industry, improve production practices and technical training, increase exports abroad, and correspond with public powers in economic and social matters.15 Over the course of the 1930s, articles in its journal, Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, indicated these aims and the

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

general anxious tone in the industry.16 In one issue from 1932, the Fédération’s then president E. Max Brunhes brought up concerns that would resurface after the Second World War and into the 1950s, introducing the notion of coordination as vital to the modernization of the ‘industrie de la robe en série’ (mass-produced dress industry) and the nation’s economic success.17 He warned that the industry had lost its pre-war importance and discussed how its foreign ‘competitors’ boasted a ‘well organised, very developed mechanised Industry,’ in opposition to France’s fragmented one, as Weill described above.18 He proposed – with the help of state aid – to improve and reorganize the industry, through the close-knit collaboration between manufacturers and textile producers, industrial studies to support production and a schedule of clothing presentations. Only an organized, profitable industry could compete on the international market. However, Brunhes advised manufacturers not to follow foreign producers who copied couture designs through ‘mechanic production,’ which he described as paradoxical to ‘our tastes, traditions, [and] worldview.’19 This was a subtle reference to the United States, who had been buying large quantities of French haute couture to copy on several production levels throughout the century. Instead, he urged that they ‘offer French serialized dresses with a personal character on the world market.’20 As such Brunhes sought to separate the French industry from foreign clothing production. Likewise, in her study of the introduction of American commercial systems in interwar France, Ellen Furlough remarked, ‘The constant invocation of French “taste” and “elegance” was […] a reflexive strategy demarcating […] national boundaries.’21 This Americanization was perhaps behind Brunhes’s motivation to distance French confection from standardized products. Rather he connected it indirectly to couture production and the country’s heritage in characterizing it as ‘one of the factors of our national richness.’22 However, this link between confection and nation was tenuous. The article illustrated the ambiguity surrounding the notion of creation in French industrial debates. In arguing that production should be both ‘serialized’ (en série), or massproduced, as well as exhibit ‘personal character,’ Brunhes validated Green’s theory that the twentieth-century industry dialogue ‘was transformed into a perceived dichotomy between a reigning individualism and a necessary industrialization.’23 As seen above, Brunhes seemed opposed to the copy. However, he did not wish to disconnect readymade dress from the couture silhouette, the ultimate mark of assurance for retailers and consumers. Thus, further in his article he conceded that although readymade ‘dress could find its inspiration from couture,’ it must stand apart from ‘foreign industries’ by its ‘details,’ ‘special fabrics’ and ‘especially [its] workmanship.’24 As such Brunhes sought to connect to and stand apart

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from couture, as a result of both the necessity of French cultural dominance and economic productivity. These economic concerns prevailed after the Second World War, as very little had changed in the industry, with production still largely based around homeworkers and contractors.25 The Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin was created in 1946 from the previous Fédération du Vêtement, and the following year the Cahiers resumed publication after seven years of inactivity during the war. Its post-war issues expressed the industry’s long-standing concerns and goals to improve the organization of the entire textiles and clothing professional network, industrialize, and attain national recognition. These were key aims of the convention organized by the Fédération in 1947, with representatives from the unions of silk, cotton, linen and wool merchants, dyers, manufacturers and retailers, as well as from the Ministry of Economy and Industrial Production.26 After the war, delays in resuming production and fabric rations hindered the industry.27 Calls to professionalize seemed particularly urgent given the growing success of the US sportswear industry during the war period.28 Facing this competition (and less need for French couture export), readymade clothing was more relevant in the new industrial moment. In addition, as the haute couture industry was largely absent during the war, readymade clothing manufacturers seized the opportunity to fill this void, and improve their output and standing. The industry thus attempted to introduce a high-end readymade production through the Maisons de couture en gros. To many, confection connoted a serially produced industrial product of low quality, while couture en gros (wholesale couture) was built on the notion of bespoke garment making, as a 1949 article in a technical journal expressed well: ‘The pejorative meaning of the word “Confection” hasn’t escaped anyone. For many, it is synonymous with excessive rapidity, poor taste, and especially standard measurements incompatible with clients’ physical builds.’29 That this terminology caused tension between the readymade and couture industries was communicated earlier to the public in a 1947 article in the couture-centric magazine, l’Officiel de la Mode. The author explained how ‘“Couture en gros”, strange catchphrase of new competition, distinguishes itself from “couture” without adjectives or compliments, like all “true” Couture.’30 At several points throughout, for instance, the author treated the readymade industry as imposter, addressing it as ‘Confection, – excuse me! Couture en gros.’31 The article appeared in response to another, written by the president of the Association des maisons de couture en gros Maurice Warnery earlier in the year in La Revue du Vêtement titled, ‘l’Académie française devant le mot “Luxe.”’ The l’Officiel response took a vitriolic tone, to defend couture against Warnéry’s misinformed and ‘serious accusations’ as well as

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

distinguish between the two: while production behind confection stemmed from machines and copied couture lines, haute couture, ‘at once a trade and an art,’ was distinguished by meticulous handiwork.32 This estimation posed a challenge to confectionneurs’ aims to align themselves with high-end production. The author’s defensive tone also laid bare the couture industry’s perceived jeopardy in view of the United States’ strengthened clothing industry. This also explains Edmond de Semont’s reassured, celebratory report in Le Monde on Christian Dior’s first collection in spring 1947, which produced his widely influential Ligne Corolle silhouette. He wrote that, ‘Paris has once again won the war for elegance. As if in response to certain couturiers on the other side of the Atlantic, who have been acting as though they had nothing more to learn from Paris and the old world, [this season’s] collections are more sumptuous and delicately refined than ever they were in happier times.’33 This came at a moment which saw ‘a slew of articles denigrating American fashion,’ according to Rebecca J. Pulju.34 Likewise in language that was rife with reference to politics and the Franco-American rivalry, de Semont equated Dior’s success to that of the country as a whole. Despite the war’s impact, the connection between Paris and couture was essentially intact. Many scholars have discussed the role of the Théâtre de la Mode in reaffirming this connection, using it as a way to frame the post-war fashion history of France as a triumphant comeback story of the Paris haute couture industry.35 The Théâtre consisted of fifteen miniature theatres decorated with various Parisian scenes that housed 170 figurines dressed by thirty-five couturiers – the meaning and aura of both city and garment conflated, one reinforcing the other. After its exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan in March 1945, it travelled to other world cities throughout 1946, to spread the message that both Paris and fashion were returning to their pre-war strengths. This project looked to the fashion dolls that dressmakers and tailors historically made to disseminate styles to international courts.36 This is perhaps also the source of the miniature garments made by the couture en gros manufacturer Lise France from spring–summer 1947 (Plate 1). Although little known outside of the Palais Galliera archive, where they are held, their craftsmanship is also impeccable, ranging from silk and lace gowns of varying silhouettes constructed through well-placed darts; to wool suits and coats with peplum waists, dolman sleeves and embroidered details; and matching belts and feathered hats. Intended for display at trade fairs in France, they functioned on a second level as a symbolic link to France’s couture and dressmaking tradition37 – and they reveal the less familiar narrative of ready-to-wear in history. The French readymade industry – identified variously as confection, couture en gros, robe de série and vêtement féminin – thus attempted to reinvent its image as it

45

faced competition from both its couture counterpart and its foreign adversaries. To show that it could rival couture on the national fashion stage, industrialists organized prestigious events with political representatives in attendance. President of the Fédération Albert Lempereur was a key force in spearheading these campaigns to receive funding from public powers for publicity campaigns.38 In 1948, he organized a fashion presentation at Paris’s Palais de Chaillot with the support of president Vincent Auriol.39 His deployment of the fashion show, a promotional tool of haute couture, served to increase the symbolic value of readymade dress. Over the course of the 1950s development and publicity efforts focused around the Maisons de couture en gros on industry, government and press levels. These vital campaigns were among the few options available for promotion in a system that centred on haute couture. As the industry developed and competed on global markets, it faced a secondary challenge concerning what it projected abroad.

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Productivity and prêt-à-porter

46

­s discussed above, internal dialogue expressed fears of technological A shortcoming, exacerbated by France’s wartime losses and the need to modernize, a sentiment echoed in other fields of industry. At the heart of the French post-war modernization drive was the Commissariat général du Plan, the governmental body for economic planning founded in 1946 comprising sequential plans. Jean Monnet led the first Plan de modernization et d’équipement after the war into the early 1950s. According to Pulju, the Monnet Plan instigated a strong system of collaboration among government, industry, workers and consumers in specific industries.40 In this context the underdeveloped position of the womenswear industry after the war was articulated in a 1946 issue of the journal of the Centre d’études techniques des industries de l’habillement: ‘France finished the war with a heavy handicap of a six-year delay in the technical domain. If we want to catch up, we must, and are obligated, to better our technique.’41 The article looked to foreign examples, citing Sweden and the United States, in asserting the need for technical research. The author referenced in particular the construction of research centres by Henry Ford and shirt manufacturer Cluett Peabody. In 1948, textiles machinery producer Jacques Roux wrote a series of articles for the Cahiers titled ‘Les Progrès de la Technique Française’ (The Progress of French Technique) in which he similarly evoked Fordist ideas and the importance of research. Roux cited the creation of the above-mentioned Centre d’Etudes Techniques des Industries de l’Habillement and other training facilities, as one step towards ‘transforming the clothing industry into a veritable industry, which would be well equipped

and use rational work methods.’42 His language stressed change, mechanized movement and a scientific representation of modernity: The wind has blown in and swept away old-fashioned methods in all the branches of the French clothing industry. People everywhere are studying the breakdown of work or the synchro system, everyone is ruthlessly chasing away dead time, unnecessary and costly [workers’] gestures. Everywhere people are looking for modern and adaptable machinery.43

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

Roux’s comments drew on early twentieth-century American theories of scientific management, borrowing from Frederick Winslow Taylor, Frank Bunker Gilbreth and Henry Ford in terms of reducing process times, motions involved and assembly line production. These were not then new discoveries for the French, as engineers, company managers and workers in other fields applied these ideas, as well as the scientific management theories of Henri Fayol, in the early twentieth century.44 After the Second World War, France’s backwardness was redefined as insufficient productivity. Scholars such as Richard F. Kuisel have written that industrialists adopted 1920s’ measures of rationalization in post-war definitions of productivity, so that ‘in the 1950s, this old problem was defined, quantified and presented to the public in terms of lateness in the area of productivity’ with an emphasis on high production times.45 The clothing industry clearly shared this mentality, as forecast in Roux’s advice to ‘ruthlessly chas[e] away dead time’ in his linear theory that stressed handicap and progress. These ideas encapsulated the technological determinism that governed thinking during this period. French notions of productivity were inserted into already ambiguous identity debates as prêt-à-porter developed in the 1950s. The concept of productivity, and the belief that it was the key to France’s modernization, became known in France partly through the economist Jean Fourastié’s 1949 text Le Grand Espoir du XXe siècle: progrès technique, progrès economique, progrès social, and reinforced during the 1950s with La Civilisation de 1975 (1953) and Histoire de demain (1956). His concept centred upon the importance of efficiency, technique and rational decision-making in human activities.46 Fourastié’s ideas influenced government officials such as General Commissioner of Economic Planning Monnet and Minister of Finance Robert Buron, who believed the introduction of American management techniques, supported by the Ministry for the Economy’s productivity commissions, to be essential to the country’s modernization program and economic reconstruction. The French clothing industry often looked overseas, notably to Sweden, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, to improve their menswear and womenswear clothing

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industries.47 The United States took the lead when, from 1948, the European Recovery Program, and specifically the Marshall Plan, organized ‘productivity missions.’48 Buron led the Comité National de la Productivité, which, through its subgroup the Association Française pour l’Accroissement de la Productivité (AFAP), managed the productivity voyages. They comprised teams of about twenty people in different positions in the same field of industry to study American production and commercialization techniques. Thirteen trips dedicated to the field of textiles were organized between 1948 and 1959 that researched the menswear, womenswear, work clothing and undergarment industries, as well as ones that studied glove making, sizing, distribution, dyes and finishes, and the cotton, silk and wool industries.49 Two voyages in particular, taken in 1952 and 1955, pertained to the womenswear industry. Company manager Pierre Garçin led the mission to New York, Boston and Chicago from November to December 1952. The nine other representatives reflected the composition of the Fédération and included company managers, production managers, manufacturers, a seamstress (modéliste) and a forewoman.50 As in other trips, in addition to voyage summaries in respective trade journals and presentations to colleagues, it resulted in a written report, intended for public authorities and other professionals in the same field. According to Vincent Guigueno, these writings, which discussed production, human resources, sales and marketing techniques, and distribution, served ‘to spread the virus of productivity in the French economy.’51 This was echoed in the publication resulting from Garçin’s trip, Notes de voyage de la Mission aux U.S.A. de la délégation du ‘vêtement féminin,’ novembre-décembre 1952. However, as reported in a number of other missions in different fields, the trip challenged the idea that American productivity was rooted in markets, financial means and equipment. The Notes de voyage redefined it as, ‘the relationship that exists between given productivity and the means made use of to obtain it.’52 Couched under the ideas of Taylor and Fourastié, the missionaries found that an efficient workforce was behind this elusive concept, measured by production volume, number of hours worked and materials used. Their studies classed productivity causes under commercial, technical and human factors, taking the ‘social climate’ of the enterprise into account.53 This social metaphor would have wide repercussions in the formation of the industry’s representation of itself. After visiting a worker’s union, a professional school, an advertising agency and twenty factories, the missionaries remarked on the need for coordination and unity of these sectors around two essential points, noting ‘the women’s confection industry is purely an industry of transformation, the constant and close liaison between weaver and user is clear.’54 Thus the Notes de voyage stressed the

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

organization of the steps between textile production and clothing distribution, but there was little mention of design.55 The author observed that ‘garments are generally conceived from a pattern taken from American, Italian or French shops. Very little original creation.’56 Therefore success was not due to mastery of design, which remained mainly a foreign asset, but to seamless organization between industrial sectors. This new ideal of fluidity was based on the precise relationship to space and the speed of industrial work, as suggested above. In terms of production, the Notes du Voyage stressed the importance of standardization and simplification. The author remarked how most manufacturers specialized in one type of clothing article, which allowed them to produce large quantities. Direct effects can be observed in the French industry. After taking part in a 1948 voyage, for example, Weill adapted design to these production methods and reduced its output to coats and suits in 1950.57 The 1952 mission report also described the need to increase worker efficiency by using certain tools and eliminating unnecessary gestures and operations. The fact that 50% of the 65,000 garment industry workers worked in their homes, which had been illegal for several years in the United States, was another obstacle to fluid labour, and to the ideal of efficiency that the New York industry epitomized.58 As a side note, the year this mission took place saw the small-scale launch of Gaby Aghion’s ready-made brand Chloé, in a garret apartment. She succeeded working within the confines of haute couture, with which she was familiar as a client, selling her six simple designs (made with the help of a former couture seamstress) to houses with ready-to-wear boutiques, namely, Fath, Dior, Carven and Schiaparelli.59 Likewise, in his studies of the productivity missions as a whole, Guigueno pointed out that fluidity was the characteristic that underscored the majority of mission reports: ‘All of them noted that production management had reached a level they could not have imagined. Based on speed and smoothness, production was organized as a flow that nothing could stop.’60 These observations went beyond object flows in factory production, however, and the fluidity metaphor was used to explain the seamless coordination of the multifarious industry as a whole and, as such, the Notes du Voyage placed importance on company management and smooth operations of unions. On a wider level, the seamless functioning of the American industry on a magnified scale may have impressed upon the missionaries the shortcoming of their own industry and divided postwar state, governed by, according to Brian Angus McKenzie, the short-lived Fourth Republic with its ‘weak executive office, disastrous colonial policies, and divided political parties.’61 Guigueno similarly noted that ‘The portrait – sometimes sharp, precise and accurate – of American industry is also a portrait of French weakness.’62 Garçin’s descriptions of human and cross-cultural interactions likewise shed light

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 50

on the sociocultural aspects of the missions that worked parallel to their economic objectives. In a post-mission article in the Cahiers, he described interaction with their managerial hosts: ‘We often gave the impression of being diminutive, as, over the course of the visits when inquiring about weekly production and being told 50,000 suits … and you? Needless to say we always answered with the production of our largest houses, which, although important for us, made them smile.’63 To counter feelings of inadequacy, the French missionaries thus subtly affronted the American industry, often casting the products, and people, as simple, standardized copies of French couture. Echoing Brunhes’s article twenty years earlier, Garçin explained that individualized identity was embedded in fashion for French women, who would buy two dresses annually, as opposed to ten dresses for Americans. Garçin further recounted that throughout the mission they were told, ‘Productivity creates the market and it isn’t the market that creates Productivity.’64 He doubted this could apply completely to their clothing industry, as it would necessitate that French women ‘somewhat abandon their individualism.’65 In these and many other trade texts, the representation of the industry was conflated with that of French women consumers and as a measure of national taste. Green has similarly discussed how ‘[French] Women are represented in garment discourse not only as producers and especially as consumers, but as representatives of national character in a war of the wearers.’66 The character, taste and rigour of French consumers had been used to justify the industry’s failures, as Weill’s autumn-winter 1950 catalogue illustrated: ‘Forever, for the [French] woman, dressing has been the means of showing her personality and her grace. The French woman [was] placed between serialised confection little adapted to her individualist temperament and Haute Couture, reserved to the privileged few […].’67 This trope was employed throughout the 1950s to explain why France could not achieve the same productivity as other nations.68 French industrialists treated it not as a question of ability but of choice: they chose to produce smaller series of higher-quality goods over mass quantities of the same, low-quality product. In his speech at a trade conference in 1953, for example, Buron praised French manufacturers for making clothing in limited series and distributing them to vendors far from one another, whereas, in the United States, ‘the same dress could be reproduced in thousands of copies without the American finding cause to complain: on the contrary, on seeing a friend wearing a dress that pleases her, she will not hesitate to buy the same one as soon as the next day.’69 Cross-cultural contact through productivity missions only bolstered how, according to Green, ‘The economic problem of reproducibility and standardization is interpreted along a cultural scale of values.’70 Moreover, it illustrated the transfer between individual, industrial and national traits.

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

In his other writings, Buron particularly stressed the idea of the loss of France’s individuality through contact with the United States in all areas of industry, which was a feature of the French concept of Americanization.71 As noted in Chapter 1, the country’s seemingly abrupt modernization alarmed citizens, which may have negatively affected their view of France’s expanding fashion market. The loss of ‘individualism’ through mechanized production threatened France’s inherent artisanal and couture tradition, and thus its identity. In Kuisel’s studies of the cultural dimension of economic and political projects, he notes that identity is at stake in these encounters between France and the United States: ‘Industrial experts, for example, touring factories in the United States under the aegis of the Marshall Plan, responded to American prosperity as a challenge to the French way of life.’72 Just as the missionaries’ enthusiastic yet doubtful responses in the Notes de Voyage demonstrated, he argues that anxiety over loss of Frenchness caused criticisms of Americans’ simple, bad and standardized taste. Therefore individualism in the industry also stood for France’s identity and dignity, which were especially vulnerable following the war, as Kuisel explains: ‘A France already torn by internal division, humiliated by defeat, occupation, and collaboration, and slightly embarrassed by its liberation faced a crisis of national identity.’73 After the war, a disgraced France found itself with a weakened fashion industry, its traditional area of expertise. That industrialists were forced to take advice from the United States in matters of textiles would have reinforced feelings of disempowerment and identity loss. In his writings on the parallel operations of cultural and political diplomacy in the post-war period, Serge Guilbaut notes that ‘the situation in France in 1946 was tense in both politics and art. With great difficulty the country was attempting to pick up the scattered bits of its culture and restore the coherent image of Paris that had existed before. The question on everyone’s mind was whether the old pattern was still valid.’74 The maintenance of France’s cultural hegemony was an immediate post-war concern, attested to by a meeting held by the Union Nationale des Intellectuels on 18 June 1945. This short-lived group attempted to unite all French intellectuals to reassert French cultural life, or ‘the greatness and renown of the fatherland.’75 The threat of cultural disempowerment was heightened by the 1946 Blum-Byrnes Agreement, which allowed for the opening of the French market to American goods in exchange for the eradication of France’s debt to the United States. More directly, in January 1948, the SmithMundt or US Information and Educational Exchange Act enabled the American government to disseminate positive information and materials about the United States largely to counter the perceived Soviet threat and anti-Americanism abroad. The fashion likewise industry operated within this capitalist agenda. Nicola White

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has shown that post-war American aid and industrial instruction sought to purge Communism through the creation of an export-focused international capitalist trading scheme.76 This context of heightened American presence explains de Semont’s reassured tone at the success of the couture collections in 1947, as discussed above. His article echoed fears that this presence would stand for largescale changes to long-held systems, mentalities and identity, as critics such as Soria warned. Both sides had much at stake in the success of the French clothing industry, in terms of perceptions of each nation abroad. The tense relationship between French and American industrial professionals evident in the 1952 mission paralleled a wider diplomatic situation where the United States represented at once saviour, model and intruder. Developments in the clothing industry were set against increasing American presence in recovering France in terms of military support, national propaganda and consumer products. The Marshall Plan was itself an international propaganda operation as David Ellwood argues and, like the Smith-Mundt Act, possessed a service to disseminate information about the United States abroad.77 Mission France, the cultural body of the Marshall Plan in France, and its information division, the United States Information Service (USIS), organized radio programmes, regional fairs and exhibitions, all of which served to ‘present a more complex message about American society.’78 Its monthly magazine, Rapports: France-Etats-Unis, in particular, circulated stories about the Marshall Plan, life in the United States, Franco-American interaction and international affairs. As noted, this presence was perceived as a threat to French identity throughout the 1950s. Scholars have widely discussed how the United States used cultural production as their tacit tool of diplomacy to gain French approval and political influence. For example, while the importation of Abstract Expressionism exhibited the country’s avantgarde spirit and sanction of artistic liberty, international exhibitions illustrated, as Robert H. Haddow has argued, its ‘ideal of progress and material abundance.’79 In one example, Gay McDonald has shown that, to counter the increasingly high rate of Anti-Americanism in France, in 1955 USIS and New York’s Museum of Modern Art exported the vast retrospective exhibition ‘50 Years of American Art’ to Paris’s National Museum of Modern Art. McDonald described this display of twentiethcentury art, architecture, photography, printmaking, typography, film and massproduced industrial design items as ‘the largest and most aggressive statement to date about the vigour and originality of American visual culture to have been circulated within Europe.’80 Thus a sort of cultural offensive accompanied American aid. Just as the United States sought closer ties with France to reaffirm the value of their own cultural achievements to counter the communist threat, France attempted to export its cultural heritage – in the form of existentialist

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

literature and haute couture according to Simone de Beauvoir – in its post-war reconstruction.81 As argued here, this was also attempted through entry to the American readymade clothing market. This is why the participation of the French industry in New York, as exemplified by the visit by the Maisons de couture en gros in 1953, functioned as an act of cultural diplomacy. As noted, the productivity voyages helped instil in fashion and government professionals the importance of readymade fashion and the need for improvement to the industry’s manufacturing techniques and image. Using arguments that harked back to Brunhes’s ambiguous industrial dialogue, which at once separated and connected readymade dress to couture, manufacturers characterized post-war prêt-à-porter as a synthesis that combined notions of industrial productivity and individualized creation.82 After returning from a 1948 trip, for instance, Weill is credited as one of the first companies to use the term ‘prêt-à-porter,’ a literal translation of the English phrase, in 1949 trade publicity.83 Weill’s previously mentioned 1950 catalogue, which launched its publicity campaign, described prêt-à-porter as a blend of industry and fashion, under which it inserted its own output as a new ‘formula of high class ready-to-wear feminine clothing.’84 Their clothing would ‘finally and fortunately fill this gap’ and ‘achieve the synthesis of all that exemplifies the renown of French taste, allied to the most modern techniques of production.’85 The catalogue credited the company with originality in its invention of ‘this new concept,’ a creative act that served to mask how garments would ‘conform to all the latest fashion trends.’86 Therefore the necessity to reassure consumers that clothing would not veer from accepted trends remained. That Weill would ‘repeat’ these accepted styles ‘in an extraordinarily varied range of fabrics and colours’ further downplayed the act of serial production.87 The catalogue thus built on the ambiguous dialogue already in place, and introduced the notions of industrial fashionability that would shape prêt-à-porter. This language was disseminated within the trade throughout the decade, as seen in a 1954 industry publication Prestige de la Qualité that specifically addressed the replacement of ‘confection féminine’ with ‘Prêt à Porter.’ According to one article written by Lempereur, ‘Until now, people have either made “practical” [clothing] and nothing more; or they had sacrificed exclusively to luxury. [Prêt-à-porter] is, finally, the study of the synthesis of comfort, elegance and price that is going to be the premier concern of our Industry.’88 Only prêt-à-porter, and in particular the article’s focus, the Maisons de couture on gros, could operate as couture, but in an economically viable way. This was the message the industry urged manufacturers and marketers to disperse outward in its promotion of prêt-à-porter. In this way, ready-to-wear could allow France to achieve its post-war aim, in the words of

53

Kuisel, ‘to become economically and socially “modern” without such American sins as social conformity, economic savagery, and cultural sterility.’89

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Coordination and propaganda in the press

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Throughout the 1950s, the Fédération sought to deepen dialogue with the fashion press. Fuelled in part by the productivity mission held a few months earlier, on 17 March 1953 the Fédération organized the Présentation l’Industrie propagandepresse at the Pavillon Dauphine, a conference and fashion presentation led by Robert Buron that brought representatives from the fashion press into dialogue with its organization. One week earlier, the Cahiers discussed the upcoming presentation and noted ‘the influence of these “tribunes” for […] a considerable number of women,’ citing Elle, Marie-France and Jardin des Modes.90 The article listed two options for the fashion press to sell ready-to-wear, reflecting ideas gleaned from the 1952 mission: ‘the publicity placard [or] slogan,’ and ‘a less direct, more literary procedure, that of pure editorial publicity.’91 Indeed, the 1952 Notes de Voyage discussed advertisement (or placard) usage, citing the example of chemical company and textile producer Dupont. It described an advertisement that visualized a dress made from Dupont fabrics, which also noted the name of the garment’s manufacturer, retailer and price, so as to entice and educate the viewer on how to buy. The author assessed that ‘The philosophy at the base of this advertising is for everything to work not only to attract the reader’s attention but also to facilitate purchase.’92 As a consequence, editorial publicity for ready-to-wear brands considerably increased in France over the course of the 1950s. In some instances however, although the press often provided relevant retail information, manufactures did not follow through with the products. Journalist Claude Brouet, who assisted Elle’s fashion editor Annie Rivemale from 1953, noted that Weill often failed to produce the garments Elle pictured, which prompted her comment, ‘it was absolutely as though we weren’t doing anything.’93 Within their aims of overall industry fluidity, matching production with demand was thus a recurring problem. The author of the Notes de Voyage seemed aware of this inefficiency. He stressed the importance of coordination, explaining, ‘Advertising and distribution work hand in hand. It would be indeed stupid to pay a lot for a page in Life destined to be read by five times five million readers in the entire country and to have distributers only in one quarter of the country.’94 Despite the above problems at the level of production, Weill implemented these concepts in the late 1940s, following its trip to the United States. In late 1949 the company became the client of Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet’s advertising agency Publicis, as Lempereur

had also done that year. Its first advertisement appeared in Elle in 1950. In addition to magazines and regional papers, the brand’s extensive campaign also included radio and cinema advertisements.95 Jean-Claude Weill maintains that their company stood apart because it was among the few who advertised. One advertisement from a March 1953 issue of Elle featured a slogan and logo, as the above-mentioned 1953 Cahiers advised (Figure 2.2). It also included descriptions

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

Figure 2.2  Weill advertisement by Publicis, Elle, 2 March 1953 © Maison Weill

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of the clothing pictured and purchase information. Other high-end brands such as Rodier, Lempereur, Timwear, Tricosa and Blizzand drew on this format in their early advertisements from about 1950.96 In addition to advertisements and editorial publicity, the Fédération encouraged the press to employ ‘propaganda,’ in other words, educate readers on ready-to-wear’s benefits. The Cahiers article described the conference as ‘the first step of Lempereur’s propaganda campaign.’97 Its theme and propaganda message, ‘Prix d’élégance’ (the price of elegance), was meant to ‘illustrate the possibilities offered by the Industrie du Vêtement féminin and contribute to the consumer’s education, since she is still too often unaware that quality is not necessarily the privilege of high prices.’98 Such an approach exhibited clear links to American officials of the Marshall Plan, who, as McKenzie observed, identified their diplomatic work as propaganda, information, psychological warfare and publicity.99 In a more transparent transference from wartime military language to post-war sales terminology, a 1955 article in the Cahiers noted that ‘The French woman is used to being well dressed, but […] her budget is more and more attracted to other purchases: it is the role of propaganda to fight against these solicitations coming from competing professions.’100 Such language laid bare the competitive atmosphere of the national and global clothing markets. Over the course of the 1950s this ‘propaganda’ was clearly evident in the pages of the fashion press, which took a didactic tone in listing the benefits of readymade clothing. Elle in particular described to readers the development, progress and improvement of the industry as well as explained how the products would work for their modern lifestyles.101 This dialogue also illustrated the new representation of prêt-à-porter. As such, articles that related the narrative of the industry’s development often gave the French ownership of ready-to-wear – traced from its nineteenth-century invention of the sewing machine – and lauded their efforts in transitioning from unattractive confection to prêt-à-porter. Further, these articles seemed to originate from industry writings, not least from the fact that, like the 1953 Vogue article on manufacturers’ New York visit, the fashion press reported on trade developments. Two articles in Elle, for instance, discussed the 1953 Présentation l’Industrie propagande-presse at the Pavillon Dauphine. This was a press-worthy event as it also included a fashion show, touted in an April 1953 issue as the ‘first [ever] “ready-to-wear” collection: 111 garments taken directly from manufacturers’ hangers.’102 Journalists such as Brouet insisted that they chose the clothes they pictured and never read trade writing.103 The texts, however, tell a different story of the cooperation between the industry and fashion press. Underlying these articles was the same constant reassurance of France’s progress and the health of its industry, as de Semont had done for haute couture

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

in 1947. In 1953 Elle Simone Baron applauded the industry’s wide ‘progress’ and ‘success’: `manufacturers are going faster and endeavouring to do even better.’104 This mentality found a direct parallel in trade texts like the above-mentioned 1954 publication Prestige de la Qualité: ‘For several years now, the clothing industries haven’t stopped marking continuous progress, that will continue to rise when they have completely updated their equipment and perfected their production methods.’105 Once the press established France’s role in the history of technology, and documented its progress, it could promote prêt-à-porter through its industrial fashionability. It did this by describing it as a synthesis between confection and haute couture, as discussed. For instance, another Elle article listed the drawbacks to confection before it explained how French prêt-à-porter ‘corrected’ them, yet retained the French virtues of quality and individualism. The author wrote: ‘clients were not always satisfied with their garments. They snubbed confection. They also had a secret terror, especially in small towns, of finding themselves nose to nose with a woman dressed in exactly the same “way” as them.’106 The article went on to describe how ‘we,’ conflating the reader with the wider industry and country, perfected confection through the introduction of prêt-à-porter, and couture en gros in particular. As such the fashion press implicated the industry and consumers in a national narrative of progress. The 1955 productivity mission was conceived to build on this development in the press. A subsequent article in the Cahiers communicated its marketing and press focus: ‘The object of the mission will be to study the commercial methods in use in the United States and the active role played by magazines in promotion of “ready-to-wear.”’107 Therefore, besides manufacturers and a government representative, Lempereur also brought along journalists from Elle, France-Soir, Paris-Presse, Femina, Jours de France, Marie-France; publicists from French radio and television and Agence France-Presse; and representatives from the advertising agencies Neuville and Publicis to visit manufacturers, department stores, advertising agencies, magazines and fashion information groups in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas and Washington. In addition to the use of the press as a means of information dissemination, however, the voyage also instructed missionaries on how to further exploit the power of the press: ‘The press across the Atlantic is not only an organism of fashion diffusion, it is also the counsellor to fabric and clothing producers.’108 Further, they were seen to uphold the coordination of the entire fashion industry. Elle journalists in attendance Alice Chavane and Annie Rivemale recounted the mission to the magazine’s readers.109 Their article also explained the intrinsic role of the press in the coordination of the entire fashion system, described for New York as a ‘large spider’s web called Fashion Group, Tobé, Amos and Parrish,

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Vogue, Harper’s or Mademoiselle.’110 According to the authors, the key to such organization was the realization of a perfectly timed coordination between all involved sectors, which they illustrated by a grid connecting textiles, manufacturers, retailers and fashion to the client, supported by marketing, press and publicity. Their most important discovery was the American notion of commercialization, which started with creating renewable demand for a product: ‘In America, they know it isn’t enough to have invented [a style] to sell. It is just as essential to create the want or need.’111 Taking its own advice on ‘propaganda,’ an editorial in the same issue presented ready-to-wear trends for the upcoming autumn season.112 Chavane and Rivemale also noted that distribution must then be able to fulfil consumer demand, which Weill was not able to do in regard to its Elle advertisement, as mentioned earlier. In another analogy to national synchronization that France lacked, the journalists contended that, ‘Ready-to-wear represents American organization at its most perfect.’113 Missions to the United States and communication with the New York Fashion Group validated the Fédération’s ideas on the necessary internal organization of the industry, ideas that circulated as early as Brunhes’s 1932 article.114 Over the course of 1955, discussion of this topic intensified, in anticipation of the above-mentioned five-week productivity mission Lempereur would lead in June of that year. In April 1955, for example, a meeting was held to consider the creation of a fashion industry coordination committee between members of the Fédération including then president Didier Colette, Lempereur and Weill, as well as Robert Offrey of the Association Française pour AFAP, and representatives from the Union Textile and cotton, wool, silk and synthetic textile industries.115 A May 1955 article in the Cahiers reported on the meeting, and blamed the ‘weakness of French confection’ on issues relating to faulty internal communication and, in particular, retailers’ late orders to manufacturers.116 This, in turn, delayed the operation of the entire industry, and the meeting thus proposed to coordinate lines of communication through organized meetings of textile producers, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers. After Lempereur’s mission, the Comité de coordination des industries de mode (CIM) was established to resolve such coordination issues. Under Offrey as president and Colette as executive officer, the CIM assembled the fashion industry’s wide group of professionals, including technicians, buyers, consultants, patternmakers, designers and journalists, to circulate fabric and colour trends to manufacturers, foster education on buying practices and implement a collections calendar.117 In the first issue of the trade directory and publication Elégance ‘prêt a porter’ – envisioned as a tool for the CIM – Lempereur explained that the group ‘constitutes the first link in inter-professional solidarity.’118 This brought them one

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

step closer to the coordination and social harmony of the New York industry, and away from France’s political dividedness. Lempereur announced the creation of the CIM in November 1955, during a press conference in the office of the AFAP in which he presented the outcome of his marketing-oriented productivity mission to the wider French industry. This comes during a time when many industries created their own marketing research organizations to gage and spur consumer demand. From the immediate war aftermath the government too created various statistical agencies, not least of which was the national statistics bureau, Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), in 1946, which heavily buttressed the Monnet Plan. At the November meeting, Lempereur and Henri de Neuville, president of the advertising agency Contact, insisted on the idea of coordination. They developed their definition of this concept after meetings with two market-study companies, Tobé and Amos Parrish: trend forecasting, a main function of American market-study companies, would be essential to the French notion of coordination.119 Lempereur reiterated this the following month in the Cahiers, explaining that the recent mission confirmed that advance market study would resolve ‘the main obstacle to the “Prêt-a-Porter” industry,’ that is ‘the uncertainty of our clients and ourselves when making orders regarding colour choice, types of fabric, and general silhouette trends.’120 In addition to the creation of original ready-to-wear trends, he assured that such research would necessitate the synchronization of the entire industrial network to ensure commercial success. As Lempereur proposed a 1955 issue of the Cahiers, the press would be instrumental to this industrial synchronization: journalists would counsel the CIM on style choices and diffuse agreed-upon trends to readers. Earlier in 1955, the Fédération noted the press’ increasing power ‘as a vehicle of ideas’ and stressed the need for regular dialogue: ‘We must therefore communicate our preoccupations, projects and everyday life. Why not have a monthly lunch with the fashion press? Why not hold meetings where we study fashion trends together?’121 Indeed, the trade press often encouragingly remarked on instances where the fashion press mentioned ready-to-wear.122 In addition, these articles hinted that the press played a role in production, in that manufacturers and fabric suppliers took cues from the press on what to produce. Therefore CIM Secretary Dominique Peclers would meet with department store fashion coordinators, journalists, wholesalers, manufacturers, colourists, fabric producers and sampling companies such as Fred Carlin to decide on colours and fabrics.123 The CIM also undertook market studies, made trend books, and launched colours and fabrics to producers in liaison with the press. From the mid-1950s, the press notified retailers about the clothing it

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would present so to synchronize distribution, another step in the industry’s wider attempt to achieve perfect coordination.124

Les Trois Hirondelles and the International Style

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

­ efore the earlier productivity missions, readymade garments hid most traces B of their manufacturers. In view of the poor public opinion of confection, retailers provided their own labels. When Maison Weill, for example, opted to use its own name in 1949, they contacted their hundreds of retailers to explain the change of approach.125 This bold action was later the subject of a 1955 article in the business magazine Entreprise. According to the article, ‘Robert Weill, assisted by his son JeanClaude, decided to authenticate his products by a personal brand, this despite the scepticism of his friends and the whole of the profession that had only ever worked anonymously.’126 The author described the challenge Weill faced: ‘overcoming two

Figure  2.3 (above and opposite)  Weill Catalogue, 1950, Maison Weill Archives, Paris © Maison Weill 60

well-anchored opinions. The very valuable one of the retailer, who preferred to attach his personal brand to the garment; and that, much less-reasoned one, of the consumer, who feared that, by dressing at Weill’s, she would recognise her own garment on many other women.’127 Branding efforts, implemented by Elie Crespi of Publicis, were thus needed to augment the value of the Weill label. Crespi created slogans as well as a logo of a horse-drawn carriage that anchored the firm in established and bourgeois fashionability. These values were also conveyed in the pages of an early catalogue by Publicis from 1950, which featured illustrations and photographs of models in coats in and against photographs of Paris (Figure 2.3). Association to Paris’s monuments cemented this link, as noted in the previous chapter, reinforced by coats named after the city’s neighbourhoods. The catalogue explained that the Weill label encapsulated these symbols. One page described it as a ‘guarantee’ of quality, a notion legitimized by catalogue imagery of workers in Weill’s atelier.128 The corresponding text conveyed to consumers how they should perceive the Weill brand: ‘Madame … this label identifies the production

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Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 62

of the oldest feminine “ready-to-wear” house. It represents 58 years of tradition and elegance, allied to a rational organization of the most modern means, that guarantee you, in your size, a high-class garment, irreproachable in terms of cut, chic, quality.’129 Reinforced by the logo, the text established a brand history, which it carried to the present through industrial production references. Market research in the early 1950s illustrated how, after a few years of advertising on a national level, the public recognized the name Weill.130 As for Weill, the Association des maisons de couture en gros implemented new strategies after the productivity missions, which continuously reinforced the necessity of branding. Missionaries remarked in the 1952 Notes de Voyage: ‘We are beginning to recognise the importance there would be in creating in this field nationally bought brands,’ noting ‘the textile and clothing industries represent the second [most important commercial] activity in the United States.’131 The Maisons thus undertook new efforts to brand, market and publicize Les Trois Hirondelles from the early 1950s on national and international levels. From its inception in 1943, its logo was a trio of hirondelles or swallows. The design was also embroidered on a 1940s dress label in red white and blue, asserting a sense of nation through colour. The velvet appliqués of swallows on the skirt of the dress served to further bind the connection between brand and garment (Figure 2.4). Still, this wordless statement was subtle, and no other sign survives on the garment to indicate a maker. These early efforts at branding in confection sought to express Frenchness, at a time when France’s identity and political situation were tenuous. Little material evidence of the group exists from the 1940s, and it is easier to trace its development through articles, editorials and advertisements in the trade and fashion press in the following decade. That branding gained acceptance was evidenced in Estelle Lamy’s article on ‘propaganda’ in Prestige de la Qualité. Citing Les Trois Hirondelles, Lamy defined the brand as ‘the pole indicator of a production,’ that ‘transforms [it] into a sort of living personality and allows one to identify it.’132 As for Weill, the ‘imposition of the “griffe”’ or label Trois Hirondelles, served as a ‘symbolic act of marking,’ as Yvette Delsaut and Pierre Bourdieu have theorized, and materialized the brands’ exclusivity and status.133 It is unlikely, however, that consumers would have been aware of the rigorous regulations behind this particular label. To be admitted into the Association, each manufacturer underwent an annual evaluation, comprising a presentation of live models in front of the Fédération and the Minister of Industry and Commerce.134 A 1952 report published in the Cahiers noted that in order to qualify for an evaluation each house had to have been open for at least one year, with an annual production of 2,000 pieces, and ‘must swear on its honour that no models presented are copies.’135 Advertisements that displayed

the group’s logo alongside dressed models further operated as, for Lamy, a ‘signature of the producer’ and ‘the contract of guarantee’ for consumers.136 They made several appearances in Vogue, including in the March 1954 issue, where five pages of advertisements consisted of photographs with garment information and addresses of the individual brands. The regulations attached to membership, members’ entitlement to the Trois Hirondelles label, publicity campaigns and fashion presentations every season

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

Figure  2.4  Les Trois Hirondelles, dress, 1940s, Palais Galliera, GAL2008.33.1 © Paris Musées/ Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris

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at the Hotel Georges V, and its participation in national salons, meant that this mode of readymade production modelled itself after haute couture.137 Clothing was often described as imitative of couture styles in the trade and fashion presses. For instance a 1953 article in the Cahiers reported on the spring collections, explaining how they ‘adapted ideas of haute couture to technical conceptions, providing women on a budget who want to be elegant, an adaptation of the new line in novel fabrics and an impeccable construction.’138 However, trade dialogue expressed unease with this concept, reflecting the industry’s ambiguous stance on creation. An article by Marcel Villeminot in Prestige de la Qualité, which specifically addressed the meaning behind Les Trois Hirondelles, dissected the term ‘couture en gros’ according to which ‘“Couture” applies to the inspiration and to production that includes a large amount of handwork, while “En Gros” signifies that this clothing is not sold directly to consumers, but to retailers who handle distribution.’139 Here Villeminot aligned readymade production to couture and original creation through the ambiguous notion of ‘inspiration’ and technique. He further wrote, ‘Every season over 3,000 original garments appear, signed “Trois Hirondelles.”’140 Villeminot thus insisted on originality despite large production numbers. The hindrance to even higher production rates was again attributed to the ‘individualistic’ character of the French woman consumer.141 He reasoned how, ‘This tendency has been a difficulty as well as a stimulus for the ever renewing creation of our Houses.’142 Villeminot changed the barometer of creation, through ambiguous wording, so that ever-renewing creation replaced original, oneoff creation; transforming, in the words of Nancy Troy, ‘an object of serial if not mass production’ to a ‘singular, auratic’ one.143 And he subtly inserted French clothing production in industrial productivity, measured by high production and distribution. To attain national recognition, Les Trois Hirondelles also toured France and other countries in what Didier Grumbach termed ‘propaganda voyages,’ which included their 1953 voyage to New York.144 In order to work on the international market, the brand’s connection with Paris fashion was necessary. A 1952 issue of the Cahiers included an article titled ‘De Paris s’envoie la Mode’ (Fashion is sent out from Paris) that described the brand and the Fédération’s goal to export readymade fashion. President of the Association Warnery addressed foreign buyers in his text, which was also translated into English: These few photographs, taken for you in the Paris sites, will enable you to appreciate the style of these creations, the prices of which have been particularly studied for the foreign market. Your visit will be greatly appreciated. It will convince you of the interest you would find in doing regular business with

us, thus offering your clientele a wider choice of original pieces bearing the wondrous mark of: Paris.145

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

It drew on long-held beliefs that attached fashion to Paris and, through the juxtaposition of French monuments and sites, literally contextualized readymade production in the artistic tradition of France. Accompanying photographs pictured models next to these ‘Paris sites,’ including the Eiffel Tower, Maxime’s, the Pont Alexandre, the Palais de Chaillot and in St-Germain-des-Prés. Such trade articles may have also served to instruct journalists and manufacturers on how to brand the group. Recall for example the 1956 article in mainstream fashion magazine Le Petit Echo de la Mode, mentioned in this book’s introduction, which pictured garments by the couture en gros brands Basta and Wébé against a photograph of the Tuileries Gardens (Figure I.1). The title described how prêt-àporter ‘conquered’ Paris, conveying the clothing’s fashionability in its connection to this city, in aggressive language that exposed competition in national and global markets.146 The United States was France’s most sought after buyer, as Jean Teissèdre explicated in an article on Franco-American commercial relations for the 1951 issue of Rapports France-Etats-Unis. In it he described the ‘boldness, imagination, patience, perseverance, constancy and continuity’ required in ‘the conquest of a foreign market.’147 This was especially true for the American market, already crowded with its home-grown goods. Additionally, in the early 1950s, French prêt-à-porter rivalled Italy, whose competitively priced high-end ready-to-wear was being imported in large amounts to the United States.148 Competition also arose, notably between 1950 and 1953, from the Couturiers Associés, a group of couturiers that produced readymade clothing priced slightly above couture en gros. In view of this, the presentation of the Association des maisons de couture en gros to buyers at the Waldorf Astoria must have seemed an significant milestone. This event, according to Villeminot in 1954, ‘has shown that our production has a unique place in global clothing competition. The variety, quality and beauty of these pieces, the Paris brand that signs them, [and] their very reasonable prices make them appreciated by refined women in the entire world.’149 For Villeminot, prêt-à-porter drew on values attached to French design, such as quality, individuality and the Paris association, to succeed on the world market. Vogue’s 1953 editorial by Henry Clarke, ‘Les “Hirondelles” visitent New York,’ made a crucial new connection, that of French readymade fashion to the modernity of New York. Clarke counted among the photographers who fostered the fusion of the developing fields of photojournalism and fashion photography, and shaped visual constructions of prêt-à-porter, as his photographs appeared

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in Vogue’s ‘Tout Fait, Tout Prêt à Porter’ three other times between 1952 and 1955.150 He also worked at American Vogue before moving to Paris in 1949, and from 1951 held a contract for American, English and French Vogue.151 His 1953 editorial illustrated this transatlantic association. One photograph pictured the model Mary Jane Russell wearing a beige corduroy dress and jacket by Lempereur at the very forefront of the composition (Figure 2.1). At once towering over the reader, who viewed her from below, and in the shadow of a modern skyscraper, the image made a statement of epic proportions and construction. Russell’s body and ‘straight jacket’ mirrored the tall statuesque structure behind her, the United Nations Secretariat. In between the two was an empty space with the debris of unfinished construction, as though to signal the uncertainty of the clothing industry or the work to be done by consumers or manufacturers. Woman, with map in hand, surveyed her future domain and industry, symbolized by the city of New York, whilst Vogue correlated new constructions and modern identities in its description of the ‘comfortable’ garments ‘for leading an active life travelling or in the city.’152 The remainder of Clarke’s photographs presented models in and around other New York spaces, such as the Lever House and the Staten Island Ferry, with views of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. As noted above, Marshall Berman described the city’s structures as deliberate ‘symbolic expressions of modernity’ – a foil to the ‘age-old authority’ of Lefebvre’s monuments – which, over time, transformed New York into a ‘forest of symbols.’153 The missionaries might have also associated industrial power and modernity with these surroundings, as the report from the 1950 productivity mission of the Nitrogen industry revealed:

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

The European visitor traditionally meets the USA with the impressive scene of the skyscrapers of Manhattan. As we immediately took off to Washington DC, the massed gold, red, blue and green city lights and the interminable lines of streets and avenues revealed to us American power. An unforgettable feeling of magnificence, dynamism and prosperity emerged from this scene.154

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The New York City perceived by the missionaries, however, was also one of perpetual, large-scale construction, the result of Robert Moses’s plans for the city’s reconstruction in the 1950s and 1960s into, as Berman wrote, ‘an enormously complex network of bridges and approaches and parkways that would link Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester with Queens and Long Island.’155 With this in view, in his ‘forest of symbols,’‘axes and bulldozers are always at work, and great works constantly crashing down […] where new meanings are forever springing up with, and falling down from, the constructed trees.’156 Figure  2.1 visualized

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

this notion of cyclical modernity; the newness of the building was reinforced by older structures, the surrounding debris reminded the viewer of destruction, and the empty space foretold the next, more modern construction. Further, this editorial followed another in that issue that presented models in haute couture suits in the streets of Paris. This placement shaped a narrative in which ready-towear and New York’s modern architecture represented a turning point in fashion. Figure 2.1 in particular, located towards the end of the spread, visualized a new representation of sartorial modernity, with prêt-à-porter as the protagonist. Indeed images set against the United Nations Secretariat and Lever House stood out in terms of Clarke’s deployment of architecture. Both pictured, in full length, models against buildings in the International Style that were completed in 1952. The tall and slim women in Figure 2.1 echoed the form of the building behind her. Whilst in the other, a model in a wool dress by Jean-Pierre Gattegno, dialogued with the tall buildings in the reflection of the Lever House’s curtain wall. Its interlocked checked glass façade echoed the weave pattern of her dress. Mark Wigley reminds us of the tradition in modernist architecture in which ‘the fundamental experience of architecture is visual.’157 Drawing on the ideas of Le Corbusier in his L’art décoratif d’aujourd’hui, he adds that ‘the building is a certain way of looking.’158 Clarke’s photographs, taken from below to augment the height of the structures, instructed viewers on how to look at the modern architecture, garment and woman. Both clothing and architecture became monumental, politicized bodies, and evoked ideals of modern national power, presaging towering skyscraper fashion imagery in the following decade. Further, the United Nations could be seen to symbolize international harmony and a renewed attempt at global dialogue, replacing the failed League of Nations following the Second World War. And, perhaps to France’s chagrin, the building represented not only the new inclusion of the United States in international politics, but its physical leadership. The building could also be viewed as one thread in Moses’s interwoven metropolis, as he was instrumental in securing the necessary funding and land for its construction. It thus represented perfect American organization that had a parallel in the New York fashion industry. Still, Les Trois Hirondelles provided a means for manufacturers to participate in a sort of cross-cultural exchange. Through this trip to New York, they could stage a reversal of the Marshall Plan, and assert the continued dominance of French fashion. The building itself, constructed between 1948 and 1952, was tinged with French modernism, based largely on Le Corbusier’s design (and Oscar Niemeyer to a lesser extent). In this image, it connected French prêt-à-porter to the seat of political power, to a country that represented both model and competitor and to Berman’s foremost symbol of modernity.

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The French used the International Style to shape a national image for export, reliant on a new way of looking. This rationale also informed the United States’ 1955 exhibition in Paris, ‘50 Years of American Art,’ which opened with a display of post-war architecture, including the Lever House and other modernist examples by Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Eames, Philip Johnson and Richard Neutra. Gay McDonald relates how French spectators were ‘plunged immediately into the very heart of American life’ on viewing the ‘giant photos twenty feet in height, and scale models and plans.’159 The 1950s influx of American propaganda and productivity missions instructing how to deploy art, architecture and clothing as diplomatic tools was not lost on the French. A 1956 article in the journal Art et Décoration on the newly constructed French embassy in Sarrebrück by Boris J. Lacroix very clearly articulated the use of architecture as propaganda in the goal of diplomacy and shaping a national image. Lacroix explained that: ‘if the duties of diplomatic representation are multiple and complex, those of propaganda or, more to the point, the propagation of national genius are not.’160 The author defined France’s ‘cultural activities,’ and in particular ‘contemporary architecture and decoration’ as ‘the most convincing evidence of its health.’161 The article included photographs of the interior and exterior of the building, whose thin, wide edifice closely resembled the United Nations building. International Style backdrops in fashion photography likewise functioned to circulate the message of France’s ‘health’ or fashion hegemony. If International Modernism was appropriate for diplomacy and the exportation of nationhood, an impressive four pages of advertisements for Les Trois Hirondelles that appeared in the August 1956 issue of Vogue, the first devoted solely to prêt-à-porter, convey a nuance (Figure 2.5). Photographs by Jacques Boucher, a frequent contributor to Vogue’s ‘Tout Fait, Tout Prêt à Porter’ editorials, departed visually from imagery of Paris monuments. Here, models posed alongside residential modernist buildings, which teetered ambiguously between avant-garde modernism and the common grand ensemble. These tower blocks within housing projects were the focus of large-scale construction in the outskirts of Paris and other large French cities over the post-war period, so they would have been an apt metaphor for the development of the dress industry. Unlike the imagery that conflated models with New York’s monumental skyscrapers; it highlighted minor, detailed aspects of architectural construction, in the same way that ready-to-wear’s promotional rhetoric stressed individualized attention to detail. This articulation differentiating French and foreign industries was again referenced in an Associated Press article that noted how five manufacturers of Les Trois Hirondelles branched out to New York. While the manufacturers admitted, ‘Of course we don’t expect to

Figure 2.5  Les Trois Hirondelles advertisement. Photographs by Jacques Boucher, Vogue Paris, August 1956 © Vogue Paris Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

compete with American mass-production methods,’ the author speculated that ‘the French suits and dresses are likely to have more handfinishing.’162 The article, titled ‘French Invade U.S. Ready-to-Wear Market,’ was disseminated to a large number of regional American newspapers between July and August 1955. In yet another fashion-military allusion, the article presented Les Trois Hirondelles as the French representation of ready-to-wear. And like the architectural spaces in the Vogue advertisement, this brand signalled a negotiation between luxury and mass production. And, just as the ambiguous spaces prefigured fashion imagery that drew more heavily on monumental modernist styles, Les Trois Hirondelles stood for a type of readymade dress that would disappear in the

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next decade (the label folded in 1961) in view of the emergence of new brands, political regimes and economic systems. The turn of 1957 to 1958 was a period of many shifts in France that called for increased internal organization of its clothing industry, including the country’s entry as the first regional group member into New York’s Fashion Group in 1957.163 The Fourth Republic, with its weak executive, and lack of organization and sense of identity, gave way to the Fifth Republic in October 1958, months after the Algerian crisis. Industrial dialogue continued to reveal qualms about the coordination and identity of the industry.164 The issues were heightened in view of its increasing expansion, due especially to the 1958 Treaty of Rome, after which France entered the European Economic Community. An article in the November 1958 issue of the Cahiers tensely discussed the approaching event and, in view of a recent monthlong industrial recession, questioned how France would be able to compete on the exterior market.165 This shift called for the creation of the Comité Européen de Liaison des Industries du Vêtement Féminin in 1960, presided over by Lempereur, which grouped the clothing industries of France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands and Luxembourg. This creation of ‘a European fashion’ to complement the ‘unique European market,’ as an article in trade publication Elégence Européen presaged, would call for a strengthening of industrial identity.166 More particularly, it necessitated an identity to reflect a strong, independent Fifth Republic France within an interconnected Europe. Just as after the war, the country doubted its strength and future in this newer transition. In contrast, the 1958 Brussels Exposition provided an opportunity to stage an external show of value. As the first world’s fair since before the Second World War – and at the height of the Cold War – it was a pivotal occasion for France and other nations to illustrate their post-war productivity and reconstructed image. Its theme, ‘A World View – A New Humanism,’ invited each nation to exhibit, according to a British news clip, ‘not only its technical progress but also its way of life, very appropriate to an exhibition whose theme is peace.’167 It was also an occasion to reassess the state of humanity after rapid post-war modernization, with which France had an uneasy relationship. These somewhat contradictory aims were represented by the exhibition’s iconic symbol, the Atomium, a sculptural reproduction of molecules by André Waterkeyn and André and Jean Polak. The sculpture’s power seemed more potent in view of the period’s continual technical advances, not least of which was the 1957 launch of Sputnik. Belgian organizers thus looked to show ‘civilisation of the nuclear age,’ and how contemporary force and progress could be harnessed for good.168 Likewise, an article on the exhibition in Le Petit Echo de la Mode testified that the Atomium symbolized ‘a new force, pacifying and charitable, at the service of

Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic

human progress.’169 This theme provided the ideal forum for the presentation of both the individualistic and technically progressive aspects of French prêtà-porter. Indeed the French Pavilion displayed it and other objects in a setting spotlighting the values of fashion, industry and the everyday. There were spaces that presented machines in action, as well as those showcasing fashion in a quotidian framework, clothing which, according to a post-exposition publication, ‘correspond[ed] to the rhythm of the day of man (rest, work, leisure).’170 The French products, including couture en gros garments, sat well in these increasingly familiar promotional themes.171 Yet the exhibition of French readymade dress was in no way atypical in a world’s fair, which historically functioned as a platform to display industrial wares. The difference in 1958 owed to shifts in the clothing industry and its press apparatus. Like Clarke’s earlier Vogue editorial set in New York, in 1958 magazines cemented a link between industry and fashion through prêt-à-porter. The exposition provided the opportunity for them to promote clothing through the lens of modern progress, as a December 1957 article in Elle proclaimed: ‘Such an event is a mirror onto which a generation reflects and projects itself into the future. In choosing it as the setting for this presentation of ready-to-wear dresses, we sought to highlight the role that fashion’s avant-garde plays in the avant-garde of progress.’172 Jean-François Clair’s accompanying photographs bolstered these aims: in juxtaposing figure and structure as performative symbols of modernity, in the construction site of the Brussels Exposition. The article opened with an image of a model whose coat by Wébé echoed the shape of the bulbous Atomium in the background (Figure  2.6). This connection was reinforced by the circular page layout, as well as text describing the ‘balloon-coat’ as the ‘tenth sphere to this nuclear system.’173 Indeed journalists chose to picture the most rounded and flared silhouettes of the season to make this direct comparison between fashion and the cutting-edge technology that the Atomium represented, prefiguring the space age fashionability of the following decade. Yet there was a slight disconnect between dressed bodies and surrounding space and in journalists’ and image makers’ sought-after modernity. Clair also photographed the models amidst the cast-iron pillars and rubble of the unfinished exposition. Like Clarke’s Vogue editorial, these images connected readymade clothing with a distinctly French modernity that, as Berman theorized, ceaselessly presaged the next, newer construction. The above-mentioned article in Petit Echo de la Mode similarly focused on the unfinished and in-progress aspect of the site: ‘The entire town is transformed into a building site. […] for months now, in anticipation of what we’re calling for short “l’Expo 58”, drillers, concrete mixers, pneumatic guns, motors and all sorts of tools labour, dig up,

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Figure  2.6  Ensemble by Wébé. Photograph by Jean-François Clair, Elle, 30  December 1957 © Claude Brouet, Jean-François Clair/ELLE FRANCE

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[and] transform Brussels.’174 Through these magazines, readers could follow the preparation and even attend the event vicariously. Yet although image makers quite clearly stated that prêt-à-porter was relevant for its modern setting, the models sat falsely in it, exposing their forced placement. The tension transferred to women in reading and looking is the subject of the following chapter, which unpacks magazines’ construction of modern body, dress and space in the decade that preceded the Exposition.

­  ­Displaying industrial 3 modernity in 1950s’ Elle: Readymade dress, rational space and the image of women In 1952, weekly fashion magazine Elle sent its fashion editor Annie Rivemale to report on the completion of the hydroelectric Donzère-Mondragon dam on the Rhône. Rivemale’s visit coincided with the dam’s inauguration by French president Vincent Auriol after four years of construction. Her resulting article, ‘Elle a vu les 7 Miracles de Donzère-Mondragon’ (Elle has seen the seven miracles of DonzèreMondragon) detailed the project’s seven ‘miracles’ of manmade construction, including an immense canal, a high-tech centre of operations and an ornately designed factory wall. Numerous photographs by Jacques Ravasse documented these sites and stressed the enormity of the project: from the first page, which pictured a vast landscape that designated the dam, bridges, villages, canals and factory to aerial shots into the dam’s cavernous depths. Other images of heavy machinery and in-progress construction reinforced the power and newness of the work itself. The article also incorporated models within these contexts, clad in readymade garments by department store and independent brands. One page included a large-scale photograph of the smiling Marie-Claire Nivoix, posed casually next to a turbine, her smart, full-skirted tweed coatdress by Lempereur made practical worn over a jersey turtleneck (Figure  3.1). This image was surrounded by smaller ones of models in the machine room, waving at boats in the lock and at the construction site pointing to some awe-inspiring sight. The photographs’ composition drew viewers’ attention to the garments and an apparatus, such as the turbine, or highlighted the interaction between model and environment. ‘Side by side,’ clothing and industry were the focal points of these images.1 Both were cast as new and monumental national creations in the wake of the Second World War, at which time the country worked to improve its industrial infrastructure within its wider modernization plans, as the previous chapter discussed. In fact, this editorial fits well in the context of the first (Monnet) Plan de modernization et d’équipement between 1946 and 1952,

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Figure  3.1  Garments by Lempereur, Casalino, Gattegno and Weill. Photographs by Jacques Ravasse, Elle, 10 November 1952 © Annie Rivemale, Jacques Ravasse/ELLE FRANCE. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive

which prioritized heavy industry notably targeting coal mining, steel, electricity, cement, agricultural machinery and rail transport. The dam – a potential power source of all national industry – was a particularly potent symbol. Accompanying text further connected clothing and larger construction projects in announcing an eighth miracle: the ‘fashion-concrete marriage’2 – another foil to the ‘age-old authority’ of Lefebvre’s monuments from Chapter  1. As though Rivemale knew

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

that readers would make this ‘fantastical comparison’ with some difficulty, she urged them to envision, side by side, ‘a gigantic concrete mural that constitutes the most important Hydraulic Power Centre in Western Europe’ and ‘a young woman in her favourite dress.’3 Nonetheless Rivemale made sure to emphasize the ‘fragile elegance,’ of the readymade clothing, to minimize the negative aspects of this association. Women, in the form of fashionable models, were portrayed as explorers and stakeholders in this new industrialized France. One model, at the foot of the reinforced concrete factory wall, truly epitomized the ‘fashion-concrete marriage’ as the squares of her tartan-patterned dress by Jacqueline Monnin echoed the blocks of the sculptural wall (Plate 3). Full-length colour photographs such as this one interspersed among the black-and-white documentary-style images reaffirmed the text’s fantastical characterizations. These images transported the reader to an imagined realm where the performance of fashion could occur on a beach, in a construction site or against a concrete wall. With the tool of Kodachrome and Ektachrome film technologies, colour was used increasingly in fashion advertising and editorial photography. Certainly, the magazine’s distinctive use of highly saturated colour photography had as much to do with Roland Barthes’s characterization of Elle in the mid-1950s as ‘a real mythological treasure’ as its content.4 In 1952 writer Colette Audry similarly described Elle as ‘a marvellous mosaic of technicolour’ meant to captivate and distract from the realities of life.5 Exposing issues of class and gender inequality, their comments also illustrated the influence of the United States, where the Eastman Kodak Company was located. Jean Chevalier, who directed Elle’s photography studio from 1946 to 1961 and in that time built a colour printing lab in close connection to Kodak, played a decisive role in integrating American-style editorial and advertising imagery in the magazine. The effects of this visual culture were noted as early as 1951, when Marshall McLuhan uncovered the ‘social myths or forms’ in the American news media in industrial society ‘[…] in order to manipulate, exploit, control […].’6 The plasticized, colourful visualization of Plate 3 characterized Elle imagery during the 1950s, and simultaneously served to mask industrial realities as it sold the promise of modern garment, lifestyle and femininity. Elle equated its journalists and models, in garments as new as the construction they witnessed, to their engineer counterparts. Images forecasted those in Vogue and Elle of models against the unfinished United Nations building and Brussels Exposition site in 1953 and 1957. The Donzère-Mondragon photographs also connected readymade clothing to Marshall Berman’s notion of cyclical modernity through constant construction.7 Within this metaphor, Rivemale compared the intense, physical, mechanized work of the dam to that of clothing production: ‘Imagine 7,000

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workers labouring without interruption during four years in the infernal noise of drills and, next to that, thousands of silent hands creating an ephemeral fashion.’8 Factory production and technology, also behind the creation of readymade dress, filtered through to the magazine. Elle asserted its pivotal role as an advocate of the modernity of these national projects. Rivemale described how a Monsieur Olivier, in charge of visitors to the dam, remarked that, following hordes of engineers, this was the first visit by a woman’s magazine. She made sure to note that this issue celebrated Elle’s seventh anniversary and connected this milestone to ‘the celebration of the birth of the giant dam of Donzère-Mondragon by a President of the Republic, a Council President, several ministers, 45 ambassadors […].’9 Indeed, throughout the 1950s, the magazine reported on and took part in design and architectural projects in the context of France’s rapid urbanization, housing crisis and efforts to compete on the exterior market through industrial design.10 In fact from January 1954 AnneMarie Raimond became editor of the new section, ‘Urbanisme,’ which co-existed with Maison, under Annie Fabre’s editorship. Elle’s interest in these issues coincided with its increased coverage of readymade clothing from late 1952. Prêt-à-porter, a product of the industry that perturbed mainstream notions of French artisanal production, was directly implicated in the country’s reconstruction. The previous chapter considered the clothing industry in the framework of the recovering and industrializing economy of the Fourth Republic. It showed how the industry and government worked together to employ prêt-à-porter to renegotiate and reinvent the industry and the country’s identity and cultural hegemony, previously built around couture. Implicit in this undertaking was the re-conceptualization of dress within the framework of industrial modernity in magazines, as seen in the article on the Donzère-Mondragon dam. This chapter asks how Elle’s new construction of fashion and femininity negotiated components of modernity, such as speed, standardization and productivity, and disseminated them in relation to readymade dress. As noted in Chapter 1, from its first issue, the magazine positioned itself as the voice of a post-war, modern dialogue in relation to its more informal representations of women and clothing, and content which often addressed wider sociocultural issues. Perhaps its most significant distinguishing feature was the intimate dialogue the magazine professed to foster with its readers, who, in the 1950s, constituted a large number of French women from both the working and upper classes.11 In addition to articles that discussed often controversial issues that related to women’s personal lives, editorials directly addressed their readers so that they became conflated with the magazine itself. This relationship grounds this chapter’s exploration of the wider meanings behind Elle’s presentation of dress, space and women. It is also important to note that, in addition to this editorial influence, the magazine had a more explicit say in

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

how women consumed fashion and items for the home, in its lines of readymade objects and sewing patterns (Patrons Elle-va-bien). Originating in the immediate post-war years of austerity, Elle’s Bons magiques, or magic coupons, could be cut out and exchanged against goods, which typically numbered one per issue.12 This expanded in time notably once the magazine had a public space in the 1950s on 38, Champs-Elysées where products could be directly acquired (mail-order and regional depots were options outside of Paris). Elle therefore played a definite role in forming an important group of post-war women consumers who, as Rebecca J. Pulju has demonstrated, ‘embraced new methods of spending and ideas about consumption, helping drive economic expansion through their demands and purchases.’13 While this first part questions how representations of women as active participants in wider currents of modernity informed readers’ consumer identity, the second asks how Elle’s presentation of bodies in space instructed them on ways of seeing and coping with modernity. Although it does not address dress specifically, this questioning is important as Elle conceptualized women through their bodily relationship to domestic space and objects. Therefore for the reader, space became what Pierre Bourdieu theorized as an ‘abstract representation’ ‘from which [to] see the social world.’14 The modern meaning that can be drawn from this relationship was heightened in view of period importance placed on the home, in terms of women’s domestic roles, and the influx of appliances and other products presented at fairs and in magazines. This is set in the wider context of a massive rebuilding project directed by the Ministère de la reconstruction et de l’urbanisme (MRU) from 1944, that transformed post-war French dwelling to house new immigrant and urban populations as well as those displaced in wartime destruction and dilapidated buildings. The domestic thus illustrated the ‘hallucinating rhythm of scientific discoveries and progresses of the industry,’ according to a 1956 article on the Salon des Arts Ménagers, a yearly fair devoted to household appliances and design.15 The final section considers display and technology in Elle imagery in the years between the 1952 shoot at DonzèreMondragon and the 1958 Brussels Exposition. It studies Elle’s deployment of myth to mediate its technological underpinning of modernity. Largely out of step with the ‘modernity’ Elle offered, the government encouraged women to assume traditional roles during the Fourth Republic. In turn, Simone de Beauvoir questioned the ambiguous nature of women’s place in 1949. She wrote: ‘One wonders if women still exist, if they will always exist, whether or not it is desirable that they should, what place they occupy in this world, what their place should be.’16 Throughout, this chapter underlines this notion of post-war femininity as a source of uncertainty, contradiction and conflict.

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Elle’s structural depiction of time

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As discussed in the last chapter, throughout the 1950s fashion trade groups and press worked to open pathways for dialogue and cooperation. In addition to its articles that openly communicated industrial ‘educational propaganda’ that listed the benefits of readymade clothing didactically, the fashion press indirectly conveyed ideas of productivity and scientific management in textual and visual representations of these garments. These narratives, which spanned the late 1940s to the early 1960s, stressed speed as a measure of modernity, in terms of mechanized production processes, fast purchases in shops and client lifestyle.17 These ideas were first clearly articulated in a 1952 issue of Elle, which asked for readers’ own opinions in a six-page survey titled ‘Would you like to find your dresses ready made?’ The author characterized confection as the ideal dressing mode for the present moment for rushed, busy and active women, as opposed to a visit to the dressmaker, a vestige of the past. Even a made-to-measure seamstress named Madame Filleaudeau was cited, who noted, ‘women today are hurried and want to see what they will buy and wear right away. I thus find “confection” excellent’.18 Elle stressed the economy and rapidity of this production to hide its main disadvantages, imperfect fit and standardization. The values of speed and productivity, reinforced by the implication of lifestyle, underpinned the magazine’s construction of the feminine ideal. In addition, through the connection of clothing with the speed of modernity, the magazine characterized the fashionable and up-to-date woman as in sync with the wider currents; this idea lay beneath its attempts to shape a modern woman. A 1953 issue of Elle elaborated on these ideas in its ‘Vite et Bien’ (Fast and Well) section that included rapid clothing, cuisine and home decoration instructions. It featured an editorial, ‘Habillez-vous à l’heure présente’ (Dress yourself for current times), in which Simone Baron set the tone for subsequent articles on the success of French confection and its relevance for modern, practical lifestyles and budgets of women who ‘have neither the time nor the money to get dressed to measure.’19 Indeed, the accompanying photograph of a triangle of models, Bettina, Gigi and Suzy Parker (clockwise from top), perched alertly reflected the communal worries of women à propos the fast-paced rhythm of modernity (Plate 4). This picture illustrated, as Rebecca Arnold describes 1950s’ American fashion imagery, ‘photographers’ continual focus on surface, texture and colour in the fabrics used, and the ways these are styled and presented.’20 Readers’ eyes worked to touch the fuzz of the tweed, its stiffness echoed in the angularity of the models’ poses, garment lines and graphic details. They in turn worked to hold their stances, reliant on each other’s bodies to stay upright, their exaggerated expressions amplifying

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

the drama. The colours were equally coordinated, down to the red accents of hair, fabric edging and lipstick. Elle stood out unmistakably from other publications for its colour printing capabilities at the Studio Astorg. With his assistant Henry Fournier, Jean Chevalier built a laboratory for colour processing there around 1949, perhaps the only one in France to use Kodak’s modern colour photographic processes.21 This comes in the years after Ektachrome was introduced to the public in 1946, the first colour film from Kodak which photographers could process themselves with chemical kits. With its colorants self-contained, it was also easier to process than Kodachrome in which colours dyes were added in several steps. Chevalier also built the country’s first strobe flash equipment with very powerful industrial capacitors to attain the sharp exposures needed for colour.22 These lights emitted an intense heat, making the models’ poses in Plate 4 all the more arduous, which they held while waiting for the accumulators to recharge for the next shot. From styling to printing, the heavily constructed image carried strong implications concerning the intricate manufacture of female image and identity. And the appropriate clothing was crucial to the success of this picture: Baron’s text portrayed the models’ couture en gros garments by Lempereur and Jacqueline Monnin as solutions to their problems. For, their clothing would correspond to their busy lifestyles, as it was easily purchasable in accessible shops throughout France, as opposed to lengthy visits to the local seamstress or the process of hand sewing. Baron employed terminology that evoked readiness in descriptions of the dresses as ‘toutes faites’ (all done) or ‘tout prêt’ (all ready), which were used prevalently throughout the decade, in addition to confection and later prêt-àporter.23 Further, she implied that the reader herself ought to be ready for whatever the modern world had in store. For, the title, whose expression ‘l’heure présente’ interchanged ‘right now’ and ‘current times,’ stressed both the contemporaneity and urgency of the notion of ‘time.’ The article visually asserted its focus on time through accompanying photographs of models who looked at their wristwatches and stood atop oversized clocks (Plate 5). The women acted out busy scenarios and seemed unprepared and behind in a race against time, much like the position of the postwar clothing industry, which sought to catch up to more industrialized nations. The images closely related to dialogue in the trade press, such as the series of articles written by textiles machinery producer Jacques Roux for the Cahiers in 1948. As mentioned in Chapter 2, they encapsulated major themes of the postwar dialogue within the industry, grounded in fears of technological shortcoming, exacerbated by France’s wartime losses, and the goal to modernize its ‘artisanal’ methods.24 Roux’s language stressed speedy and mechanized movement, and

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a scientific representation of modernity. Pictured en masse, models in Plate 5 likewise visualized the serial production of their garments. As though working to combat the perception of post-war France’s insufficient productivity, the rushed models also illustrated Roux’s characterization of workers ‘ruthlessly chasing away dead time, unnecessary and costly gestures.’25 Imagery that evoked production fortified clothing’s connection with the speed of modernity, and its portrayal of the fashionably current woman as productive. These ideas were reinforced by Françoise Giroud’s article in this issue, in which she positioned time and speed at the centre of contemporary preoccupations. Titled ‘A la recherche du temps à gagner,’ the article did not search for a Proustian temps perdu but time ‘gained’ (à gagner) through human efforts. Giroud characterized present-day men and women as impatient and in a constant race or struggle against time, personified as a landlord who rents out years. She painted the picture of modernity as a linear path of progress, wherein men had increasingly learned ‘to prolong the lease,’ thanks to scientists and doctors’ advances in, for instance, surgery and penicillin.26 She defined speed as another manmade invention ‘to give the illusion of multiplying hours.’27 Modern conveniences thus allowed men to ‘cheat’ and ‘triumph over Time and accomplish in 24 hours what their fathers would have done in 240.’28 The reader might have connected these scientific advances with Baron’s earlier comments on speed, clothing production and dressing, which informed them that ‘New machines that arrived from America reduce production time’ and ‘Getting dressed fast and well has become a reality.’29 Likewise, the fabric of a dress from circa 1953 sold at the department store Printemps could be viewed as another tool of speed (Plate 6). Made from fibranne, a silklike viscose rayon, it was both washable and wrinklefree, as printed on its selvedge. Alexandra Bosc has noted that fibranne was renamed Flésa by the Industrie des textiles artificiels in 1950 to disassociate it, like other older synthetic fabrics such as rayon, from wartime penury.30 ‘Flésa (controle de qualité)’ was also printed on the selvedge of this dress (Plate 6, detail). Armed with this textual reassurance of quality that masked industrial realities, close to the body yet immersed within and camouflaged by the textile’s pattern of tiny, organic droplets, the wearer embodied a blend of technology and decoration, the material of Giroud’s progressive modernity. This modernity was not without detours; she wrote that inevitably, ‘furious Time takes its revenge. A plane crashes, the nerves of a man crack.’31 The negative results of scientific progress were valid concerns in the post-war period, as reading Henri Lefebvre’s first volume of his Critique de la vie quotidienne in 1947 illustrates. He captured the country’s scepticism of modern technology and described the disconnect that would result from the encounter between advancement, in

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

the ‘ideal home’ for one, and regression in terms of social relationships and the standard of living, writing: ‘The remarkable way in which modern techniques have penetrated everyday life has thus introduced into this backward sector the uneven development which characterizes every aspect of our era.’32 He further explored ideas of ‘backwardness’ and modern appliances in his second volume, writing in 1961 that ‘If these gestures increase effectiveness – productivity – they also split things up; they truncate, they make mincemeat of everyday life; they leave margins and empty spaces.’33 Likewise, social and material disconnect was exposed in Elle’s visual representations of dress and technology. And although Giroud’s tone was less moralizing than that of Lefebvre, her subtle distrust of modern speed and technology can be read as immobilisme regarding manmade tools of speed, which included readymade dress. In her reflections of this period, she described the materiality of this modernization and its advocate, Elle editor-in-chief Hélène Lazareff: ‘With her American culture, she was the vehicle for a modernity that, for better or worse, would invade French society. She was made for the world of disposable cigarette lighters, dresses that last for a season, plastic packaging. In a ravaged France, the society of consumption was still far away. But Hélène was already the mouthpiece of its hysteria.’34 This modernity was communicated via imagery and, as such, Chevalier’s influence and close collaboration with Lazareff is key to reading Elle’s 1950s’ messaging. Chevalier’s work was informed by American aesthetics and new technologies, including his photography for magazines such as Collier’s and Fortune from the mid-1940s, the close relationship he fostered with Kodak and the importance he placed on invention in terms of photographic equipment and process. Thus emergent technology – from colour processing to electronic flash separations – was integral to producing the physical magazine despite the ambivalence with which Giroud discussed manmade tools of speed. Giroud had articulated her uneasy relationship to change in her discussion of the shift from haute couture to confection. In an article from November 1951, she lamented the closure of several couture houses since 1947 yet commended the ‘general evolution of women’ from ‘the doll-woman uniquely preoccupied by her hats and dresses’ to one who ‘prefers to buy and maintain a personal car, holidays, a washing machine, a refrigerator.’35 But most importantly, this client was too ‘rushed’ to wait three weeks for a couture garment. Likewise, in her 1953 article, Giroud accepted speed as it was implicit in modernity and vital to progress: she even formulated a ‘code of speed’ because ‘If you know how to manage speed it will serve you well.’36 Giroud implored readers not to lose or misuse their time, which called for organization, efficient movements and the use of modern

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household appliances, just as Baron’s earlier fashion editorial prescribed, ‘don’t lose a minute: choose, wear.’ Her comments illustrated the simultaneous pull backwards and forwards in French society epitomized by readymade dress. And they show how, for the magazine, modernity also embraced urgency, tension and even apprehension, epitomized by its 1956 editorial ‘Bravo la confection française,’ cited in Chapter 1 (see Figure 1.5).37 As opposed to the unprepared, rushed women atop clocks, hindered by their own superfluous gestures, the productive models in the subsequent pages of the 1953 editorial used their time wisely and appeared poised and ready for their given activity. A double-page spread featuring day dresses on one side and evening dresses on the other asserted that readymade garments timed the day perfectly. In these and other editorials, Elle situated readymades in the framework of the day, within which it separated clothing according to time and function, whether casual or formal, professional or private. Throughout the decade, the magazine would draw on discourses of speed, practicality and lifestyle in its presentation of readymade garments. Take, for instance, a 1956 editorial that discussed the occupations of three ‘real’ women outside the studio setting, a housewife, a shopkeeper and a secretary. Articles such as this substantiate Susan Weiner’s claim that from 1945 to the late 1950s, Elle presented the image of a ‘uniquely modern’ woman and ‘the fantasy of “having it all”’: a traditional home life and a job outside of this sphere.38 The magazine drew readers into this fantasy by conflating them with the women it pictured: ‘Here are three young women with very different lifestyles. Like you, perhaps, they live outside the city and must, in the morning, equip themselves for comfortable travel, their activities, and for dressier evenings out.’39 One page presented the activities of Marie-José, the mother, and the clothing necessary for each endeavour (Figure  3.2). Images in a grid-like pattern picturing her actions were reinforced by the text that described them, which included taking care of her child, shopping in the city, making visits and gardening. The author included retail and price information alongside the images, as was standard for readymade editorials, which cemented the notion that clothing and lifestyle were purchasable. Reflecting on the post-war period, in 1968 Jean Baudrillard wrote that ‘the measuring of time produces anxiety when it serves to assign us to social tasks, but it makes us feel safe when it substantializes time and cuts it into slices like an object of consumption.’40 This imagery, which separated and organized women’s commodities, activities and spaces in compartments and rows, evoked Structuralism’s conception of the world as systems of related things. This philosophical movement that swept through French intellectual life in the post-war period was also visible in the magazine, lending credence to Lefebvre’s assertion that ‘There is a widespread representation of reality as a structure.’41 For,

Marie-José exemplified Roland Barthes’s ‘Structuralist Man,’ who he characterized, in 1963, ‘not by his ideas or his languages […] but by the way in which he mentally experiences structure.’42 Marie-José’s separated and defined tasks eased reader’s apprehension vis-à-vis the speed of modern life. Reinforced by the magazine’s implication of lifestyle, the industrial values of speed and productivity underpinned its construction of the feminine ideal.

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

Figure  3.2  Photographs by Jean-François Clair, Elle, 13  February 1956 © Annie Rivemale, Jean-François Clair/ELLE FRANCE

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Thus models epitomized, as Arnold writes, the 1950s ‘ideal of efficient femininity.’43 Images of Marie-José undertaking a diverse range of activities necessitated readymade dress as her ‘modern and well-adapted machinery,’ as Roux had stated in regard to industrial production in 1948. Through her scientific management of time and space in the feminine sphere, Marie-José was a model of productivity for readers to emulate. Her forced rhythm resembles the linear time scale that Lefebvre described in volume two of his Critique. Accordingly, the linear time of ‘modern man’ opposes the natural rhythm of cyclic time. Modern man controls linear time which is both progressive, ‘grow[ing] indefinitely from an initial zero,’ and ‘discontinuous,’ in that ‘it fragments into partial time scales assigned to one thing or another according to a programme which is abstract in relation to time. It dissects indefinitely.’44 The feminine press similarly manipulated and fixed time to centre around domestic and quotidian events and the purchase of readymade garments.45 Giroud advised readers to improve their health, beauty and knowledge, use their time productively and fight against ‘ennui.’46 She was perhaps influenced by Simone de Beauvoir’s radical and epic text on the situation of women, The Second Sex, published in 1949. In her chapter on ‘The Married Woman,’ she characterized marriage as ‘a life of stable equilibrium’ and described the boredom experienced by the woman at home.47 She wrote that marriage was the framework from which women situated themselves in society, as articles and imagery in Elle reinforced throughout the decade: ‘It is still true that most women are married, or have been, or plan to be, or suffer from not being.’48 Beauvoir implored women, the objectified Other, to fight for emancipation against the sovereign self (Man). Likewise, Giroud warned readers to move according to their own pace, but not to rush. For her, the struggle against ennui implied a deep understanding of one’s ‘natural pace’ or ‘individual rhythm,’ which echoed the existentialist support of Beauvoir’s text.49 Perhaps these ideas were reinforced for readers when, in 1955, Elle published extracts of The Second Sex.50 Giroud’s article, especially intriguing in view of her later role as the first Minister of Women’s Affairs in 1974, indicated an understated theme seen throughout the decade in Elle: in addition to propagating the ideal of the efficient housewife, articles sought a personal dialogue with readers that questioned traditional feminine roles directly and indirectly, through the promotion of an active femininity. Articles that, for example, discussed employment or happiness in marriage, took on new meaning when read alongside editorials that pictured women creators with text couched in a language of problem solving. The abovementioned 1953 issue of Elle also included home decorating tips that could be accomplished quickly by the female reader. It was one of countless issues

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

from 1953 that offered articles on decoration, repairs and bricolage, all of which encompassed the magazine’s rhetoric of readiness. A 1954 issue presented an article on prefabricated housing, according to which: ‘Tout-Prêt’ (all ready) ‘is the magic slogan of 1954. It is a gaining of time, fatigue and money. Fashion has its “Prêt à porter,” urbanism its “Prêt à monter.” That is, the prefabricated house, which you can order by telephone and have delivered and installed within days. New method for the bold and rushed.’51 Other articles described prefabricated homes as ‘prêt à habiter’ and ‘Maison Minute.’52 In one, furniture designer Jacques Luzeau discussed Elle’s recent tour of France to view and inspect prefabricated homes: ‘We have seen, at the four corners of France, happy families living in houses unlike any others. Homes delivered ready made. Can this be real? A home ordered by telephone, delivered in packages, installed in three days, inhabitable immediately?’53 After the tours, author Anne-Marie Raimond, in charge of Elle’s department dedicated to urbanism and lodging as noted above, questioned the Minister of Construction about the installation and purchase process. In response to her queries, the article concluded with the advice that ‘the “tout-fait” for the home, as in couture, is a valid solution.’54 It is remarkable how in the context of magazines, readymade dress necessitated a new language of production and distribution that influenced that of other industries. In these various instances Elle defined products as solutions to problems such as time and money. In the case of Annette, the secretary counterpart to MarieJosé, ‘transformative two-piece outfits’ allowed her to ‘renew her wardrobe’ whilst easily moving between activities. Her red, pleated jersey skirt was adaptable to three different situations with the pairing of either a smock, a poplin blouse and, for the evening, a low-cut sweater and crinoline petticoat. Mix-and-match ensembles epitomized practicality and adaptability. As Structuralist woman, Annette paired different garments for new meanings. Although her behaviour was determined by structure, or a standardized set of garments, the article implicated the participation and effort of the user and, echoing the ideas of Beauvoir, petitioned existential woman to make choices. Just as journalists underscored the role of the individual in coordinating and wearing readymade clothing, the 1954 ‘Prêt à monter’ article explained to readers the possibility of customization of their houses. It pointed out, for instance, the different models of pre-fabricated houses available in the catalogue or the possibility of enlarging the home over time. The article noted the houses’ ‘assembly-line factory’ production but minimized their industrial homogeneity by invoking French individualist tendencies, as discussed in the previous chapter.55 According to the author, ‘in light of the French taste for the “individual,” both prefabrication-confection and prefabrication “to measure” are available: you can

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choose a serially-produced house, or rather have your architect study, plan and prefabricate it.’56 This marketing strategy of ‘standardized diversity’ accommodated the ‘desire for individualism,’ as Joan Ockman pointed out as regards American post-war architecture.57 In 1950s France, text and imagery in Elle, such as the models atop clocks or in grid patterns, accommodated both Giroud’s notion of ‘individual rhythm’ and serial production, a blend of tradition and modernity that was so key to the identity of prêt-à-porter. Articles that implied consumer choice and action in relation to home decoration reinforced the construction of a productive femininity. In one from 1957 readers were introduced to the married couple Jean and Micheline who described how they built their house themselves. It was Elle’s prefabricated Maison Minute, characterized as ‘the house-snail of the modern woman who carries her home on her shoulders, and who knows how to undertake an installation anywhere.’58 As such the magazine positioned women as the main builders, and their homes as portable like clothing. Here Micheline was not only a creator, she was endowed with valuable consumer and accounting jobs ‘because the modern woman is one of the principal consumers of the economic world, because there is in each of you a businessman – you manage your family budget – a company manager – you govern your household.’59 Through such professionalization of the domestic, Elle asserted that women’s efficient creativity allowed them to function in a modern and complex world. The agency, productivity and modernity implied in these images contradicted women’s standing. They won suffrage in 1944, yet the constitution of the Fourth Republic clearly contextualized this right within the framework of motherhood.60 Women remained legally subservient to their husbands under the Napoleonic Code Civil during the 1950s. In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s industrialists relied on earlier notions of scientific management to improve production, while, as Weiner wrote, ‘postwar culture was more visibly marked by the revalorization of female domesticity.’61 At the same time feminist groups were relatively silent.62 This signified frozen time in which progress halted for women unlike advances in industry. Similarly contradictory, Elle stressed speed and readiness in women’s lifestyles and purchases, yet imagery of stylized, immobilized women in Plates 4 and 5, for instance, resulted in a distorted sense of time for the reader. In 1961, Lefebvre sought to illustrate the ‘persistence of rhythmic time scales within the linear time of modern industrial society [and] the defects and disquiet this […] interaction produces.’63 Elle was equally illustrative of his observations: tension in the magazine between the quotidian timetable and progressive modernity as well as between existential and structural woman reflected paradoxes in women’s lives. As Lefebvre wrote further in his text, ‘the

women’s press demonstrates by its quantity and quality an obvious wish to “promote” women. At the same time it reveals the uncertainties and ambiguities of such a promotion.’64 In an article for Existentialist journal Les Temps Modernes on her exhaustive reading of one issue, Colette Audry similarly noted a discrepancy in Elle’s widespread characterization as the ‘weekly of the modern woman.’65 For, although the magazine presented a ‘free and triumphant femininity’ in its early pages that included a fashion editorial and article on a model’s voyage to New York, it ended with a different tone and subject matter, centred on realities and problems in marriage.66 Accordingly, ‘the Elle reader returns to the more familiar face of the Eternal feminine [whose] destiny and the duty have not changed: […] they are called silence and resignation.’67 As seen from Giroud’s article, in its presentation of readymade dress and women, Elle encapsulated the paradoxical modernity of the 1950s.

Women’s wellness and the problem of spaces

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

Writers such as Claire Duchen and Kelly Ricciardi Colvin have noted how midcentury French women’s magazines upheld ideas of gender stability and the centrality of the family unit to sustain the State’s patriarchal views.68 Echoing their national status, Elle imagery consistently located models within a domestic space assigning them the roles of wife and mother. Women’s placement in this milieu was part of ‘The Happy Family’ discourse which, as Marjorie Ferguson argues in terms of the British feminine press of the 1950s, was built on ‘the centrality of family life to the world of women.’69 Beauvoir also observed how, for the married woman who took part in no exterior, public activity, ‘The home becomes the centre of the world and even its only reality.’70 In view of Beauvoir’s text, considering objects within the home can be useful to discern women’s ideas of the world and social relationships: ‘In the form of more or less expensive bric-à brac she has within her four walls the fauna and flora of the world, she has exotic countries and past times; she has her husband, representing human society, and she has her child, who gives her the entire future in portable form.’71 Thus, much magazine dialogue revolved around the home to communicate implicitly and explicitly the message of ‘satisfaction that derived from wifehood and motherhood,’ in the words of Ferguson, to reinforce and sustain ‘The Happy Family.’ Magazines easily inferred the symbolism of interiors as the home took on new importance during the post-war housing crisis, attested to by Raimond’s urbanism section, as well as Elle’s involvement in architectural projects, such as the Maison Minute.72 The magazine conceived of these homes as fast and economic lodging options. Likewise, its language to describe building

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and decoration in these articles often centred around a problem and its solution like that employed in relation to readymade dress, as noted above. This section considers Elle as a domestic microcosm inhabited by women through the critical lens of Beauvoir, in which these problems signify existential issues. Its presentation of space, and the actions of dressed bodies within it, sheds light on how women were asked to see and cope with their wider experience of modernity. Elle’s dialogue on architecture and interiors throughout the 1950s framed modernity in terms of progress, rationality and material comfort. In a 1953 issue, for example, Raimond discussed the construction of a new town, SaintDizier-le-Neuf, built outside of Paris to accommodate the workers drawn to the area’s many new factories. In opposition to the nearby, overpopulated SaintDizier-le-Vieux, the new ‘avant-garde town’ with its ‘rational interiors’ would be ‘adapted to modern man.’73 These interiors were located mainly within grands ensembles, housing estate tower blocks, the method the MRU had chosen to house the greatest number of families quickly and efficiently. These homes were, according to Nicole C. Rudolph, ‘imagined and built to be one-size-fits-mostclasses apartments’74 or the cellule d’habitation, in line with governmental aims of forming a new (standardized) middle class. However, as with fashion discourses, this posed a problem for the vital value of individuality in French design. The magazine overcame the ‘new furnishing problem’ posed by this modern building composed of ‘rooms of the same type,’ through the arrangement of furniture, fabrics, colours and lighting in novel ways.75 The accompanying images illustrated these solutions, including furnishings by modernist designers Charlotte Perriand and Paul Guariche, as four numbered images of rooms, separated by function in a grid pattern. Post-war modernism drew on avant-garde interwar ideals of socially democratic design endorsed by designers and architects such as Perriand, in that they utilized inexpensive industrial materials and mass production techniques to disperse good design to a large group. Their work also fit into a discourse of rationality, such as that outlined by Le Corbusier in his 1929 manifesto The City of To-Morrow and its Planning, which Elle also deployed throughout the 1950s. In fact a 1955 issue of Elle reported on Le Corbusier’s recently completed Cité Radieuse outside of Nantes, devised as an inexpensive solution to accommodate France’s growing population. As above, accompanying images portrayed rooms as small compartments in a larger structure or unité (Plate 7). The thick black line that separated them underscored both their difference and their roles as identical parts of a larger whole. In this way, magazine graphics reinforced text, which neatly presented problems for women readers to solve. Foremost among them was that of small spaces, which Andrée Braive conveyed in a 1951 issue, writing, ‘The plague of our epoch is this interminable

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

housing crisis that constrains so many people to a living space that is too narrow.’76 Throughout the decade Elle discussed various options for adapting one room to several functions.77 Whereas for Braive, the solution was ‘furniture that liberates living space,’ ‘with double or triple usage that unfolds or refolds according to need.’78 These ideas mirrored discourses of readymade clothing which could adapt to different situations with a slight modification. The right product or tool was also key to spatial organization, as a 1955 article advised. Here, the efficient functioning of one family’s small apartment in a habitation à loyer modéré (HLM) or low-income housing project in a suburb of Lille was the ‘bloc-loisirs separation.’ This ‘compartmental leisure-unit,’ separately accommodated a television, a dressmaker’s mannequin and other household objects. In these various attempts to enhance interior decoration and liberate space in the home, which Beauvoir considered a ‘restricted space’ that confined women, the magazine encouraged women to improve their situation as well as find ‘self-expression’ and ‘social justification.’79 Its problem-based format allowed them to be active, professional and fulfilled in the context of the ‘The Happy Family’ narrative. Elle’s directions reflected those of Paulette Bernège, who, through her interwar work as director of the Etudes de l’Ecole de Haut Enseignement Ménager and president of the Ligue de l’Organisation Ménagère, applied scientific management techniques to domestic life. Bernège viewed the housewife as a manager who undertook many varied jobs, ideas expressed in her housekeeping manual De la Méthode Ménagère, first published in 1928. She wrote: “Let us consider the life of a housewife; from wake-up to bedtime, she takes part in tasks of many orders that utilize knowledge of all categories, a very varied set of tools, different parts of her body.”80 Bernège advocated simplified and rational methods and tools. Most importantly, she advised women to list and divide tasks: ‘You will not succeed at bringing any clarity to [a] problem if you envisage it in its entirety.’81 Her work continued to be published into the 1950s, when, as Duchen contends, in magazines the home functioned as a workplace that employed Taylorist ideas.82 In fact, conversations in support of women’s professionalization within the home surfaced in Elle.83 The establishment of the allocation de la mere au foyer by the French government in November 1955, a stipend for ‘athome’ mothers, part of the social security system that buttressed State natalist leanings, came to symbolize women’s paradoxical status. This act legitimized women’s place within the home, but also served to keep them there and out of public professional spaces. The sustaining relevance of Bernège’s ideas is not surprising in this period dominated by national discourses of productivity, when for Pulju, the language of planners and modernizers was used by proponents of home modernization, who: ‘asserted that the domestic consumer was not only

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performing citizenship, or orienting the national economy, in the marketplace, but in all of the tasks she completed in the home.’84 Just as the roles and clothing of Marie-José in Figure 3.2 were separated into compartments, the above-mentioned article on the Cité Radieuse described Le Corbusier’s intention to divide the spaces and activities for the inhabitants of the apartment, envisaged predictably as a nuclear family comprising mother, father and children. The architect related the interior space to emotional qualities of its residents: ‘The Happiness of the family is firstly of material order: a series of commodities and bold combinations, giving each one a maximum of space, intimacy and silence.’85 This spatial ideal implied separate, gendered activities and spaces: ‘The Happiness of the father is to find, upon his return from work, a comfortable and restful interior, where he can relax without being disturbed by anyone.’86 But it is the wife, or ‘modernised woman,’ according to Le Corbusier, who truly inhabits the home, therefore ‘The balance of the household is her duty.’87 Material comforts, along with ‘functional housing’ and ‘independence in the collective home,’ would lead to her ‘liberation.’88 Echoing Braive’s ideas above, this article connected separation of space to wellbeing and freedom. These were the same concepts that underlined the magazine’s presentation of the Maison Heureuse (Happy House). With the property estate group Société Général Foncière, architect Claude Parent, who had briefly worked with Le Corbusier, and interior designer Jean-Pierre Rosier, Elle co-sponsored the house in the context of the 1955 Salon des Arts Ménagers. Conceived for a family unit, its exterior was a simple white cube, with façade sections coloured in blocks of red, yellow and blue. In keeping with Corbusian ideas, one article explained how separation within small rooms would allow for individual gendered space and mental calm: ‘You want to live in the “Maison Heureuse” because it is conceived for a harmonious family life. You can have mood swings, your husband can isolate himself to read or work, your children can play in complete freedom at any time of the day without being disturbed.’89 The author thus viewed partitions (cloisons), and other mechanisms that separate and readapt space according to function, as essential in that they ‘guarantee[d] each person a total liberty of action and thus a relaxed family atmosphere.’90 Citing the Maison Heureuse, in fact, Rudolph argues that ‘The modern home’s success was to be evaluated on the basis of its capacity to allow the épanouissement, or the full development, of the individual’s mind and body, and tranquility and privacy were understood to play a role in that process of development.’91 Within this construct, the focus on the decoration of small corners (coins) in Elle and other sources was telling, as they can be seen as spaces for women to escape

or dream, outlets for their search for freedom. A 1956 issue of Art et Décoration included an article titled ‘Le coin “à penser”,’ which discussed the transformation of corners within the cellule into libraries or relaxation spots, and the resulting ‘mental compartmentalisation’: [W]e have all dreamt, in every apartment, small or big, of possessing ‘our corner,’ where we find our favourite books, newspapers, magazines, discs and radio shows. The increasingly widespread living room setup renders this ‘mental compartmentalisation’ indispensable, thanks to which one can, for a few moments, abandon the realm of the daily worries for one of dream and thoughts.92

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

The author’s discussion of the individual’s need for private space apart from the pace of daily concerns corresponds to Gaston Bachelard’s writings in 1958. Corners represent secluded entities, ‘impressions of intimacy,’ in his theorization of the house which, in the spirit of Beauvoir, he likened to a personal ‘cosmos.’93 Further, like the partition, the corner serves to isolate: ‘An imaginary room rises up around our bodies, which think that they are well hidden when we take refuge in a corner. Already, the shadows are walls, a piece of furniture constitutes a barrier, hangings are a roof.’94 For Bachelard, this isolation and escape from ‘public’ space fosters self-awareness through daydreaming. Through their placement within corners, or re-structuring space, Elle hinted that women could achieve Giroud’s ‘individual rhythm’ and Beauvoir’s sovereign self. Another 1955 article on the Maison Heureuse provided a double-page view of its interior that showcased its separated spaces, which included a ‘leisure corner’ (coin loisir), living room and kitchen.95 In lieu of black lines, selected objects were spotlighted and dramatized by bright colours, as in the above-mentioned images of Saint-Dizier-le-Neuf and the Cité Radieuse. Viewers’ perception of the interior was heightened by technologically advanced colour printing, which masked its small size and simplicity. Colour described various elements of the image including the blue kitchen cabinetry, a red dress form and a multicolour abstract picture hanging in the living room, each adding more surface detail and texture. In contrast to the white-walled modernist décor of the interwar period, trends for colourful product and interior design such as Formica countertops coincided with advances in printing. In parallel, a dialogue around colour in fashion and interior decoration unfolded in the magazine in terms of the individual’s inner stasis and rationalism. In a notable example, the cover of a 1953 issue communicated to readers how its interior contents would reveal the ‘mystery of colours in your everyday life,’ its text swathed in a rainbow graphic of yellow,

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green, blue, brown and two shades of red. Within, Jean Hérin’s article, ‘A scientific and psychological study which will allow you to discover your happiness in colour,’ included a personality chart based on colour preferences and a discussion of colour theory and symbols.96 These ideas next played out in Rivemale’s article on four ‘real’ women identified by their first names, biographical details and tastes who ‘have found their colour harmonies.’97 Accompanying illustrations of their outfits showed how colour enabled psychic and sartorial coordination. This was followed by features on ‘coloring your home’ and sewing patterns for colourful blouses. The creative agency of the average consumer was reinforced by that of couturiers Schiaparelli and Marc Bohan in a subsequent article presenting colour choices, described as harmonies, and swatches from their latest collections. The issue also included Georges Dambier’s fashion editorial shot in black and white that highlighted the colour white in haute couture gowns. As such, the range of production modes presented was matched by Chevalier’s mastered repertoire of photographic processing and printing. Through new products and image technologies, colour saturated visual and material culture describing objects and spaces, while connecting consumer choice and scientific analysis, to inner harmony and happiness. But colour was like the word heureuse, which, in the 1950s can be read as innuendo. In 1956, Dr. Marie-Andrée Weill-Hallé and sociologist Evelyne Sullerot founded the Association Maternité Heureuse, the precursor to the 1961 Family Planning Movement. As Sharon Elise Cline writes, seen from its title, motherhood and family provided the framework for debates on contraception.98 The word ‘heureuse’ masked its goal to control the size of families. Like the ‘Happy family’ discourse, it also concealed the problems of women’s realities. The notions of control and freedom were at the heart of these issues as well as in Elle’s presentation of housing and design projects such as the Maison Heureuse. Following articles that discussed happy and rational spaces, as the decade progressed language in Elle often fixated on inner being when describing women’s corporal relationship to their surroundings and objects, adding a sensorial dimension to the ‘fashion-concrete marriage.’ In one 1957 issue of Elle, for instance, an article discussed the ideal of feeling ‘beautiful and well in one’s home,’ which relied on the coordination of bodily adornment and home decoration.99 In accompanying imagery by Jean-François Clair, both black-and-white and colour, models interacted with modernist furniture by manufacturers such as Knoll, whose values of avant-garde accessibility transferred to the readymade clothing they wore. Text layered the characteristic of material comfort into this visual construct, explaining, for example, how ‘a cardigan over trousers, a skirt, in one’s home [would] achieve a relaxed allure and a pretty face.’100 Did this signal a

wider shift towards informal fashion styling, or simply characterize the home as the appropriate setting for such comfortable clothing? Models posed in relation to their environment, sitting in various ways on sofas, their feet grazing shag carpets, as well as stroking and resting their heads on cushioned, upholstered chairs. Cloaked in language of wellness, Elle depicted a seamless, sensory yet highly constructed cosmos in which bodies, dress and space intertwined. Women were encouraged to interact with the spaces pictured in ways that gave them the happiness, control and freedom they may have searched for in reality.

Technology and myth

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

T­ he June 1956 issue of trade journal Prêt à Porter reinforced the integral nature of readymade clothing, private space and the daily, lived experience of women that circulated in fashion magazines throughout the decade. It held a photography shoot at the annual Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and placed models in dresses and coats by manufacturers in Les Trois Hirondelles alongside furniture, ceramics, silver and tapestries, which constituted, according to the text, ‘a complete atmosphere of intimacy where the woman can move to her comfort.’101 As discussed in Chapter 2, the trade press stressed the rigorous criteria by which the manufacturer members of this group were afforded entry to augment their value. Prêt à Porter echoed this promotional message in its focus on both the practicality and elegance of the clothing; it employed home decoration to support these claims and proposed that viewers consider the garments ‘in the context of practical life of today, but with the note of the most delicate and formal of contemporary applied arts.’102 Similar to the imagery at Donzère-Mondragon, readymade dress was positioned as singularly relevant for this modern yet domestic setting. Bodies completed the gesamtkunstwerk, as the text explained: ‘We wouldn’t even know how to imagine them being more expressive and charming than they are in these furnishings, reduced discreetly to essential lines [like silhouette] but “thought” in relation to the activities, leisure, or lifestyle of our charming contemporaries.’103 Like the ‘fashion-concrete’ metaphor, here the text also collapsed the industrial and sartorial. The two were also linked through their limited accessibility: the cost of the displayed readymade garments and furniture by modernist designers negated their purpose of mass distribution. In one photograph, a model wore a dress and coat ensemble by Basta in red wool trimmed in panther fur. She gestured towards nesting tables made of plexiglass on hollowed steel legs designed by Gustave Gauthier. The model was a showpiece as well, in formal garments unlike Elle’s above-mentioned promotion of comfortable clothing for the home. Indeed,

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she appeared to present the objects rather than inhabit the space naturally. Similar to the woman next to the factory wall and the secretary Annette who held her telephone, she showcased her dressed body and, pointing at the tables, interacted with an element of her surrounding space. Like her counterpart in Plate 3 whose tartan dress echoed the shapes of the wall in the backdrop, her furlined coat harmonized with Gauthier’s calf leather sofa, which served to objectify her further. Women were not only cast as objects, but as props in the makeshift setting of the exposition, defined by ephemeral newness. Expositions were prevalent in post-war France, from those that, in the context of the Marshall Plan, exhibited American products and culture, to the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs and Salon des Arts Ménagers, both held at the vast Grand Palais. The latter was established in 1923 to showcase the latest household appliances and décor. After almost one decade of wartime closure it reopened in 1948 and became devoted to l’art d’habiter, or the art of living. Housing and home decoration became central preoccupations for the French public as demonstrated by the fact that attendance had reached 1,402,299 visitors in 1955.104 Like other nations, France used expositions to celebrate material ‘progress,’ the refinement of its technology and the beauty of its products.105 These ideas were dispersed in the fashion press, which, in turn, presented readymade dress, architectural and interior design imagery through the lenses of newness and technology. Elle released a themed issue each year in February that presented objects for sale at the Salon and articles that advised readers on home decoration and household maintenance. It was not alone in this endeavour, joining other women’s magazines, national and local press sources, as well as the Salon’s own journal. In keeping with Alice Chavane and Rivemale’s 1955 post-mission article on American marketing and fashion system coordination, articles pictured products, described how they would work for readers’ modern lifestyles and listed retail information to facilitate purchases. These ideas were in place as early as 1951, as seen from one cover that pictured a model who pertly carried architectural plans, paint and brush, alongside the heading, ‘“Digest” for rushed women of the Salon des Arts Ménagers.’106 Salon-themed issues such as this targeted women ‘looking for the small practical utensil to facilitate everyday life,’ bolstered by advertisements that endorsed miracle appliances.107 Just as the magazine promoted readymade dress as accessible, practical and maintenance free, it imbued these often-mechanized items with a magical function that would reduce women’s domestic labour. A 1955 issue thus described a ‘Magic material: time gaining finds. Five minutes here, five minutes there … you have a precious gaining of time. Mrs. Bon Magique found you these five practical objects that are easy to maintain and will simplify your life.’108 Available through the magazine’s own ‘magic’ buying system, introduced

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

above, ease of purchase paralleled that of use. Like the Flésa dress, prêt-à-porter was part of this discourse on domestic labour, and the article also discussed how the readymade blouses pictured would ‘wash [as easily as] handkerchiefs.’109 As above, women were cast as managers who, through the use of tools sold at the Salon, could efficiently accomplish a specific set of housekeeping tasks. Yet imagery in these themed issues that showcased models in a world of material excess often contradicted their portrayal as active in texts. The 1955 Salon issue included a double-page spread by Lionel Kazan that pictured women in readymade dresses among household appliances for sale (Plate 8). Despite the powerful flash bulbs in Chevalier’s studio, the image retained a graininess that in turn evoked a painterly aesthetic. This was the case with much of Elle’s colour imagery. Like 1950s ‘New Look’ silhouettes that were in fact nineteenth-century iterations, the photograph itself linked to older visual media, such as fashion illustration. Historicism was implicit in 1950s modernism, and provided familiar comfort amid rapid change into the unknown, symbolized by the industrial design presented in Plate 8. Its hazy resolution acting as a mirage, the image transferred readers between present and past. But it also served as a reminder that emerging technology, from that behind colour film to domestic appliances, had its limits. The models revel in happy amazement at the goods they hold and present to the viewer. Rather than attempt to use the surrounding props realistically, they resemble smartly dressed consumers in the sterile environment of a trade show. Clad in jersey, wool and knitted dresses whose pastel colours matched those of the appliances, the women were subsumed in the overall objectscape, a space characterized by its consumer objects.110 They were reproducible and alike, down to their red lips, yet distinguished by the colour of their adornment. Writing The System of Objects (1968), Baudrillard depicted a new social order centred around consumption, which altered the ways in which people relate to objects, and systems of human behaviour. Borrowing from the materialism and social theory of Lefebvre, for Baudrillard, modern objects and furniture ceased to have moral connotations and were instead defined by their ability to adapt to human needs (as per advertisements’ instructions) and communicate in an overall system. As such, individual parts of the home coordinated with one another, just as the housewives in the above examples managed a group of tasks, whilst evoking, ‘not the elements of a whole, but the complex network of relationships that link and unite those elements,’ as Michael Lane defines Structuralism.111 Accordingly, for Baudrillard as the technology behind objects became more complex, gestures simplified: ‘objects are no longer surrounded by the theatre of gesture in which they used to be simply the various roles; instead their emphatic goal-directedness has very nearly turned them into the actors in a global process in which man

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is merely the role, or the spectator.’112 Plate 8 likewise asserted the coordination of a set of things over the activity (or subjectivity) of the individual. Contrary to language that fixated on women’s speed and ease of movement, imagery is static, parts are reversed and the models became roles, or shiny, new commodities. But within this manmade ‘panoply of consumption’ according to Baudrillard, ‘one object is more beautiful, precious, and dazzling than the rest […] the body.’113 In imagery too, bodies integrated with clothing and other objects into their setting by a common aspect of their materiality, which took on greater importance than the subjects portrayed. Elle’s objectified construction of women was laid bare in one 1955 issue, in which Guy Arsac visualized the ‘model woman of 1956’: the model Dany Bassenave, with arrows that pointed to her hair, shoulders, chest, waist, hips and legs (Plate 9).114 This enumeration of body parts visually corresponded to the mass of plastic objects and furnishings for purchase on the facing page. Accompanying text anonymously introduced the subject, as a seventeen-yearold model, and her hobbies and physical features. Just as the previous example of Marie-José described her activities in relation to her garments, this image packaged lifestyle as a tangible commodity. Text explicitly linked the ‘figure (plastique) of the 1956 woman [to the] multicoloured, Plastic of the 1956 Home.’115 The two were conflated through the double meaning of ‘plastique’ which signifies both plastic and physique or form, reinforced by Arsac’s depiction of a motionless model, placed against a panoply of colourful inanimate objects. In the 1950s, women were also objectified through their clothing, sometimes with, according to Arnold, ‘focus placed on a hard body created by corsetry and shiny dress fabrics that suggested a metallic finish and touch.’116 A dress sold at the boutique Claude Mérel, now in the collection of the Palais Galliera, with its crisp synthetic material veiled under a printed pattern of flowers intimated painterly, handcrafted creation.117 It was as the above 1955 Elle article on multicoloured plastic discussed fabric, on the pulse of modern invention in its connection to plastic yet reassuringly anchored in the past: ‘Synthetic textiles are also in the process of making a remarkable step ahead. […] [They] will not kill natural textiles. But, little by little, seek to combine their qualities with the irreplaceable ones of wool, cotton and silk.’118 The dress concealed its synthetic core, just as the boutique’s label hid any trace of a manufacturer. Freedom of movement was repressed and the body contained through the dress’s construction: besides a small zipper at its side waist, the garment had no opening and included a belt for further containment. Plastic bodies began to populate France’s material and visual culture, largely due to the synthetic materials used in garment construction, and their promotion in magazines. Echoing information in the trade press, Elle endorsed the fashionability,

We are entering the age of plastic. Today, our homes are in stone, tomorrow they will be in plastic. […] Progress is immense […] Plastic has seeped in everywhere. It has conquered men who, yesterday, were the most attached to their combs made of horn and women their porcelain from Limoges. Plastic has imposed itself in all areas. On you sirs, from your toothbrush cup to your car ornament, from your pen to your office doorknob. And for you, ladies, it is even more flagrant, in your kitchen, in your bathroom, in your children’s toy box.126

The text highlighted technological progress and a shift away from ‘traditional’ design, as delineated by the fashion-concrete marriage, to one based around

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

practicality and quality of new fabrics, such as Tergal and Crylor, created in 1954 and 1955.119 The magazine interwove them into its wider discussion of industrial materials for domestic products and avant-garde design. This link was made explicit in a 1955 double-page editorial on ‘the plastic dress,’ composed of six colour photographs by Clair of women set in modernist interiors and exteriors.120 The dresses they wore were crafted from ‘Six new synthetic stars’: Rhovyline, Orlon, Rhodia, Triconyl, Rhovylon, Cristal-plastique,121 the names of each highlighted in a different colour. This ‘miracle material,’ as the article described plastic, could fill several roles and bridge old and new modes of fashion production. For, as above, text stressed the fabrics’ close connection to their ‘sisters,’ or silk, Egyptian cotton and wool, whilst also classing them as ‘practical, washable, wrinkle-free, hard-wearing.’122 Garments spanned different styles, from a tennis outfit, a trousers ensemble, a raincoat, to more formal dresses, by well-known brands including Tricosa and Pierany. A cheerful modernism along with differences in clothing styles were asserted by Clair’s colour palette of green, brown, blue, red and white, which extended to yellow and red abstract wall art in backgrounds. The article specified that ‘Today and tomorrow, you will find them everywhere in the department stores, and also in specialised boutiques.’123 Later in the year Arsac’s editorial likewise described a gradual yet pervasive absorption of the material in France’s industrial infrastructure and physical landscape: ‘At the moment, factories are growing like mushrooms, next year will see the hatching of a polystyrene factory at Mazingarbe, near Bethune, in Marseille, a factory for Rilsan, which is essentially a French plastic material, in Besancon, a Tergal factory, a new synthetic fibre, another Nylon factory in Lyon.’124 Such reporting on plastic prompted Barthes to presage in his well-known article from the mid1950s, that plastic would replace all forms and become ‘ubiquity made visible.’125 A notable 1955 Elle article similarly discussed the omnipresence of plastic in an abundant objectscape:

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synthetic materials, and it depicted an industrial landscape that would include readymade dress. Intriguingly, this overlaps with the 1954 launch of the second Plan de modernization et d’équipement, to which consumer appliances were incorporated, marking a shift away from heavy to lighter industry. The article also viewed progresses in plastic manufacture as a national achievement, introducing the town Oyonnax as ‘the birthplace of plastic,’ and a ‘triumph’ for France, evidence of which was displayed at the Salon de la Chimie et de la Matière Plastique.127 In his description of the magical transformation of plastic Barthes likewise referred to trade shows: ‘Despite having the names of Greek shepherds (Polystyrene, Polyvinyl, Polyethylene), plastic, the products of which have just been gathered in an exhibition, is in essence the stuff of alchemy. At the entrance of the stand, the public waits in a long queue in order to witness the accomplishment of the magical operation par excellence: the transmutation of matter.’128 This description can be applied to an accompanying image in Elle’s article on Oyonnax, which depicted artisans as they pass nylon through machines as though wielding an abstract form. With no other documentation of the process but surrounding images of finished products, readers might have been somewhat mystified. Likewise, Barthes wrote that ‘more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation. […] And it is this, in fact, which makes it a miraculous substance: a miracle is always a sudden transformation of nature.’129 For him, magic was synonymous with industrial production, which miraculously and quickly transformed nature, from ‘the original crystals into a multitude of more and more startling objects.’130 Arsac’s above-mentioned editorial similarly described the magical production of plastic, and its ensuing objectscape: ‘Transformations will pour in their moulds tons of small grains to fabricate new objects.’131 This promise of a culture of newness, abundant in material objects, clothing and visual advertisements, was the context in which Barthes composed, between 1954 and 1956, the series of essays on current events and subjects such as plastic – and automobiles, as discussed elsewhere in this book – that would later compose Mythologies. Barthes echoed Lefebvre in remarking on the disconnect found in the press, who linked the practical everyday, such as recipes, and (unattainable) imaginary. For Barthes, journalists filled empty signifiers with new meaning to create a ‘type of discourse’ that conveys a myth.132 Just as Elle discussed the ‘miracles of manmade production’ at the Donzère-Mondragon dam in 1952 and defined plastic as the ‘Miracle-Material’ in 1955, through its mythologization of industrial production, everyday life and women, the magazine sought to sanction readymade dress for readers.133 Like Barthes’s empty signifiers, Elle underlined how plastic could morph into any shape. One article defined Plexiglas as ‘the plastic material of modern times,

Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle

capable of assuming all forms, all colours and all sizes – from the airplane [cup] to the pupil’s ruler – equipped the bathroom with sinks, as light as it is robust.’134 Elle performed the ultimate act of magic, however, in its construction of the Maison Plastique for the 1956 Salon des Arts Ménagers (see Plate 10), with the stateowned coal mining company Charbonnages de France. Architect Ionel Schein with René Coulon and designer Alain Richard conceived the structure to be industrially and serially produced entirely in plastic. In her description of the Maison Plastique, Raimond lauded the house’s totality as ‘honest’ in view of the fact that everything extended from one structure and material.135 She wrote: ‘The walls are not garnished with plaster, paint, or wallpaper: it is plastic, coloured in its mass, that composes the décor of your life. The furnishings for the most part are not added elements: they are but simple protuberances from the house out of which they grew.’136 This emphasis on honesty in design countered the magazine’s discourse of the magical production of nylon strands and other plastics manufacture. Echoing the moralizing tone of nineteenthcentury design reform language, Raimond worked to curb readers’ scepticism, of an aesthetic that was perhaps too new and too American for the French. But more worrisome, the house’s plastic, like synthetic fabrics, was essentially pretending to be something other than what it was. Whereas the honesty Raimond described connected to trends of minimalism and rationalism in mid-century design, she emphasized how the Maison Plastique’s decoration stemmed from colour, serving ‘both affective and rational functions,’ as Rudolph described the discourses around colourful objects in modern French residences: they provided adornment ‘without the accumulation of “useless” items like souvenirs, tchotchkes, or knockoff paintings.’137 Chevalier’s lab capabilities worked to enforce Raimond’s message. For on the printed page, highly saturated hues reduced definition and flattened form, and thus reinforced the seamless environment. This included, for example, shelves built into the wall and the bathroom fixture that consisted of tub, toilet and sink. The magazine conceived of colour to connect to the emotions of the inhabitants, like above-mentioned articles’ discussion of spatial separation and wellbeing: ‘Colour plays an essential role in this ensemble […] it sings in every room, it brightens, animates, softens, thrills. In visiting the plastic house, you will learn to live in colour and in joy.’138 Although several years prior, Audry saw through Elle’s ‘mosaic of technicolour,’ the magazine continued to sell the promise of happiness through colour, whilst it skirted around plastic’s inherent duplicity. This physical and emotional seamlessness was problematic, and spoke to flaws that underlay constructions of imagery and subjects. It is as Arnold discusses how the controlled and elaborate presentation of fabric and colour clashed with the

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photographic surface in the 1950s, which exposed tensions beneath, and led to ‘readers’ sense of dissonance, despite the smooth, seamless finish that magazines strove to construct.’139 The house’s plastic mass extended to the garments worn by models, made in the materials Crylor, Tergal, Rhovyl and wool, seen in photographs by Kazan. One model at the bottom right corner of Plate 10 drew open a curtain, as if to present the interior contents to display show visitors. They were similar in the plastique of their physiques as well, and resembled reproducible display prototypes in contrast to their heroic counterparts who contemplated the dam at Donzère-Mondragon. In another image, a group of models did not appear to communicate with one another and instead moved in stylized gestures around household objects, just as Baudrillard wrote of flawed human communication in modern structures. Instead, the ‘protruding’ components of the home, a set of elements in a larger system, interacted among themselves. For, these integral elements allowed, according to Raimond, ‘an astonishing simplification of tasks and quotidian gestures for the mistress of the house.’140 This symbolized women’s lack of control however, living in homes, their microcosmic universe, whose substance they could not change. Echoing their actual petrified state in 1956, women were visualized as plastic and embedded in the house and fabric of France’s infrastructure. And through advances in image technology, colour subtly moved readers between illustration and photography, or different lenses onto space and time. In the magazine, meanings slipped and transferred. This adaptability, as it negotiated the choices and contradictions of post-war modernity, threaded together many areas, including fashion’s discourses and technologies, and the identity of women. Elle defined modernity and the modern woman in relation to readymade dress through its emphasis on garments’ newness, their connection to current methods of industrial manufacture and their relevance for organized fast-paced lifestyles. Haute couture, France’s traditional made-to-measure production, could not contain these values. The Maison Plastique editorial can be seen as rehearsal for the type of ‘display imagery’ showcasing French readymades that Elle presented the following year at the Brussels Exposition, and which was representative of the seamless, integral and colourful imagery of the 1950s (and of the sought after coordination of the entire womenswear industry). Beneath the trade show façade was women’s far from flawless reality. They could only simulate Elle’s construction of a creative, productive consumer who managed time, space and everyday life.

­  ­Negotiating the avant-garde 4 in the 1960s: Stylisme, industry debates and restless images Industrial professionals viewed the inclusion of prêt-à-porter in the French pavilion of the 1958 Brussels Exposition as a turning point with regard to the position of the post-war industry. Its very presence at ‘an international event of such importance,’ as Albert Lempereur wrote in 1958, revealed the industry’s ‘intention to take a leading place within the Common European Market’ in the coming decade.1 France’s entry into the European Economic Community at the end of 1958 as well as, paradoxically, the nationalism of de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic intensified the country’s post-war goal to improve industrial production and compete with overseas clothing markets. In such a context, the industry’s global success continued to be a point of importance in trade and wider discussions of fashion well into the 1960s, as an editorial in a 1965 issue of Elle, titled ‘French prêt-à-porter is becoming the best in the world,’ illustrated (Plate 11). As though to underline this idea, parts of the article featured models silhouetted in columns of red, white and blue: Elle situated ready-to-wear firmly in the shadow of France’s flag and cultural heritage. This chapter likewise positions industry developments and debates during the 1960s in this national framework, in view of shifts in production, communications and photographic technologies. The Elle article revealed new players, dynamics and a system of values in the readymade industry. It veered away from the couture en gros houses and pictured clothing by newly established designer-led brands, which were defined by creative industrial production methods. The article thus attributed the industry’s success to ‘a new production […] conceived by new creators [and] made through new means.’2 Its stress on production revealed a link to articles in the fashion press from the previous decade that mythologized industrial manufacture in their construction of fashion and femininity. But it also exposed new elements in Nancy L. Green’s description of a ‘struggle over the attribution of aura’ in the history of the French readymade industry.3 For, Elle’s editorials that photographed models at the unfinished Donzère-Mondragon and Brussels Exposition sites in 1952 and 1957, respectively, showed how the spheres of fashion and industry collided on

its pages. By the early 1960s, the fashion press had internalized this language; it continued to relay industrial information, yet honed its portrayal of prêt-à-porter as industrial avant-garde creation. This was in part due to the ways the image was constructed to connect to industry and technology. As in the text, Plate 11 linked to older editorials set against heavy machinery. Here, however, in contrast to machinery or construction sites, other invisible technologies were evoked, as Joan Ockman has written in relation to post-war American architecture: ‘Advanced technology now also came to mean cybernetic processes, software systems, miniaturized electronics, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and other sophisticated instrumentalities eluding physical form.’4 In the 1965 Elle editorial clothing was framed against stark white walls. Photographer Brian Duffy employed coloured filters or lighting gels to dramatize the pictorial space which worked to subtly reference various technologies. Plate 11 presented a model in a white serge coat and hat designed by Emmanuelle Khanh for the brand Pierre d’Alby. The model seemed to be caught in front of the bright lights of a projector, or as a subject of a moving camera. The article’s text bolstered this connection in its first sentence, which explained that prêt-à-porter ‘is [currently] being discussed on television.’5 Indeed, in the 1960s televisions increasingly featured in French homes, which affected how fashion was disseminated and received. Notably, the 1962 Telstar satellite enabled the first official live transatlantic television transmission, which included French couture shows, as this chapter will discuss further. Moving image thus connected viewers to larger technologies and sciences such as communications satellites and space exploration, which became an exciting reality in France after the 1961 establishment of the Centre Nationale d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). As Jane Pavitt has argued,

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The Space Race not only provided an enduring stream of technological innovations and material developments that could be adapted to everyday use, but also a host of imaginative possibilities for how products, clothing, environments – even the human body – might be redesigned in the future.6

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Indeed, Khanh’s white coat and hat seemed to insulate the body in the style of a spacesuit and helmet. This and other images that featured models in the shadow of harsh lighting and red and blue flashes, against mysterious black backgrounds which alluded to interplanetary space, suggested, in the words of Pavitt, ‘artificial experiences, with the body “plugged in” and “tuned in” to an electronically enhanced sensory playground.’7 The television screen and the magazine page allowed access to such environments, notably during the period in which Peter

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Knapp oversaw the artistic direction of Elle between 1959 and 1966. Fashion editor Claude Brouet recalled how with him, ‘We made a giant leap forward.’8 Knapp’s forward-thinking vision and skill as an image maker informed the collaborative bond between him and the editorial team: ‘With [him] we immediately established a dialogue. […] And he chose the best way he thought there was to show it.’9 This also meant designing the publication as a cohesive whole through minimalist yet bold attention to line and negative space, omitting anything superfluous. Knapp has commented on his work at Elle: ‘I wanted to construct the magazine as a film. I wanted others to bring me [the content] and I constructed the pages, the doubles pages, as a whole.’10 The technological possibilities presented by space exploration and advances in telecommunications paralleled the imaginative work of readymade designers and Knapp, under whose direction, according to Brouet, ‘everything was possible.’11 In the magazine’s new visual harmonization – thanks also to the layout work and input of printmaker and poster artist Roman Cieslewicz – which linked editorials, photography and graphic layout in the manner of a seamless film, technology was smoothly interwoven in conceptions of avant-garde fashion production. Journalists and image makers clearly connected the work of designer Michèle Rosier to futuristic environments; likewise, she joined other designers such as Khanh who vociferously distinguished their ‘inventive’ production from haute couture. Rosier, daughter of Hélène Lazareff, worked as a journalist for France-Soir and Nouveau Fémina before she designed sportswear for the VdeV (Vêtements de Vacances) label, which she founded with Jean-Pierre Bamberger in 1962.12 She wrote that her design career stemmed from her dissatisfaction with the clothing on which she reported: ‘I disliked most of the clothes, finding them uncomfortable and inadequate for modern life. This is what fuelled my desire to create other ones.’13 This creative output notably included jumpsuits and anoraks in materials such as nylon and vinyl, that bridged sports clothing and daywear. Industry professionals understood the timeliness of these unusual garments and presented them in relation to period fascination with Space exploration and futurity. Fashion editor of The Sunday Times Ernestine Carter, for example, consciously inserted them into dress history’s narrative when she selected Rosier’s PVC coat as ensemble of the year for Bath’s Fashion Museum in 1966. Designed by her VdeV label for the British Young Jaeger line, it accompanied a black-and-white rayon and linen dress by Young Jaeger and transparent plastic boots. This choice signalled the French industry’s global relevance, and illustrated how similar creative ideas traversed national borders. This movement had much to do with advances in communication technology in addition to articles about the designers disseminated abroad. By 1965, when

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the popular variety programme Dim Dam Dom, produced by Daisy de Galard, aired an episode titled ‘Trois Modélistes’ (Three Designers) that featured Rosier and Khanh along with the designer Christiane Bailly, they had achieved wide public presence. Knapp and Fouli Elia, a photographer he employed frequently at Nouveau Fémina and then Elle, filmed the episode.14 The programme paired each designer with her garments, and Rosier notably presented vinyl raincoats and hats (Figure 4.1). Her choice was fitting as, in the programme, she noted her ‘passion’ for ‘the avant-gardes’ and how, unlike couturiers, ready-to-wear designers ‘aim[ed] for the moon.’15 Evocative of metallic machinery and space suits, shiny surfaces such as vinyl served as potent metaphors for the future in the mid1960s, as a December 1965 issue of Officiel du Prêt à Porter illustrated: it pictured a model posed on a ladder with a forward-looking gaze, clad in a plastic coat, transparent save for black squares, over fitted mini shorts, with sunglasses and boots under the title, ‘fashion of the twenty-first century.’16 In turn, fashion was constructed and disseminated to the public as avant-garde, which was rooted in the concepts of futurity and endless possibility, as Rosier’s above commentary intimated. In the television programme, she interwove the notion of utility within this construction, and described the garments’ material as ‘modern because it can be wiped with a rag like a refrigerator.’17 In ways that harked back to the 1950s, magazines also promoted these materials as practical for everyday life, as suggested in a 1966 issue of trade publication International Textiles that described the material PVC as both practical, in that it is ‘waterproof, hardwearing and easy to keep clean,’ and avant-garde.18 While these utilitarian factors were ingrained within the fabric, it also triggered sensual effects as Rosier described in the programme: ‘I like this fabric very much, for me, it is very, very modern, it’s pretty under the rain because little raindrops are reflected.’19 These comments were reinforced by the visualization of the garments, whose sheen would have been further emphasized for viewers through their television screens. This contrasted the integral, plasticized environment that magazines sought to achieve in the previous decade. Programmes such as Dim Dam Dom thus shaped ways of seeing and dispersed the avant-garde in the everyday experience of dress. The episode also grouped new designers and photographers into a creative circle and invested them with symbolic value. Rosier, Khanh and Bailly figured among other designers, including Sonia Rykiel, Gérard Pipart and Daniel Hechter, who magazines featured from the early 1960s. The press used the word ‘style’ in relation to these designers and their fashionable clothing output, and this chapter will consider how it was used to shape fashion’s symbolic construction in the 1960s. However, as consultant Maïmé Arnodin noted in 1968, stylisme was not the work of an individual creator, but an ‘artistic direction of a company, a

Figure  4.1  Film still, Michèle Rosier and models, ‘Trois Modélistes,’ Dim Dam Dom (16 mm black and white, 1965). Directed by Peter Knapp, produced by Daisy de Galard

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

catalyst between artists and manufacturers, a role of orientation, selection, coordination, promotion.’20 This collaborative system, which included the work of consultants such as Arnodin, relates to Frederic Jameson’s discussion of the ‘death of the subject’ or the end of individualism in the postmodern age.21 He argues that this new order began in France of the late 1950s, and is characterized by ‘the effacement […] of some key boundaries […] to the point where the line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly difficult to draw.’22 Like the Situationist International, French art critic Pierre Restany, for example, encouraged creative engagement with quotidian life and consumer society when he founded Nouveau Réalisme in 1960. He proposed that this movement act as an extension of Dada, and more particularly, build on Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. He theorized that the appropriation of everyday objects and visual culture could be the only valid means of artistic expression in a society newly marked as it was by an urban, industrialized consumer landscape. The fashion industry, with its increasing focus on readymade production, gradually underwent the same sort of shift from so-called high to low culture, as this book is tracing. This shift was more drastically perceived in the mid-1960s, which Bruno du Roselle, of the Fédération française du vêtement féminin, defined as a

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moment of ‘fashion crisis.’23 He characterized the crisis by the emergence of ‘prêtà-porter de style’ in relation to the death of haute couture. Stylisme, however, with its prioritization of the creative hand and wide dissemination, helped close the gap between high and low.24 The first part of this chapter situates this production model and its value system in the context of wider production and distribution in the 1960s, and amid shifts in image dissemination and technologies, through the case study of designer Emmanuelle Khanh. It dissects the fashion system and examines its components: designers, brands, retailers and consulting agencies. Part two builds on this foundation and, through the example of a collection by Khanh and its resulting manifestations in photography and film in 1966, considers stylisme’s connection to artistic production against developments in artistic debates and dissemination, and modes of seeing.

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Stylisme

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Industry professionals had propagated the long held and widespread belief that true creation was only possible at haute couture level. In 1956, for example, Raymond Barbas of the Maison Jean Patou and president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture defined couture as ‘creation’ and, in an obvious reference to readymade clothing, deemed creativity incompatible with industrial production.25 He further explained that trend creation based on colour and silhouette functioned only within the biannual couture system. Barbas’s account coincided with the creation of seasonal collections by readymade clothing brands, namely the couture en gros houses, whilst the press increasingly featured them in editorials, alongside the couture collections in March and September. Journalists’ deployment of silhouette names, such as ‘trapeze line’ by Yves Saint Laurent in 1958, allowed readers to identify designs easily. Such designations also served to cement their importance for readers. Emma McClendon has pointed out, in relation to the American press’s dissemination of couture trends in the late 1950s and early 1960s that, ‘This was the age of the silhouette, when it was not necessarily the details, but the overall outline of a Parisian garment that dictated its importance.’26 Couturiers and the Chambre Syndicale strictly controlled access to fashion shows to uphold this system, to prevent copying by manufacturers and couture clients.27 Other than occasional press showings during fashion week, couture houses released images of their garments one month after the presentations. Before the haute couture release date, according to Brouet, ‘we couldn’t show the clothing because the couturiers sold patterns, toiles […] and garments to be reproduced in the entire world, to seamstresses or department

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

stores.’28 This ‘ever present reality of the copy,’ as Rosalind Krauss theorized, was an ‘underlying condition of the original.’29 Likewise, the secrecy around the shows served to heighten the anticipation, aura and value of the original creation. The addition of readymade dress collections to the seasonal calendar threatened the functioning of this system, based as it was on the highly timed, ‘original’ production by a select group of creators. Shifts in image dissemination, in addition to the appearance of new brands in magazines, challenged couture houses’ strict control of images and hegemonic claim to creation. These changes occurred at a moment of transformation in terms of the speed of communication, leading up to and after the first official live transatlantic television transmission between Europe and the United States in July 1962.30 Among the broadcasted programmes was a live preview of several garments by couture houses Balmain and Dior throughout the United States during fashion week. McClendon argues that the event helped ‘chang(e) the dynamic of the fashion industry by disrupting the traditional flow of information.’31 While for Ernestine Carter, the broadcast signified the loss of control and power of a dominant creative voice: ‘Since its defenses were breeched, the Chambre never really recovered its authority.’32 In the years that followed, according to McClendon, the Chambre Syndicale reduced its active role in the regulation of publicity, and the American press disseminated more detailed representations of the garments, rather than focus on their silhouettes.33 This event was indicative of a general shift in communication technology via the feminine press, cinema, radio and television, so that, according to Bruno du Roselle, women ‘found [themselves] surrounded by a giant network of information about fashion.’34 This affected the speed and means through which fashion imagery was disseminated and, as this chapter explores further, how it was received. The industry moved away from, according to Roselle, ‘a seasonal rhythm of slow and codified evolutions.’35 Moreover, the production of a new range of brands added variety and, as Brouet explained, ‘erased this idea of dictatorship because […] there were enough things so that everyone could find what they were looking for.’36 The 1965 Dim Dam Dom episode, which featured some of these designers, showed the stylistic variety in each designer’s repertoire as well as underlined the immediacy of fashion consumption through the television medium. These designers took a clearer stance in terms of creation, in relation to the more ambiguous attitude of manufacturers in the 1950s. Exemplified by the Maisons de couture en gros members, manufacturers had attempted to assume the couture value of original creation, whilst they repositioned themselves within industrial modernity. Some encouraged original design and others, to compete with foreign manufacturers who copied French designs, believed

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that they should have the right to produce copies of couture silhouettes. As discussed in Chapter 2, industry dialogue later constructed prêt-à-porter as a vague synthesis between art and the industry, a definition that seeped into the 1960s, as a 1961 article in the Cahiers illustrated. It described prêt-à-porter as ‘fashionable,’ in the sense that it is ‘an adaptation of Haute Couture fashion that allows all women to follow the trend of the moment […] while managing her budget.’37 However, the author articulated a nuance that later commentators would build upon in their discursive characterizations of stylisme. The text continued: ‘In other words, Prêt-à-Porter transforms the Haute Couture garment that is “at the point of fashion” to “fashionable” clothing.’38 This notion, which implied that fashion production was increasing and diversifying and therefore could be any number of things, is crucial in the study of readymade dress’s development, and will have important consequences in terms of fashion presentation and experience. Although endorsed as an ‘adaptation’ of couture, this concept of a fashionable norm underlay stylisme, or industrial aesthetics, as it was later characterized in the above-mentioned Elle article of 1965. Key to this concept was the opposition of the singular trend or creation to a wider quantity of good design. The notion of quantity also underlay the thinking of Lempereur when, in 1963, he compared French couture and prêt-à-porter through their ability to create trends, yet distinguished the look of readymade creation by its production and dissemination: ‘prêt-à-porter has the obligation to think “number, diffusion” and to balance its collections so that an elegant simplicity, that is accessible to all budgets, spreads in the street.’39 As opposed to the focus on copy and single creation, the symbolic discussion around prêt-à-porter would be based around its ability to disperse. As such, new means of defining creativity and skill were formulated. André Bercher, president of the Fédération, notably affirmed in 1964 that ‘rationalised production’ was ‘compatible with the originality and elegance of the creation.’40 In this internal discussion, skill began to be measured by the ability of a designer both to be creative and work under the constraints of industrial production, as Bercher conveyed: ‘One of the challenges as well the glories of our profession is the need to link the art of design creation to the imperatives of industrial production.’41 These ideas were echoed in the abovementioned Elle 1965 article, which explained that the group of designers whose clothing it featured, such as Khanh, ‘are more interested in industrial aesthetics than launching prototypes. […] To make “fashionable” clothing that doesn’t go out of fashion.’42 Such a conception, as the article showed, positioned prêtà-porter in opposition to both expensive bespoke garments and unoriginal ‘traditional confection,’ and prioritized good design or ‘industrial aesthetics’ over

the singular fashion trend.43 Still, the primacy of creation underlay descriptions of the new designer-led brands, as illustrated by a 1966 article in International Textiles that described a new venture in which designers Khanh, Bailly and Rosier would create ‘style collections’ for manufacturers.44 According to the author, they would produce ‘original styles, without a trace of conformism, specially adapted to the tastes and needs of modern women.’45 The author suggested that these collections should appear eight months before those of the couturiers to allow both production models their own season and voice. Coupled with the text’s insistence upon designer originality, this proposal exposed the transitional nature of the industry. The notion of creator-driven, widely produced design illustrates contradictory forces still at play in terms of authorship and reproduction. This section studies the ways in which players negotiated these parameters thus shaping the intermediary model of stylisme.

Designers Emmanuelle Khanh was born in Paris in 1937 and grew up in the working-class eighteenth arrondissement. From 1956, she worked as a model mainly for couturiers Cristóbal Balenciaga and Hubert de Givenchy, whose expensive clothing did not correspond to her informal lifestyle. She perceived this dichotomy first-hand as a model, of which she later wrote: I rebelled against the ambiance, against the autocratic side, against the snobbery of people that surrounded couturiers, against creations that were uniquely aimed at the lifestyles of privileged women: cocktail parties, balls, worldly dinners, cruises … fashion that was financially inaccessible and impracticable for the life of the majority of women, the traces of a life already in decline.46 Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

Photographs of Khanh in couture garments, which presented a highly posed body and a formal femininity, illustrated the privileged, impractical lifestyle she discussed (Figure 4.2). Like Rosier, she therefore began to design her own clothing for personal use around 1960, sewed by her seamstress, as she had no professional training in dressmaking. Khanh’s start also harks back to Gaby Aghion’s launch of Chloé one decade earlier, a small-scale operation that relied on a couture seamstress and other fashion industry connections. Claude Brouet noticed Khanh wearing one of these designs, a low-waisted skirt and small waistcoat, as she was leaving a fashion show for the inexpensive department store Prisunic, at the Theâtre en Rond during her career as a model in 1961.47 Brouet recently explained how,

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­Figure  4.2  Emmanuelle Khanh in a promotional photograph for Balenciaga, c. late 1950s, reproduced from Emmanuelle Khanh’s unpublished manuscript, Khanh private archive, Paris © Emmanuelle Khanh Estate

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It [was] the first low-waisted skirt that I had seen … a small waistcoat that was shorter in the back with long points that plunged forward in the front [and] the low-waisted skirt. I said, ‘this is terrific, what you are wearing, what is it, who made it?’ She said, ‘well, me!’48

After Brouet discovered that Khanh had designed her unique outfit, she introduced her to Lazareff and began to photograph her entire wardrobe to make patterns (patrons). The first pattern Elle featured was for the above-mentioned ‘low-waisted

skirt,’ modelled by Khanh herself, in a photograph by William Connors in a 1961 issue (Figure  4.3). Brouet explained that they published it as a pattern, which readers could purchase from the magazine for the purpose of home sewing or to take to their local dressmaker, ‘to justify showing something that [didn’t] exist.’49 Connors’s image, which presented Khanh perched upon a stool to the right of another model, differed greatly from her formal couture photographs. Moreover, it suggested a blurring of the lines between wearer and creator.

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

Figure  4.3 Emmanuelle Khanh in her own skirt pattern (right). Photograph by William Connors, Elle, 24 March 1961 © William Connors/ELLE FRANCE

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Khanh’s clothing, featured as patterns throughout 1962 in Elle, forecasted the conception of stylisme design as both creator driven and widely produced. Later in the decade, Elle journalist Claude Berthod discussed the extensive diffusion and copy of her first design: ‘In three months, Emmanuelle’s skirt, first in the hands of a fashion journalist, fell into the public domain. Two hundred manufacturers copied it and two hundred French women wore it.’50 The text took a noticeably different tone to articles that stressed the importance of the French consumer’s individuality in terms of dress choice. Berthod also described a process that laid emphasis on dissemination to the wearer rather than production by the designer. It was as Roland Barthes theorized on narrative form in literature during the 1960s: he argued against the practice of incorporating the intentions, biography and ‘voice of a single person, the author’ in the interpretation of a text, and claimed instead that writing and creator were unrelated.51 He wrote: ‘The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.’52 For Barthes, the writer acts as scriptor who produces a text, the meaning of which, however, depends on the impressions of the reader and not the identity of the author. The work of the wearer, as opposed to the creator, was likewise foregrounded in the presentation of Khanh’s subsequent patterns, which appeared in a January 1962 issue of Elle. Here, a double-page spread with a photograph by Jean-François Clair pictured three garments, a blouse, a short-sleeved linen shirt and a flannel dress, all based on the same pattern.53 Described in the text as ‘a pattern that knows how to adapt itself,’ the possibility for several variations of garments relied on the buyer’s choice or interpretation. Although this drew from 1950s readymade discourses in the press that implied the participation of an active consumer, the article took a subtly novel approach to the question of author. The magazine noted the pattern’s creator, Khanh, who also embroidered her initials on the centre skirt to underline her authorship. Although Khanh received no money for this service, it was a significant means of exposure: she became one of the few named patron designers. Patterns were customary in magazines, facilitating both home sewing and the mail-order system. Magazines also published patterns by couturiers, as had been the case since the late 1940s. The inclusion of Khanh’s name alongside her patterns worked to similarly attach value to her creations, in contrast to Barthesian author anonymity. Likewise, Brouet linked these designer references in the press to their eventual recognition and success. She contrasted 1950s couture secrecy to her later ‘complete editorial liberty. […] [If ] we discover[ed] someone terrific, we ha[d] the freedom to give him or her all the pages that we want[ed].’54 More important were

the benefits of information and choice this accorded readers, and she further underlined her function in this process: I think I played a role in the discovery of certain designers, certain creators who were making things on their end. [If ] we thought it was nice, we helped them become known, we informed readers. It was important, it was less to help the creators [than] to show the reader someone who is making something new.55

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

Khanh similarly credited her early career successes to the feminine press, and particularly stressed Brouet’s constant inclusion of her name as a promotional vehicle in these photographs and reports: ‘Claude Brouet, via the intermediary Elle, helped me become a creator by propelling me to the avant-garde of fashion.’56 She claimed it was this publicity, rare in the ready-to-wear sector at this time, which led to collections for manufacturers and success as a designer.57 Recognition in the press opposed Jameson’s notion of the ‘death of the subject’ in the postmodern age. Publicity that highlighted individualistic qualities, contrasted with Jameson’s ideas, as well as with the function of Barthes’s scriptor. One article, featured in 1962 in Elle formerly introduced her to the public as a designer. Accompanying text by Dany Simon featured Khanh and another female designer; through descriptions of their physical features, personality traits and hobbies alongside their photographs, Simon portrayed them as young celebrities: ‘Emmanuelle (Nono for her friends): brown and straight hair (often hidden under extraordinary hats), big hazel eyes (always hidden under round glasses because she is very short-sighted).’58 To enhance this portrayal, text used only their first names and described them as ‘[…] our friends. They are kind and pretty, funny and nice.’59 Through their characterization as average young women, who use their fashion talent to ‘invent and dare,’ Simon sought to liken them to magazine readers and appeal to a younger market.60 As written above in relation to Elle patterns, while privileging and promoting the singular creator, this article blurred the boundary between youthful creator and spectator or ‘reader.’ Similarly, the article’s accompanying illustrations of Khanh’s garments, which resembled schoolgirl drawings, revealed connections between personal and professional attributes. The merger of spheres, forecasted in this article, would characterize stylisme promotional rhetoric. Simon brought the reader into the conversation, and proposed she also take part in the creation: ‘We really want to imitate them. Shall we try?’61 Just as Barthes renounced the singular ‘voice’ of the author, this new construction of creation encompassed the wearer. Further, it suggested the notion of a public, shared space of diffusion.62 Many fashion professionals and later commentators would interpret this as a street space, such

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as Roselle, who discussed how, with the emergence of ‘prêt-à-porter de style’ around 1963, trends originated in the street and no longer from couturiers.63 He wrote that the creator was the ‘intermediary,’ ‘between these ideas born in the street and their possibility of expansion to a large number. If overall creation stems from a collective process that engaged a number of people, the resulting fashion is made official in the voluntary act of certain people acting individually as creators.’64 Therefore, for Roselle, in the new collaborative industrial structure, the designer’s identity was almost haphazard; like Barthes’s writers, they were necessary ‘scriptors.’ This could correspond to Simon’s invitation for readers to create, and even Brouet’s chance meeting of Khanh at the Prisunic show. In contrast, the text introduced specific designs by Khanh to establish her renown. Illustrations of Khanh’s designs linked to patterns that Elle published earlier in the year, including a small waistcoat, a blouse with a long collar and her low-waisted skirt. They exemplified what Jameson described as ‘a personal, private style, as unmistakable as your fingerprint’ that marked the individual or subject.65 Simon discussed her waistcoats, worn with a scarf by the top middle figure, and how Khanh ‘baptised them “gileros.”’66 Readers would have learned from the article that the magazine pictured similar waistcoats by Khanh in the previous issue. Indeed, in February 1962 Elle published photographs by Fouli Elia of three models who wore different waistcoats under the heading ‘les gilets points d’exclamation’ (exclamation point waistcoats) (Figure  4.4). Further, the final issues that featured Khanh’s patterns, in June and July 1962, pictured more variations of these waistcoats. Through their repeated publication, these sartorial details became part of Khanh’s established design repertoire, and thus transferred her from the private to the public realm, and invested her with creative value. Descriptions of her creative process in relation to these design details heightened this value. Notably, they often described how she rethought traditional forms, such as the collar. Many articles on Khanh discussed her in these terms, including one that was disseminated in American newspapers in 1963:

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Miss Khanh’s clothes are not only young and feminine but full of fresh touches – some on the wild side – that have swept the mass market in Paris. Her ‘look’ – known as ‘the droop’ – harks back to the ‘30s … lank and limp, with long, pointed ‘dog ear’ collars, sometimes doubling for suit jackets. Virtually every garment manufacturer in Paris has copied her ‘dog ear’ collar. Her spring collections feature scalloped collars and hems.67

The article’s focus on design details contrasted with the prioritization of couture silhouettes in the 1950s; however, as Khanh’s ‘fingerprints,’ they retained

auratic value, bolstered by copies made by other manufacturers as the article explained. Stylisme functioned as a merger of spheres, rather than the dispersion of a monolithic designer. However, as new designers such as Khanh looked to become monolithic, in opposition to Barthes and Jameson’s ideas on authorship, this transition into postmodernity was not clear cut. New players thus entered the fashion system while it retained its traditional ideology of creation. These designers resembled the ‘newcomers’ in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the haute couture field, which he outlined in 1984 after observations of the post-war industry.68 In opposition to the occupiers of the dominant position or the established couturiers, newcomers such as Khanh undertook ‘subversion strategies’ to counter the couturiers’ ‘conservation strategies.’69 Subversion strategies relied on ‘accumulation of specific capital,’ such as the valorization of wide diffusion, named sartorial details, and the anonymous, youthful creator. Such strategies ‘presuppos[e] a more or less radical reversal of the table of values [and] a devaluation of the capital of the established figures.’70 Yet in order to succeed, this capital must correspond to an external revolution, such as, in this case, changes in speeds of communication and information dissemination. Bourdieu stipulates, however, that a belief in the ideology of creation is necessary for the revolution to succeed, which we can liken to designers’ assimilation into traditional methods of publicity, based on recognition of a singular, auratic creator.

Brands

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

After her Elle patterns, Khanh co-founded the brand Emma Christie with Christiane Bailly. Like Khanh, Bailly had worked as a model for couturiers and sold patterns and designs to Elle and the department store Printemps.71 The brand, which was funded by the textile merchant Alain Lalonde and employed his supply of fabrics, lasted for two seasons in 1962.72 Each designer created her individual garments, which were attributed to the brand as a whole in the press. An editorial on prêtà-porter collections in a 1962 issue of Elle included several garments by Emma Christie, outnumbered only slightly by those by Lempereur, Chloé and the new brand Nale Junior. Lempereur and Chloé, and the other featured names, which included Wébé, Weill, Jane Lend, Tiktiner and Fouks were established manufacturers and retailers. That year in fact many of these brands formed a new high-end readymade group, the Groupement de Paris du prêt-à-porter de luxe (1962–76), which combined couture en gros houses with independent labels such as Chloé to contend with couturiers.73 The editorial in fact resembled the haute couture collections articles that pictured garments by couturiers from

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Figure  4.4 (above and opposite)  Vest patterns by Emmanuelle Khanh. Photographs by Fouli Elia, Elle, 9 February 1962 © Fouli Elia/ELLE FRANCE

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that season. It however illustrated how newer brands began to supersede older readymade production, which already operated in the seasonal system. In Khanh’s case especially, the text named sartorial details, serving to patent her work and increase her renown. The author thus described the ‘horn collar’ on the jacket of a tweed suit as ‘launched by Emmanuelle Khanh’ (Figure 4.5).74 In addition, text superimposed onto imagery by Fouli Elia read ‘Les cols en guillemets’ (inverted comma collars) in relation to this ensemble as well as Khanh’s cape,

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

which was featured on the next page. Thus, although Khanh was not named, readers and buyers may have been able to identify the individual elements of her designs through this information. Other than the mention of Khanh’s collars, the text pertaining to her and Bailly’s garments did not call attention to their individual names but specified that Lalonde supplied the materials, Emma Christie and manufacturer Gil Coutin created the garment, which was sold at the boutique Orphée. In this way, the magazine served as a visual enforcer of stylisme and its multiple components, as opposed to the singular couture house.

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Figure  4.5  Suit by Emmanuelle Khanh for Emma Christie. Photograph by Fouli Elia, Elle, 14 September 1962 © Fouli Elia/ELLE FRANCE

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These details were also mentioned in an advertisement for Emma Christie in the 1962 issue of Jardin des Modes. Text specified the brand name, textile producer, manufacturer and the fabric of Khanh’s pictured suit. This format connected this venture to the advertising tradition of couture houses and established readymade brands, which presented the collaboration of designer and textile producer and underlined the importance of fabric. Brouet articulated that the difference between older brands, however, such those in the Maisons de couture en gros

(Trois Hirondelles) and Mode Côte d’Azur, and their transformation in the 1960s, was that they hired ‘very good designers.’75 The press began to print the names of the individuals who designed for these brands, including Nale Junior, I.D. and Pierre d’Alby, established by Nalevanski, Belleteste and Pianko, respectively.76 According to Brouet, ‘very quickly the word Trois Hirondelles disappeared. And other designers came to prêt-à-porter, Gérard Pipard was the first, but then came Emmanuelle Khanh, Christiane Bailly, Michèle Rosier, and Jacques Delahaye.’77 By the end of 1962 Khanh designed for Emma Christie, I.D. and Cacharel.78 She and other designers were either paid a flat rate by manufacturers or granted royalties on sales.79 The above-mentioned 1963 article disseminated to the United States proved how exceptional this system was in France, described as a ‘fashion revolution’: ‘Another reason Miss Khanh startles fashion circles is that she designs for ready-to-wear manufacturers instead of custom houses. As she says, ready-to-wear business in Paris has become “adult.” Manufacturers at last are hiring designers and beginning to turn out inexpensive, ready-to-wear.’80 This system was well established by 1965, as the above-mentioned 1965 issue of Elle illustrated: it pictured garments created by Khanh for the labels Pierre d’Alby, I.D. and the boutique-label Dorothée Bis, which were then distributed and sold at four boutiques in total, all clearly marked in the magazine (see Plate 11).81

Publicity

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

From about 1963, Khanh received substantial coverage in the fashion press, which served to strengthen her position as celebrity and auteur. This publicity ranged from mentions in current affairs sections such as ‘Quoi de Neuf?’ and ‘Paris on en parle,’ in Elle and Vogue, respectively, which indicated her of-the-moment popularity, to longer articles.82 In ways that resembled Simon’s above-mentioned 1962 article, these references fostered a specific image of Khanh in France and abroad, visually – in her trademark giant glasses – and personality-wise, as young, whimsical and audacious. They recall Angela McRobbie’s characterization of the ‘fashion designer as auteur, as an artist in his or her own right.’83 In her theory, the designer’s ‘distinctive characteristics and biographical snippets so frequently repeated in journalism impinge upon and influence how we make sense of the work.’84 Khanh’s work thus became equated with her bold character, which was the case when, in her 1967 memoir, journalist Marylin Bender compared Khanh to the British designer Mary Quant, both members ‘of a rebellious fashion movement.’85 Indeed, the press constantly associated Khanh with her ‘movement,’ stylisme or prêt-à-porter, in the 1960s. For instance, a 1965 article in American Vogue discussed the ‘Khanh idea,’ of ‘French fashion designed to be bought off

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the peg.’86 Under McRobbie’s theory, the bold, inventive persona of Khanh and other designers, including Bailly and Rosier, was transferred to the new form of ready-to-wear. Descriptions of these designers that emphasized their youth and personal traits also painted a picture of the triteness of haute couture. The abovementioned 1963 article, for example, made explicit reference to Khanh’s age, gender and character: ‘As a former model for the couture houses of Givenchy and Balenciaga, the outspoken 26-year-old designer couldn’t care less about the costly creations of the reigning male designers.’87 The article portrayed couturiers as old-fashioned in relation to its depiction of Khanh. These characterizations thus stressed the designers’ independence and separation from haute couture, and directly opposed designer innovation with confection copies and even couture unoriginality, as an article in the 1963 issue of the Herald Tribune illustrated.88 Author Hebe Dorsey noted that American buyers no longer went to Paris for readymade couture copies, but to new houses who ‘turned over the styling of their collections to a group of new, young, original designers, of whom the most famous is Emmanuelle Khanh.’89 Journalists’ didactic descriptions of designers’ characteristics and value recalled their insistent accounts of successful confection in the 1950s; both were attempts to devalue, in Bourdieu’s words mentioned above, ‘the capital of the established figures.’90 Magazines used gender as a ‘subversion strategy,’ as seen above, and a means to group, distinguish, promote and sensationalize Khanh, Bailly and Rosier.91 Their gender was a central premise of the above-mentioned 1965 episode of Dim Dam Dom filmed by Knapp and Elia, which discussed the ‘Trois Modélistes.’ In the opening scene, the narrator asked a group of seemingly random young women spectators ‘who should invent your clothes, man or woman?’92 They shouted their responses in jest, setting the episode’s playful tone. After a brief introduction to prêt-à-porter the episode filmed three short sequences, each devoted to one designer. In each sequence, after an opening scene that introduced the designer, she discussed and showed her garments (see Figures  4.1 and 4.9). As in the fashion press, the episode portrayed the designers as celebrities and established creators through focus on their personalities and stylistic trademarks. The narrator thus introduced Khanh as, ‘the one who made the first low-waisted [skirts], pointy collars, small waistcoats, and culotte skirts.’93 However, like the above-mentioned Elle article that likened Khanh to all young women and her potential client, this episode conflated and stressed both the individual creator and the mass populace. The narrator continued: ‘She says willingly, “I am comfortable in my skin,” and she wears her own garments with dynamism.’94 In this way the episode periodically linked back to the women at the beginning of the episode, and visualized the

above-mentioned shared space of creation, which would not have been possible in the male-centric haute couture arena. In many ways, this episode displayed similar subversion tactics to those employed by magazines. Visually, however, it illustrated a blurring of media. For much of the film, the frame displayed the designer’s face next to a shot of a model whose clothing she described, much like the double-page layout of a magazine. It therefore demonstrated the experimental nature of these early attempts at filmed publicity, as well as connected past and future means of fashion production and image dissemination. The second sequence, for example, featured a narrated introduction to prêt-à-porter and the designers, against moving shots of industrial production and machinery: a throwback to Chapter 3’s ‘fashion-concrete marriage’, or previous visualizations of readymade fashion juxtaposed with industrial machinery. The mode of the episode’s transmission, however, relied on invisible technologies; the programme was thus visually incongruous. Likewise, the narrator described the industry’s seamlessness and progress when she proclaimed that, ‘It is the time of perfect machines that cut sixty “swallow-style” collars (cols hirondelles) at once.’95 While this text harked back to modernist conceptions of technological progress, as in relation to 1950s discussions of readymade dress, other aspects of the narration described a sharp rupture between old and new: ‘And who modernised our old confection? Why, these young designers, intent on imposing their sense of fashion and life.’96 Here, like the 1962 issue of Elle with clothing by Emma Christie, language and image illustrated design in a moment of transition in terms of fashion conception, production and dissemination.

Retailers Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

Magazines frequently discussed the experience of shopping in Paris, which they incorporated into their symbolic construction of stylisme. Vogue’s recurrent section, for instance, ‘les Boutiques de Vogue,’ featured and photographed shops, their products and consumers. In these descriptions, magazines characterized these spaces by their singular interior decoration, rapid product turnover and conviviality.97 Furthermore, they both reaffirmed Paris’s position as a space of fashion and symbolically reconstructed the city. Or according to Bourdieu, these descriptions shaped new high reference points of ‘reified social space,’ as noted in Chapter  1.98 The spaces, characterized by a close ratio of agents and goods in magazines’ descriptions of fashion, were therefore physically realized. That is, due to these descriptions, new areas in Paris became known for boutiques and fashion, namely the rue de Sèvres in the Left Bank, which notably housed the

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boutique Dorothée Bis.99 It reinvested an area, already associated to fashion via, for instance, the department store Le Bon Marché, with stylisme and its values. A 1968 article in Officiel du Prêt à Porter visualized reified space in its discussion of boutiques in relation to their particular location. It characterized the area around the rue de Sèvres, which featured several shops, as the place that launched ‘le style’ and ‘mode boutique.’100 Elie and Jacqueline Jacobson opened Dorothée Bis in 1962, with the goal to sell more youthful garments there than at its predecessor Dorothée. Maïmé Arnodin discussed how this shop paved the way for others on that street, in that it sold high-quality, inexpensive and stylish garments, in opposition to older stores: ‘Between 1960 and 1964, 750 boutiques were created, while at the same time over 1,500 traditional shops closed, not knowing how to evolve.’101 Consumer Monique Naudeix likewise recalled how she connected certain boutiques, namely Dorothée Bis and Laura, with the new fashionable and original ready-to-wear of the 1960s. She considered Sèvres-Babylone as ‘the area where it all sort of began.’102 Magazines gave readers information to spur purchases as Khanh remarked: ‘Elle accompanied the movement. The page that described where to find our dresses was key.’103 For Brouet, it was the shops such as Dorothée Bis and Laura, who purchased ‘the latest things, [that were] the most photographed in the press,’ as opposed to those who did not buy innovative garments ‘that would arouse the interest of the reader.’104 In some cases, though, magazine and department stores – tastemakers reinforcing the other’s capital – collaborated on what to picture and sell. One important marketing scheme was known as ‘Style Elle,’ whereby the magazine conceived of a collection of trendy yet inexpensive garments with Galeries Lafayette in 1958.105 From there, twice yearly, the shop (followed by Printemps) reproduced looks from the pages of Elle in its windows.106 In one instance from the mid-1960s, window dresser Jean-Pierre Darnat displayed mannequins in the Printemps window alongside pages from the magazine and catchphrase ‘Style Elle.’ Another example from the display emphasized the word ‘style,’ which covered the entire window in enormous block letters. The word overpowered the display, suggesting that passers-by would recognize its meaning – short for stylisme – and attachment to Elle. Such elaborate displays were not new for department stores. Yet during the 1960s, articles in the trade press counselled smaller retailers on eye-catching ways to showcase clothing. The above-mentioned 1961 Cahiers article advised, ‘[t]he power of attraction of windows is enormous, because 92 per cent of women stop spontaneously when they pass in front of a clothing shop, whether or not they intend to purchase, or if they are clients of Prêt-à-Porter.’107 It pictured the

Bureaux de style ­ s the readymade industry increased its production and the number of players A involved, including separate designers, manufacturers and retailers, fashion

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

window displays of three boutiques including La Gaminerie, which, with its grotto aesthetic, was an oft-noted example of these creatively decorated spaces by commentators.108 Other shops that utilized mechanic elements in their decoration were perhaps influenced by the Cahiers article, which advised retailer-readers on the use of robots, as ‘an animated window display captures the attention of passersby four times more than a static exhibition.’109 For instance, the architect Christian Girard often incorporated electronic and mechanized technology in his designs for boutiques, such as La Machinerie, which featured a conveyor belt and screens in the window.110 Echoing texts describing designers such as Khanh and Rosier, magazines employed colourful language to portray these ‘revolutionary’ spaces, their ‘audacious’ products and ‘bizarre’ window displays, to quote a 1965 article in the Officiel du Prêt à Porter.111 As opposed to some couture boutiques, which were hidden within their houses, prêt-à-porter shops had a direct relationship to the open, public street, as the above-mentioned 1961 trade text implied. It discussed the growing trend for ‘integral’ window displays as part of retailers’ goal to attract clientele, and accompanying photographs pictured Knack and Bus Stop, boutiques with glass windows from top to bottom. This ‘integral’ style, along with the obligatory glass door, according to the text, would attract clients and erase the boundary between interior and exterior space: ‘[t]his technique facilitates the  display of clothing and renders the shop’s interior closer to passersby.’112 In his writing on the 1960s French readymade boutique, Gérald Chevalier likewise noted that retailers used transparency, through the help of materials such as plexiglass, to link the street and the interior.113 For, through the reflection of the glass, the spectator was inserted into the diorama and into the reified space of fashion. These strategies were clearly discussed in the trade press, as seen above and in a 1965 article, according to which, ‘[t]heir quirky facades render the streets youthful, attract the eye, call out to clients. […] these “door-less” boutiques, where the passerby feels irresistibly struck and finds herself in the interior without realising that she veered from the pavement.’114 In showing the interior contents of a boutique, however, the glass window did more than reveal: it sped up time and gave a preview of the merchandise, just as changes in technology increased the speed of viewing garments in the press. In this way, shopping also reflected the loss of control in terms of image dissemination and clothing production.

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consultants marketed themselves as necessary intermediaries, as well as aesthetic stylists to improve the overall look of production.115 As discussed in Chapter  2, coordination of the various industrial sections was a central goal of the Fédération, which notably resulted in the establishment of the Comité de Coordination des Industries de la Mode (CIM) in 1956. From the late 1950s over the course of the 1960s, fashion consultants established agencies, bureaux de style, with similar ambitions.116 In fact, like the CIM, one of the earliest documented consulting agencies, Relations Textiles, was formed amid discussions with Lempereur after the 1955 Productivity Mission.117 In 1957, Claude de Coux founded the agency, which evolved from the public relations firm Relations created earlier in the decade.118 Françoise VincentRicard, who took part in the mission and joined Relations Textiles at its inception, viewed it as a vehicle to input a new creation-promotion strategy to produce and distribute aesthetically pleasing, high-quality products for all levels of the industry to follow.119 Implementing fashionable styles and communicating them to various industrial sectors was also a central focus of the CIM, as an article published in 1956 in the Cahiers illustrated: ‘The harmonisation of Fashion in the area of colours, textures and even line […] is made possible through the liaison achieved by the Comité de Coordination des Industries de la Mode between all those responsible at each step of production, from textile producer to retailer.’120 The agencies adapted these notions of harmonization and trend forecasting in their work with the emerging designer-led labels in the 1960s, as a 1966 article suggested: ‘Called to play a role that is growing without cease as fashion industrializes, consultants are tasked to help their clients, that is to say manufacturers, to discover a new style that will outmode last year’s fashion.’121 Many of these labels originated from older manufacturers, such as I.D. Orléans-based manufacturer Pierre Belleteste, who produced clothing for Monoprix and Prisunic in large quantities, acquired the Isidore Dumail factory, which his son Bernard Belleteste renamed I.D. in the early 1960s.122 Consultant Maïmé Arnodin chose Khanh and Gérard Pipart as designers, and, as I.D.’s artistic director, she coordinated overall design and branding. Arnodin’s previous roles at Jardin des Modes and Printemps instilled the industry experience necessary for the wide-ranging work of the consultant.123 Concerned by the growing culture of mass readymade production, Arnodin and other consultants also functioned as design reformers endorsing stylisme as good design. In one 1967 interview, Arnodin defined style as ‘a manner of being, living, thinking that translates into clothing.’124 Implicit was the differentiation between fad and good design: “One must distinguish between style of a permanent character and occasional styles. […] What we call style is the modern style that evolves with the mode of living. It is a new attitude towards clothing, a new manner of wearing it.”125 She thus sought to demonstrate that stylisme marked

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a rupture between an older experience of fashion, centred around following trends instated by couturiers, as well as warn against fads. Her comments drew on earlier ideas from French industrial design or ‘industrial aesthetics,’ and reflected in particular those of Jacques Viénot, founder of the Institut d’Esthetique Industrielle (1951), in terms of the elevation of the everyday object and its wide diffusion.126 These ideas informed the early work of Vincent-Ricard, who established her own agency Promostyl in 1966: ‘The word “common” was fundamental. […] it could become very important [as it] is closest to the individual.’127 Her discussion of common, everyday dress prioritized the connection between a garment and an individual, as can be read from the above-mentioned notion of ‘fashionable clothing’ that opposes the singular trend for a large group. Echoing Arnodin’s above comments on the experiential aspects of fashion, Vincent-Ricard explained how she gained ideas for trends through observation into all areas of everyday life. As such, she connected good design to currents of modernity, and recalled how, with stylisme, dress expressed the individual beneath the façade: ‘we move[d] away from appearances and unite[d] the ideas of the common and personal [and] that is modernity, the act of existing in the middle of all one has to live.’128 However, in contrast to abstract ideas on establishing trends organically, consultants worked analytically. For Arnodin, three elements led to a garment’s success: colour, fabric weave and line.129 She wrote that fabric should be ‘of a simple structure, adapted to large-scale diffusion [and that] prints [should] remain clear, well rendered and, above all else, coloured in the harmonies of the year.’130 In regard to I.D.’s summer fabric choices that Arnodin selected, Khanh recalled her fear, that ‘[I would] not succeed in expressing myself with the limited means given to me.’131 Often, Arnodin’s fabric choices did not correspond to Khanh’s overall vision of the collection, yet she ‘learned to understand that constraints were part of the profession.’132 For Khanh as for Arnodin, fabric was a critical aspect of the design process, and she chose a cotton fabric with a geometric striped pattern in several colour ways to serve as the main thread for I.D.’s summer 1966 collection. In one of the dresses, concentric yellow and white diagonal lines lead the viewer’s eye to a central triangle (Plate 12). It opens through a vertical column of buttons, and its simple construction is composed of eight panels of fabric inventively joined on the bias to construct a dynamic motif of diagonal lines. Khanh’s employment of the fabric thus affected the overall look of the garment. Two circular pockets with horizontal lines applied to the skirt and the central column of buttons clash with this diagonal current, and enliven the play of colour and line. Like the faux pocket at the breast, the dress tricks and amuses. Just as the pockets add illusory depth to the flat surface of the textile, Khanh’s pattern concerns, as John Lancaster wrote in relation to Optical Art painting, ‘the interaction between illusion and picture plane,

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between understanding and seeing.’133 The playful collection was envisioned for a young clientele, illustrated by its distribution to the boutiques Vog and Dorothée Bis and the department store Galeries Lafayette’s juniors aisle (Rayon 20 ans). Although Khanh employed whimsical and trompe l’œil details throughout her career, there was an increased interest in geometry and distortion in mid1960s pattern design.134 In connection with consultants’ rhetoric, Khanh looked outwards to a culture saturated by new graphic trends, and has written that her 1966 collection for I.D. was ‘inspired by Op(tical) Art.’135 The play of lines on her dress, for example, recalled the concentric squares in works such as Frank Stella’s Line Up from 1962. Stella’s painting was reproduced in Michel Ragon’s article in the July 1965 issue of French Vogue titled ‘Op Art? Sa place est dans la rue’ (Op Art? It belongs in the street). This painting, and others pictured by Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Anonima group, Victor Vasarely, Richard Anuszkiewicz and Bridget Riley formed part of The Responsive Eye exhibition, curated by William C. Seitz at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1965. According to an article in the first issue of Opus International, Arnodin had seen the exhibition, which standardized the term Optical Art and introduced it to a wide public.136 The above-mentioned 1966 article on Arnodin surmised that consultants and magazines premeditated the fashion trend for ‘Op Art, [which,] presented with a great splash by specialised revues before going on sale, was almost outmoded before it was woven.’137 The Op dress shows how a textile acted simultaneously as a surface for individual and collaborative creation, a calculated trend and, as the following section will explore, sheds light on stylisme’s connection to wider currents in art and image making.

Restless images: Exploring art and industry projects

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Designers, consultants and textile producers were drawn to Op Art motifs just as critics considered the movement a commercial trend. Ragon’s above-mentioned article discussed The Responsive Eye exhibition, and its title alluded to the fact that this was a movement, as many critics argued, that belonged out of the museum and ‘in the street.’138 In 1971, art critic and philosopher Cyril Barrett similarly commented that ‘Optical art has often been accused of being little more than basic design or psychology-textbook illustration, so its proper fate should be to end up on the ad-man’s or dress designer’s drawing-board. This is in fact what happened. Here was an artform which was what every good dress or advertisement should be – eye-catching.’139 Modern artists had long been interested in textile design,

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and indeed, the Op Art patterns even recalled 1920s and 1930s geometric textile motifs. In the 1960s, this production coincided with new possibilities in industrial fashion production, and was dispersed in several price levels. This included the shared ‘street’ space of readymade design. Indeed, an article in Life, which reported on the artist–industry collaborations stemming from The Responsive Eye, alluded to fashion production speeds: ‘The fashion industry, always quick to latch on to the latest in contemporary art, has to sprint these days to keep up with the fast moving trends. No sooner had the Pop soup can appeared on teen-age shifts (Life, Feb. 26) than designers took over the eye-teasing optical illusion known as Op.’140 Accompanying photographs depicted models in the exhibition clad in garments that were both conceived in relation to the artwork against which they posed, and others that resembled them coincidentally. One page that depicted several garments, including the high-end American designer Pauline Trigère’s collaboration with the biophysicist and Op artist Gerald Oster, illustrated the many levels of production of the more complex American industry. The model at the top right corner of the page wore a sleeveless shift dress by Larry Aldrich constructed from a textile printed with all-over black dots. Art collector and manufacturer Aldrich had commissioned fabric designer Julian Tomchin to create fabrics that were inspired by paintings by Vasarely, Riley, Anuszkiewicz and Stanczak.141 While these fabrics were made into dresses for Aldrich’s middle-range Young Elegants label, he attested that Tomchin secretly made and sold variations of the pattern designs in inexpensive fabric. This prompted Aldrich to comment in an interview that, ‘They were everywhere all of a sudden.’142 This case illustrates how artistic and commercial boundaries became increasingly blurred in 1960s ready-to-wear production, which as noted above, Jameson identified as a feature of postmodernism, so that, ‘commodity production and in particular our clothing, furniture, buildings and other artifacts are now intimately tied in with styling changes which derive from artistic experimentation.’143 Increasingly into the 1960s, this also became a reality in France. The Op Art trend illustrated the implementation of design production on several levels, that included, for instance, garments constructed in Op Art-inspired textiles by both Khanh and couturier Yves Saint Laurent. In 1965 and 1966 Op Art was a constant feature in the everyday visual landscape in France. The feminine press was a prime space of encounter of the commercial and artistic in terms of layout and content. Elle issues from 1966 presented a dizzying array of ‘15 New OPjects’ for the home, dress patterns with Op Art motifs and advertisements with Op Art-inspired graphics.144 This production explains in part consultants’ increased concern of creating ‘good’ design, as noted. A 1967 interview of Denise Fayolle, a

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consultant for Prisunic and Arnodin’s associate, brought up the trend for Op Art seen in Prisunic’s merchandise. For Fayolle, style creation ‘poses problems often brought up by the relationship between art and industry, or rather industrial forms and the technicians they require (and who we don’t have in France).’145 Concern thus centred on good design and technical means, as well as the overall look of production rather than on the relationship between original and copy. She advanced the idea of the regular meeting of artists, manufacturers, stylists, graphic artists and industrial designers, as their skills overlapped in product manufacture. As mentioned, the Fédération’s André Bercher signalled these ideas in 1964, when he suggested that creation be measured in terms of its adaptation to industrial production. As such prêt-à-porter found itself pertinent in debates on the place of fashion in art. This was the very question posed (‘Is Fashion an Art?’) in the title of a series of interviews conducted by Priscilla Tucker and Betty Werther in 1967. Those interviewed, including couturiers Norman Norell and André Courrèges, sculptor Louise Nevelson, costume designer Irene Sharaff and choreographer Alwin Nikolais, echoed other contemporary sources in discussing frequent slippage between their art forms. According to Courrèges, ‘beauty’ and art were relative to one’s time based on the period’s technological capabilities. He wrote, ‘during each period what we call art is produced when (as today with airplanes) the worker applies the maximum of his taste to the maximum in technological and sociological advances of his time. If any one of these lags behind, something inaesthetic happens.’146 Several years prior, Courrèges introduced designs that corresponded to Khanh and Rosier’s work, in terms of bold silhouettes and utilitarian fabric. Further, that the rhetoric of a couturier echoed that of readymade designers signalled unification between the two production models. Indeed, his commentary resonates with Bruno Remaury’s writing on 1960s French fashion, and its instinctive means of keeping up with advances in production and diffusion. For, he argued that they are ‘symmetrically interlocked’ to fashion: ‘as soon as the first extends, the second reinforces itself by a natural balancing effect in order that it operates by the grace of the imaginary that surrounds it.’147 In other words, fashion’s symbolic construction should account for and sanction its technological means, industrial materials and wide diffusion. Courrèges’s ideas extended from discourses of 1950s readymade production that valorized industrial modernity. In the 1960s, a garment’s worth was measured largely in terms of its capacity for industrial production – over its form or auratic singularity. This valorization of technology was internalized in parallel to invisible technologies, and held within the surface of the fabric, in garments as varied as Rosier’s PVC coat and Khanh’s Op dress.

From fabric to film, Khanh’s dress lost its predominance as the prime surface. Remaury has commented in reference to 1960s fashion, that as imagery increases, the ‘material reality of the object of consumption […] becomes less important than its immaterial reality.’148 Thus, through image dissemination, which contrasted sharply with the rigorous control of couture imagery, Khanh’s dress renewed itself through each new visual manifestation. In 1966, Daiho Yoshida photographed it for Elle along with two other dresses from the collection (Figure 4.6). That year it was also featured in the widely disseminated daily news magazine Jours de France and in an issue of American magazine Mademoiselle. In each case, the photographer worked in the style of Op Art and used the dresses as tools in the construction of an image that sought to confuse perception, as well as adhere to a new conception of fashion that could relate to many looks and people. As such, the bold lines of the garments were emphasized and bodies receded into the background. Yoshida played with the orientation and size of the three photographs on one page. Similar to other editorials and articles, the accompanying text bolstered the image’s message and asked, ‘Does Optical make you cross-eyed?’149 The whimsical images seemed to capture the goal of Op artists

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Figure 4.6  Garments by Galeries Lafayette (left page) and Emmanuelle Khanh for I.D. (right page). Photographs by Daiho Yoshida, Elle, 7 April 1966 © Daiho Yoshida/ELLE FRANCE. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive

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to play with visual perception for new ways of seeing, as well as the experimental model of stylisme, in the constant research of novel expressions. Through these and other articles, the fashion magazine became a veritable OPjectscape, presenting wares as it communicated a cohesive message. This is especially apparent in Elle where Knapp’s graphic design unified ‘Le Style Elle,’ through bold graphic patterns and fonts, in contrast to the negative blank space of the page.150 One article from 1966 in particular discussed how Op Art and ‘Elle Style’ for 1966 were ‘made for one another.’151 Echoing consultants’ rhetoric of the currency of stylisme, the text specified that both were ‘a way of living in one’s time.’152 The article discussed all the different forms to which Op Art could apply, from clothing to furniture. The magazine itself visualized this application, as did text that described Op Art as ‘geometry in motion that attacks the eye and makes shapes dance and spaces vibrate.’153 For example, the right page of a double-page spread within pictured a wooden screen with black-and-white vertical stripes, whose undulating line was interrupted by spotted Dalmatians. These publicity surfaces, including the printed page and televised screen, thus disseminated the motifs in ways that affected how they were received. In Mike Wallace’s televised news report on The Responsive Eye exhibition, publicity was a recurring theme, and particularly, its role in Op Art’s propagation. In the report he interviewed painter Ben Cunningham, who sceptically reasoned that the public’s interest in Optical Art stemmed from its being, ‘a piece of journalism’ and ‘publicity.’154 Exhibition curator William Seitz also noted the role of the press, and high-speed communications in particular, in the artwork’s dissemination into the mainstream. Yet he warned that this speed could result in spreading a ‘false picture,’ simplifying the meaning of the art.155 According to Seitz, this led to the ‘succession of fads and vogues and cults in modern art.’156 These ideas exposed certain artists, curators and art critics’ fears over the commoditization of artwork, and echoed Fayolle and other consultants’ worry about the fleeting trend in fashion. Yet in contrast to Seitz’s ideas on the dissemination of a simplified message, through its very diffusion, Op Art was elevated to the level of ideas or the immaterial. Sociologist René König used the term ‘restless image’ to describe the fashion trend and its habit of changing.157 Just as the eye grows restless at viewing the pattern of Khanh’s dress, Op Art motifs jumped from surface to surface, from textiles to household objects. It was as the above-mentioned 1966 Elle article characterized Op Art, by the way ‘it descends in the street in the form of printed fabrics, for fashion and furnishing.’158 This statement also communicated the notion of a restless image, and how technology was subsumed into collective thought regarding consumer culture. In other words, the text here as

well as that describing clothing omitted mention of the technologies behind the products’ manufacture, rendering them invisible. It suggested instead that the point of interest resided not in the singular trends but in the possibility of movement between surfaces. It was this prospect that underlay the experience of fashion.

Movement and moving images

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Khanh wrote, in relation to her Op Art dresses, that the ‘play of clashing lines, contrasting, and breaking the rhythm’ served to ‘make the silhouette vibrate.’159 Through the dress, Khanh seemed to research a form of kinetic expression that questioned space and, through the body in motion, would transform a twodimensional textile into a four-dimensional work. These inquiries corresponded to Ragon’s above-mentioned characterization of Op Art in Vogue as ‘an art of movement, movement suggested by trompe l’oeil forms, or real mechanised movement.’160 Indeed, in addition to the dress’s trompe l’oeil elements, its capability for movement was achievable through the body. Khanh’s aim to use the body in motion to exploit these effects can be gleaned from her illustration of the dress (in red and white) on a twisting, moving figure (Figure 4.7). Further, in 1965, American Vogue reproduced an illustration of another garment by Khanh, a shorts ensemble in a chevron-patterned textile that resembled the Op Art dress (Figure 4.8). Seen here, Khanh’s fashionable body was one in motion, which she accentuated by rendering outstretched arms and legs. Text too reinforced the connection between garment and body in the aim of movement: ‘everything moves with the body. Her skirts seem to swing from the top of the hipbone.’161 The question of movement held a new importance in the 1960s, in terms of contemporary avant-garde art movements, image making and modes of seeing. Khanh’s enquiries connected her to international design and art projects. As noted above, artists who worked under the Kinetic and Op Art movements were interested in phenomenology, experience and the perception of plastic arts. Barrett thus explained the optimal optical reception of such artwork: ‘In an Op painting what at first confronts us is a stable and often rather monotonous repetition of lines, squares or dots. But as we continue to look at the simple structure it begins to dissolve before our eyes. The dots seem to flicker and move; the lines undulate; the surface heaves and billows.’162 Similar objectives informed the collaboration between Italian artist Getulio Alviani and clothing designer Germana Marucelli, which began in 1963. Alviani created fabrics whose motif of parallel lines of various gradations fell under his enquiries of kinetic movement and perception. From these fabrics, Marucelli made pleated silk gowns and Alviani straight sheath dresses that, according to a

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1965 article in Domus, ‘generate constant mobility and diverse visual effects.’163 When in movement, these designs could attain endless variation. Khanh was undertaking similar sartorial experiments in France: she also sought these visual and experiential outcomes. In these designs, the worn outcome varies from viewer to viewer and the ‘work’ behind the artwork lies more with the viewer than artist. Like Yoshida’s images and Op artists’ paintings, designers’ garments entailed the participation of the viewer in the Barthesian sense.

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Figure  4.7  Emmanuelle Khanh, Illustration, c. 1966, reproduced from Emmanuelle Khanh’s unpublished manuscript, Khanh private archive, Paris © Emmanuelle Khanh Estate

In similar ways, interest moved away from the original artworks displayed in The Responsive Eye and instead focus lay on their visual effects through the television medium. Wallace’s documentary clearly exploited their filmic visuality, as the programme’s writer Gordon Hyatt later recounted. He described the exhibition as ‘a visual circus for our cameras.’164 For, at several points in the programme, the camera zoomed in and out of the artworks to feign their further distortion to

Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s

Figure 4.8  Emmanuelle Khanh, Illustration, Vogue (USA), January 1965 © Emmanuelle Khanh Estate. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive

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viewers. At another point, according to Hyatt, ‘Mike [Wallace] gave an on-camera lecture on how the human eye receives visual information using a medical model of the eye, and then suggested that viewers carefully adjust their sets for maximum black-and-white contrast.’165 Wallace asserted that, through their own adjustable technology, viewers could regulate and play an active role in the optical effects, supporting Seitz’s view that ‘These works exist less as objects to be examined than as generators of perceptual responses in the eye and mind of the viewer.’166 These comments resonated with Knapp’s work on Dim Dam Dom. In particular, for ‘Les Trois Modélistes,’ he filmed models in motion. During the scene in which Khanh commented on her striped jersey shorts and hooded jacket ensemble, the camera slowly narrowed in on the material so that all reference to the model’s body gradually disappeared (Figure  4.9). Knapp’s interest lay in the changing diagonal lines through the movement of the camera and how, in turn, this effect could be perceived by spectators. Later in the decade he produced a similar photographic triptych, ‘Mickey Tennis Look,’ a still taken from Dim Dam Dom, portraying a model from various viewpoints whose black-and-white striped shirt clashed against her similarly patterned ground. He credited the fashion culture with these ideas, recently relating how, ‘The young prêt-à-porter creators and bureaux de style (Emmanuelle Khanh, Michèle Rosier and Christiane Bailly) were influenced by [the Op movement] for their fabrics. I was just a simple witness. […] I moved my zoom lens, a new technique for the time, to obtain a movement that gave the effect of moving forward while softening the [rigidity of the garment’s] geometric forms.’167 Viewers’ perception of the dressed body was also an abstract pictorial form in movement. Furthermore, the camera moved differently in these shots of geometric patterned clothing than in those that featured shiny lamé, vinyl fabrics or floral cotton prints. Dress and film production thus mutually reinforced one another, and Knapp can be seen to have played a role in image construction that influenced fashion design and stylisme in particular. For, an earlier photographic collaboration with Knapp may have affected Khanh’s approach to the Op Art collection. She designed robes drapeaux (flag dresses) for a 1964 collection for I.D., which she later described as an experiment with geometric-patterned fabrics and garment construction: ‘the bold graphics of the flags influenced the sober line of my dresses. A diffusion collection necessitates an assortment of varied colours, which led me to make Mondrian-like assemblages.’168 That is to say she designed simply constructed garments to counter their bold, art-inspired prints. During the 1965 Dim Dam Dom filming, Khanh also discussed how she began with the concept of flag dresses, then abstracted them, so that they became ‘more and more geometric and less and less flag-like […] like Mondrian’s paintings.’169 These references to Mondrian may

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have been prompted by Yves Saint Laurent’s haute couture collection that year, but it also revealed the centrality of fabric choice and wide dissemination to prêtà-porter. For, bright colour and simple construction, as Arnodin advised, would allow for a profitable, attractive and widely disseminated collection. In parallel, Knapp manipulated the garments’ graphics and tested their kinetic possibilities in his publicity photographs for the collection. One image pictured a model, who leaned against a wall with geometric and mottled motifs. Knapp used the new zoom lens available for 24 × 36 mm cameras to alter the simple lines of the garment: he achieved the effect of the suspension of movement, reinforced by particles that froze in the air around the model.170 Further, Knapp filmed this garment in ‘Les Trois Modélistes’ the following year. Here, as he did for her Op Art dresses, he utilized the camera to make new shapes with the fabrics. Knapp was not alone in these explorations, however, as another Dim Dam Dom episode from 1965 indicates.171 Directed by Pierre Koralnik, it was titled ‘La mode et à l’op art’ and featured designs by Khanh, Rosier, as well as Catherine Chaillet, André Courrèges, Repetto and Carita. Here, the formalist ideology of Op Art was clearly used as a framework through which to present the clothing. As in ‘Les Trois Modélistes’ this episode employed the two-shot frame, as well as a pendulumlike movement to produce a dizzying effect, a projection of Op patterns against a wall, all the while the models pranced in stylized slow-motion gestures. Over the sounds of jarring music and random noises, a narrative voice crystallized the connection between fashion and art; by chanting words such as ‘optical,’‘Vasarely,’ ‘eye,’ ‘movement,’ along with designers’ names, names of garments and fabrics such as vinyl. Further, the constant zooming in on models’ eyes, painted in Op Art patterns themselves, underlined what was really at stake: a shift in modes of looking. This was the creative landscape in which Knapp honed his craft. Chapter  1 explored his interest in capturing movement in still photography, and particularly, his method of extracting images from moving film, as he did for a 1960 issue of Elle (see Figure 1.9). Following this shoot, Knapp worked increasingly in moving film, and in particular on Dim Dam Dom episodes from 1965. In that time, he veered from the goal to capture straight movement, and explored the role of technology in imagery and perception in various ways. This body of work may have had some bearing on Khanh’s approach to the Op Art collection that would employ similarly patterned textiles. She envisaged the clothing according to its potential for movement, as well as on screen. In ways that reflect Bercher and Courrège’s ideas on the alignment of creation and industrial production, Khanh’s creative process took into account new technology in terms of dress construction and fashion dissemination.

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Figure  4.9 (above and opposite) Film stills, Emmanuelle Khanh and model, ‘Trois Modélistes,’ Dim Dam Dom (16 mm black and white, 1965). Directed by Peter Knapp, produced by Daisy de Galard

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A prime example of this idea is illustrated in Géométrique, Knapp’s 16-mm colour publicity film that presented Khanh’s Op Art collection, which was reported on in a 1965 issue of International Textiles: Arnodin commissioned Knapp and Elia to make the half-hour-long film in lieu of a live fashion show, which was screened at the Salon International du Prêt-à-Porter Féminin in November 1965 and distributed to clients and retailers outside of Paris.172 Although it is not known whether the film’s conception preceded that of the collection, the visual elements of Khanh’s clothing would have been enhanced through the camera. Knapp explained how he again used it to enact motion: ‘I posed the models in a static way […] and it was the camera that made panoramic movements. […] from left to right, the models passed for horizontal rockets. The editing was punctuated by still close-ups of details (button, collar) and clothes in moving images.’173 This gave the appearance to journalist Ginette Sainderichin, who reported on the screening, that ‘The models walk in acceleration, slow down, run, jump, appear and disappear against the sound of percussion instruments, intermingled with clicks of typewriters, telephone rings, motor noises, bits of conversation, and laughs.’174 This rare film was thus relevant for potential buyers as these visual effects would not have been possible to glean other than through the body in (simulated) motion. Further, through the addition of sounds and other filmic effects, the film presented a choreographed heightened sensory environment as the imagined space for the clothing’s use, highly pertinent during the Space Age Movement. Unlike the visualization of film rolls or Wallace’s instructions on how to view imagery, the camera was implicit in the fabric. Tellingly, the first issue of Opus International in 1967 quoted Maïmé Arnodin as saying that: ‘In fashion, it is still the fabric that pushes the rest.’175 She thus alluded to fabric’s essential position, not as the end result, but as an instigator of other manifestations. In the years after the Telstar Satellite, image makers sought innovative means of publicity that would traverse national borders. Dissemination was indeed a central goal behind Arnodin’s I.D. film, and as such, she opposed the control surrounding couture collection presentations. One article described it as the first on-screen presentation of a complete fashion collection and a new development in fashion promotion, in that shops could screen the film for clients instead of staging fashion shows.176 News of the event was even disseminated to the United States in an Associated Press article, which announced: ‘A Paris ready-to-wear fashion house has released a 25-minute film to show in the form of sketches the fashion collection of Emmanuelle Khanh, one of the “new wave” designers.’177 Géométrique should also be considered a subversion tactic in that it attached cultural value to prêt-à-porter whilst distinguishing it from couture. The film, which forecasted designers’ avant-garde fashion shows from the mid-1960s, blurred the

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boundaries between art project and a highly disseminated fashion presentation. During this time a number of visual artists used 16- and 8-mm film to document their activities and artwork. Fashion designers’ engagement with contemporary theatrical forms was not a new concept in the 1960s, but these were firsts for prêt-à-porter.178 This was another medium in which the gap between readymade clothing and the avant-garde narrowed. Designers’ avant-garde, whimsical, even outlandish runway shows differed greatly from couturiers’ discreet displays of elegance, compared by historian Bernard Roshco in 1964 to ‘sacred rites,’ so quiet ‘you can hear a pin drop.’179 The fashion and daily press exploited these shows in their symbolic construction of stylisme as seen in the publicity surrounding New York’s annual April in Paris Ball in 1966.180 Journalist Hebe Dorsey chose Khanh, Bailly and Rosier (with Paco Rabanne) as the first ready-to-wear designers to take part in this well-known charity ball that brought French design to the United States. According to Dorsey, ‘They planned the whole show to be as widely different from couture as possible.’181 In her account, Dorsey described the futuristic music and outlandish designs that included Rabanne’s leather and plastic dresses and Rhodoid accessories, Khanh’s flag and quilted dresses with magnifying mirrors and Rosier’s all-silver vinyl ensembles.182 Whilst an article in American Vogue described the models as ‘wafting automatons, following the impulses from the wheening, “concrete” music tapes […] the music and clothes hand in hand as an interpretation of the modern mood – all the meanings of today.’183 Dissonant music, composed by Quasar Khanh with the National Center of Experimental Music in Paris, accompanied the robotic models and their unusual garments.184 It was, according to journalist Eugenia Sheppard ‘moon music – off-beat, unrhythmic sounds that almost everybody now recognizes as a message from outer space.’185 As seen here, through explorations of technology, designers injected the avant-garde into their work at a time when the neo-avant-garde sought to disperse it to the mainstream. These explorations, which characterized the transitional model of stylisme, were achievable thanks to the industry’s attempts to render industrial production acceptable during the 1950s. In the following decade, moving further ahead, designers began to break away from manufacturer labels and work under their own names.

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­5  ­Expanding the urban fabric in the 1960s: Redefined bodies, dress and city space Bodies, dress and city space intersected in new ways in a 1963 issue of Elle in an editorial that presented readymade garments woven in toile, a fabric of plain or linen weave. One photograph by Fouli Elia depicted a cross-legged model standing against the grid of the metal beams of a nondescript modernist building (Plate 13). The model stared fixedly at something located off the page, and her look suggested that it was an open expanse of scenery, or an extension of her imposing architectural surroundings. Behind her, the building took on the greenish sheen of her shirt and skirt ensemble by the brand Stanley. Structure assimilated the dressed model, both cast in the same hue, as though constructed from the same strong weave. Their blurring was accentuated by text describing imagery in spatial terms: so that Plate 13 was ambiguously identified as ‘[A] large green space for this two-piece ensemble, comfortable and sweater style. In what? In toile fibranne.’1 This material, a silk-like viscose fabric, was pictured alongside natural fibres in this spread. Although woven similarly, each fabric and garment was slightly different, ranging from dresses to assorted skirt ensembles, in variations and simulations of cotton, linen and silk, by both new and established brands such as I.D. and Chloé, respectively. These many sartorial possibilities echoed consumers new lifestyle choices: seemingly abundant yet stemming from the same structure, and therefore still impeded by gender constraints. Chapter  3 discussed a garment made from fibranne under the name Flésa in the early 1950s (Plate 6). In the 1960s, the same fabric existed, renamed, its industrial reality bared. Like the nuanced Flésa-fibranne transition, the two periods were alike yet slightly different; tension was still present for women as they anticipated long-awaited legislation for their rights, and as inequalities became more overt. Elia’s photographs exposed a dissonance, as women’s growing desire for physical and financial autonomy was asserted, through, for example, the expansion of the family planning movement. In contrast to the text, the photograph suggested a lack of space, through the close crop and seemingly non-existent distance between figure and building. Its skewed sense of space and time brings to mind

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Jean Baudrillard’s characterization of the postmodern age as hyperreal, so that human experience is but a simulation of reality.2 Accordingly, symbols proliferated by the increasingly present media affected readers’ perceived reality. So too this disconnect from spatial realism in imagery stemmed from an influx of invisible technological processes referred to in the previous chapter, from cybernetics to telecommunications, or other electronic networks which Baudrillard later theorized caused ‘the microprocession of time.’3 Although this editorial preceded Elia’s 1965 work on the film Géometrique and Dim Dam Dom episode ‘Les Trois Modélistes,’ it offset reality through a filmic visualization and the artificial collage of women’s ordinary, everyday movements and buildings. In Plate 13 time seemed to suspend itself as the sense of spatial hyper-reality heightened. These and other images contrasted the fashion photographs of the previous decade with their focus on colourful surface construction, in that they allowed access into the introspective field of their subjects; as though Elle gave readers the time and space to reflect on contemporary bodily and spatial changes that affected their most basic movements. This was a period characterized by, as Baudrillard wrote, ‘[…] a new form of schizophrenia [with] too great a proximity of everything [and] no halo of private protection.’4 Profusion and possibility characterized the changes, from physical liberties to the availability of garments designed by new fashion brands in various price ranges, as the previous chapter considered. The potential that designers experienced as makers was, however, constantly in check in view of technical constraints. This too was the case for women, their potential curbed by the limits of their gender, and this weight was exposed in editorial images such as Plate 13 with its looming building and dim colouring. The image’s mix of spatial personification and lack of space also speaks to larger issues at play in post-war France. During this time of rapid urbanization, from the 1950s and increasingly into the 1960s and 1970s, low-income housing estates, or Habitations à Loyer Moderé (HLM) were erected in cities’ suburbs to accommodate factory workers, immigrants, pieds-noirs and other urban migrants. As noted in Chapter 3, overpopulation had become a major problem in Paris and other French cities so in 1955, within the Ministère de la reconstruction et de l’urbanisme (MRU), Prime Minister Edgar Faure oversaw the creation of an agency for construction and urbanism for the Paris region. Its first commissioner Pierre Sudreau introduced a plan for the large-scale construction of estates, and by 1964, there were over one thousand of these buildings in the three departments of the Parisian region.5 At the same time, Paris expanded to incorporate La Défense, the business district on its western outskirts. Building had begun in 1958 by the Etablissement public pour l’aménagement de la région de la Défense (EPAD), and slowly transformed underdeveloped land and factories into skyscrapers throughout the 1960s. With

its photographs of models’ outlined bodies superimposed onto buildings, Elia’s editorial probed women’s relationship to these new spaces and structures. In direct contrast to deteriorating and crowded housing in Paris, the government promoted the estates or cités, typically comprising towers and high-rise blocks (grands ensembles) with park space and other facilities, as symbols of France’s economic modernism and ‘progress.’ Many of the brand-new flats that magazines pictured and decorated in the 1950s, explored in Chapter  3, were cellules d’habitation within these constructions. As noted, articles in Elle in particular also regularly discussed this housing transition; in 1961, for example, housing and urbanism editor Anne-Marie Raimond surveyed women who lived in the suburbs and, in keeping with governmental rhetoric, painted a picture of the vast spaces and revisionary lifestyles of suburbia: It is the most formidable exodus of modern time, causing the upheaval of landscapes as well as man’s customs and spirit. […] A new style is born, that of ‘garden cities,’ ‘ensembles,’ ‘residences,’ where sun and greenery come with the deed or lease. Inhabitants (almost) remain Parisian, Lyonnais, Lillois, but have changed rhythm and character. They blossom like plants uprooted from undersized pots, put into the wide earth.6

Descriptions such as this conflated the modernity and progress of the spaces with their female inhabitants, as was the case with 1950s imagery. At that point, such progressivist language resembled the way magazines described the developing prêt-à-porter. Christiane Rochefort’s 1961 novel Les Petits Enfants du siècle satirized this type of linear modernist commentary on these estates. As the protagonist, the young girl Josyane Rouvier, first glimpsed Sarcelles, for instance, the most well-known cité, from afar, she proclaimed:

­ ochefort’s novel, which won the Prix du roman populiste and placed third on R the French bestseller list in 1961, enjoyed broad influence.8 Tellingly, it parodied magazine texts that equated spaces with their pioneering inhabitants. Elle’s 1963 article likewise conflated clothing, bodies and wide spaces, in that it portrayed

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

This, this was the City, the true City of the Future! Kilometre upon kilometre, there were houses houses houses. The same. Aligned. White. More houses. Houses houses houses houses houses houses houses houses houses houses houses. Houses. And the sky; an immensity. Sun. Sun-filled houses, passing through them, escaping through the other side. Enormous, clean, superb Green Spaces […] the people themselves were no doubt as progressive as the architecture.7

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toile as ‘soft, air-conditioned, non-wrinkling, neat, austere, clean-cut, soaring.’9 Garments were elsewhere described as ‘finely constructed,’ ‘architectural,’ ‘very sunny dream ensemble[s],’ and ‘To live in right away.’10 Conversely, allusions to the welfare state that accommodated natalist views and female subservience could be read in Rochefort’s similarly exaggerated description of architectural features, since the government to some extent built the inexpensive housing to lodge large families, and rewarded them with monetary allocations familiales for having children.11 The estates thus began to symbolize state regulation (dirigisme) and social commoditization. Just as Rochefort’s sardonic text warned of the dangers of this new landscape for women, the incongruity between progressivist, personifying text and subtly dark, cramped imagery in Elle hinted at growing criticism of these estates, a heightened awareness of their realities and a change in conceptions of modernity. Pages in Elia’s editorial that displayed a fashion photograph beneath a landscape illustrated how magazines’ new definition of fashion city and urban space stretched to Paris’s suburbs and airport. One such image was captioned, ‘Modern Paris seen from the southern highway between Paris and Orly.’12 Similarly, in the context of Paris’s expansion, in 1970 Henri Lefebvre wrote, ‘The urban fabric proliferates, extends itself, corrodes the residues of agrarian life.’13 Lefebvre’s ‘urban revolution,’ due to economic growth and industrialization – the inter- and postwar topics much of his writing tackled – was characterized by the globalization of the urban. It entailed a shift from an agricultural to an industrial to an urban world. This chapter focuses on the last transition, between industrial city and critical zone, during which time ‘the process of implosion-explosion’ occurs: ‘the tremendous concentration (of people, activities, wealth, goods, objects, instruments, means, and thought) of urban reality and the immense explosion, the projection of numerous, disjunct fragments (peripheries, suburbs, vacation homes, satellite towns) into space.’14 Magazine imagery visualized this process, as illustrated by the simultaneous urban concentration and wide space in Plate 13. So that, in contrast to photographs of old, iconic and static Paris, newer images represented modern Paris in perpetual construction and expansion. With this ‘excess of space’ that characterizes supermodernity, as Marc Augé theorized, came ‘changes of scale’ in relation to inhabitants.15 Below the top image in Plate 13, which stressed the vastness of space and sky, a photograph pictured a model in front of a building. Like her counterpart above, the model seemed superimposed, and the frame could not contain her body. Despite her indistinct and slightly abstracted residential background, the caption identified the building as the Caisse d’allocations familiales de la region parisienne, which provided family welfare services including allocations familiales, in the

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

15th arrondissement. This presented another pictorial disconnect, for the setting did not quite match the model’s expensive silk two-piece ensemble by Chloé. Financial access to readymade dress was a constant promotional factor, which did not always correspond to reality. In this instance, readers were offered yet potentially barred from the purchase of toile through its high price, as well as access to the fashion city. As director of the Institut de Sociologie Urbaine et Nanterre from 1965, Lefebvre wrote prolifically on urban change and access during the 1960s and 1970s. He considered entry to and command over space as fundamental sources of social power in everyday life.16 Raimond’s 1961 description of women ‘blossom[ing] like plants’ into wide space likewise harked to discourses of spatial access and negotiation during a time when this was particularly problematic for women. Alongside the continual expansion of the urban fabric and the readymade clothing industry, women’s access and place was indeterminate and peripheral, and the fabrication of their identities fluctuated. This chapter connects women’s ambiguous position in 1960s France to shifting spatial visualizations as both prêt-à-porter and Paris’s outer areas became normalized in magazine imagery, and foregrounds it in the representation and experience of fashion. As such, it extends Chapter  1’s inquiries into magazines’ symbolic production of fashion and Paris, and examines their language of bodies, city space and clothing drawing on examples from Elle, Vogue and Jardin des Modes. Four sections consider how journalists and photographers envisaged the body in space, as it related to metaphorical spatializations and actual places: the ambiguous modernist architectural settings in non-iconic Paris and la region parisienne. These figured among the spaces of surmodernité (super or hypermodernity) in Augé’s study, in which ‘anthropological place,’ signifies the ‘concrete and symbolic construction of a place.’17 As he theorized, ‘This magical effect of spatial construction can be attributed without hesitation to the fact that the human body itself is perceived as a portion of space with frontiers and vital centres, defences and weaknesses, armour and defects.’18 The first section likewise views the embodied self as a point of entry, studying models’ self-location in magazines. Subsequent sections consider the body in relation to notions of centre and periphery, movement and fragmentation in magazines’ production of fashion. In exploring these pictorial conceptions through the frameworks of heterotopy (Lefebvre), hyper-reality (Baudrillard) and non-place (Augé), the chapter suggests a theoretical shift from a modern to a postmodern dialogue. Alongside the visual analysis of representations, oral testimonies of fashion consumers further complicate the analysis of identity fabrication. This chapter cites the recollections of Claude Fauque and Monique Naudeix, who figured among those interviewed

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for this project. Born in the early 1940s, Fauque and Naudeix grew up with predominantly home-sewn dress, but matured in a society where they worked and bought their own clothing. The fashioning of their modern identities thus entailed a division between past and present – cleaved by the culture of stylisme – that negotiated their professional, personal, maternal and political roles.

Embodiment and fashion magazines

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

A photograph by Frank Horvat in a 1961 issue of Elle pictured a triangle of three models on a train platform at the forefront of the picture plane. With outward-

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Figure  5.1 (above and opposite) Garments by Galeries Lafayette, Intexa and L’Atelier. Photographs by Frank Horvat, Elle, 20 October 1961 © Frank Horvat/ELLE FRANCE

looking glances, they surveyed a seemingly vast space that was out of the readers’ line of vision (Figure  5.1). Although cropped, the sign ‘Garges/Sarcelles’ clued them to the photograph’s subject and location: Sarcelles, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, that was home to arguably the most publicized and infamously huge cité during the time of its construction between 1955 and 1970. Designed by Roger Boileau and Jacques Henri Labourdette, it represented an impressive feat of architecture on a massive scale with, by 1966, 36,500 residents in 155 buildings, which included over 10,000 individual housing units, parks, gyms, shops, restaurants and schools.19 The three models’ far-reaching gazes and stoic monumentality in Horvat’s photograph positioned them as fearless pioneers in this new territory.

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The article’s title, ‘Les grandes villes éclatent’ (big cities blow up), delineated in disorderly diagonal lines that spread out on the first page, demonstrated how Lefebvre’s urban theory of ‘implosion-explosion’ could be imagined in magazines. Although its space was extended, the article setting still located the viewer within a place, as defined by Augé. As such, elements such as the passing train in Figure 5.1 reinforced their definite location in that ‘all relations that are inscribed in space are also inscribed in time.’20 The editorial unfolded as a dialogue between women and defined space, and more particularly, the relationship between the self and wide, outer space, as the models’ gazes on the first page indicated. In parallel, increasingly into the 1960s, discussion about the effect of collective housing on the individual was addressed by French magazines, sociologists, women’s writers and city planners.21 Further, with the emergence of the ‘urban sociologist’ figure, who interviewed residents on how the spaces affected their lives and should evolve, an active dialogue between users and builders materialized.22 Most notably, by the mid-1950s Chombart de Lauwe (with MRU funding and his research group Centre d’études de groupes sociaux) was working with inhabitants of new HLMs in the Paris area, and the second volume of his influential Famille et habitation, published in 1960, included an in-depth study on grands ensembles in particular. Building on this foundation, in his 1966 book, Jean Duquesne sought to demystify Sarcelles, from its portrayal in the press, to show the realities of life on the estate.23 Moreover, he addressed his text to its present or future inhabitants, to physically and psychically prepare them for the lifestyle change produced by communal microcosmic living in large-scale ‘rectilinear’ buildings outside the city.24 This predominantly concerned women, as the majority of female inhabitants were homemakers, whose very presence defined and shaped the space: ‘during the day the city-dormitory belongs to the nonactive mother of the family.’25 Duquesne instructed them on structuring the day, in relation to their tasks, spaces and other people. Raimond’s above-mentioned Elle article similarly connected female identity in the estates to family life, and forecasted how women’s self-location, monumentalization and negotiation of individual space would play out in the fashion press in relation to the new structures and clothing featured. Horvat’s editorial served to record the lives of Sarcelloises or Sarcellites, names coined to refer to the estate’s female residents and, like Figure 5.1, linked clothing, space and daily lifestyle. Its mainly black-and-white images stemmed from the strand of late 1950s and 1960s documentary realism studied in Chapter 1, and in this case presented ‘wearable’ prêt-à-porter in the non-iconic Paris setting of a housing estate. This approach chimed with period interest in the everyday, through which the magazine sought to heighten readers’ connection with the

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

imagery. Horvat expressed how his fashion photography was built on his previous photojournalism experience during the 1950s, ‘in the hope that it would lead me to the same decisive moment, where I would strip away the layers of artifice from the model and reveal the “real woman” beneath.’26 At Sarcelles he likewise captured informally posed women in natural outdoor light with his handheld 35-mm Leica.27 In the images’ manifest goal to show reality, they harked back to an earlier Elle editorial set in Sarcelles in 1958. In studying the two articles, it becomes apparent how new means of viewing and locating the self were in place in the latter part of the 1950s, which image makers built upon in the following decade. Linking the two as well was the evolving work of urban sociologists and other groups who studied residents and brought them into a dialogue with state planners and architects. Both examples revolved around the everyday actions of the article’s subjects in mainly outdoor, domestic scenarios, within the complex and its schoolyard. In 1958, carefully posed models in garments by Chloé and couture en gros brands Lempereur and Germaine et Jane were interspersed around images of children and buildings in highly saturated colour photographs. The editorial was part of a larger feature which included a colourful three-room model apartment with decorating tips, and a report on the experience of a real resident, Yvette Sarton, through a lens of domestic modernism. In contrast, the magazine’s 1961 editorial closed the gap between reality and fantasy, in its proposition of both patterns and relatively inexpensive readymade clothing. The majority of the garments featured, mainly unbranded and sold at department stores, and in two cases Bon Magique garments from Elle’s Paris boutique (or by mail order throughout France and its overseas departments and regions) were priced between 100 and 200 new francs, although some individual articles were priced as little as 25. Based on the median salary for women in 1961, this would have been nonetheless pricey for the average fashion consumer, such as Claude Fauque.28 She turned twenty the year this editorial appeared and was on the cusp of her marriage, career and move to Paris. In an interview, she discussed how she enjoyed magazines, and recounted that, although usually financially inaccessible, she found the imagery for both couture and ready-to-wear realistic in terms of the model’s activity and setting, and the silhouette of the garment. Her comments suggest that magazines presented accessible ‘dreams’ for readers to imitate, just as Horvat aimed ‘to show women as one might imagine them in an everyday environment.’29 According to Fauque, who grew up in a bourgeois family between Paris and Lyon, ‘I remember how in the summer my friends and I would get together in a group, and how we loved poring over the latest Vogues. Of course it was a dream, but a dream which one could still slip into.’30 Looking therefore activated readers’ embodied experience of fashion.

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In another interview, Monique Naudeix, who was also born in 1941 but grew up in a working to lower-middle class area in Paris, discussed how she employed magazines to imagine herself and relate to the outside world. Naudeix admitted that ‘I started from an image, and [if ] I liked the image I tried to copy [it].’31 The magazines therefore provided her with an idea of how she aspired to fashion herself: she sewed her own clothing or went to search for it in shops when she earned her own salary. Their testimonies highlight women’s agency in relation to ready-to-wear, as well as illustrate how consumers located and viewed themselves relative to magazine imagery, indicating their potent unifying effect of a broad range of imagery on consumers. This was all the more true due to an increasingly seamless mass communications mechanism  – from the printed page to film – that disseminated fashion to the public, to the extent that, in 1967 Roland Barthes noted its role in identity building, writing,

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

[T]oday, thanks to the formidable growth of the means of communication such as the press, television, the cinema even, fashion is not only what women wear, it is also what all women (and all men) look at and read about […] We project onto Chanel suits for women and on to Courrèges shorts everything that is to do with beliefs, prejudices and resistances.32

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Although Fauque and Naudeix did not live in the suburbs, they and other women throughout France may have looked to the 1961 editorial to fashion their future or present. As noted, its documentary nature echoed articles that studied female estate inhabitants as ethnographic subjects, or that probed their psychological states, including Raimond’s survey in the same issue. Raimond sought to understand the lives of these individual ‘suburbanite women,’ who ‘have become the most agreeable citizens to watch live.’33 And like Horvat’s portrayal of pioneer models, she described the mass migration outside of Paris as a huge, revolutionary development, and asked participants ‘how they adapted to this change.’34 Raimond’s positive findings contrasted contemporary articles criticizing living conditions of grand ensembles, as well as the negative view of the estates cast by Rochefort’s novel, which appeared earlier that year. To counter this and other depictions of their remote, lacklustre location, cramped, impersonal interiors and soulless Brutalist architecture, for example, the magazine, promoted the standard of living that their larger and greener spaces afforded. As such, text accompanying Horvat’s imagery explained that ‘at four cardinal points the big cities become green: it is the suburbs … normally not well liked, but today pleasant, they have morphed into garden cities. People live there in calm, comfort, and solidarity. The [female] residents of this world of new dimensions subtly revise

their way of thinking and dressing.’35 In addition to grands ensembles, Horvat also pictured the pavillons or small detached bungalows, within the estate, while text explained how, ‘In the suburbs, there are buildings that soar up and small separate pavilions seated in the garden.’ In highlighting ‘greener’ spaces in particular, the article validated the suburban lifestyle choice, while text that insisted on bodily space, often conflated with that of the estate, signalled wider issues. The variety of imagery in Horvat’s editorial illustrates Shirley Jordan’s assertion that city photography ‘speaks to the general problem of negotiating space.’36 In her writings on postmodern urban spaces of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Jordan has noted that this photography ‘pits the individual against a backdrop of the sprawl, the massive, and the mass […].’37 Similarly, Horvat’s photographs often pictured one or several models against something of mass, whether impressive architecture, a flurry of people in a supermarket, or the large vistas and perspectival views of Figure 5.1. Seen here the large size of the women models rivalled the scale of the background objects, seemingly in an attempt to carve out some space for the self. In one such image, a model stood next to her automobile and her child with part of the huge estate behind her (Figure 5.2). The relationship between figures and structure seen here correlates to Lefebvre’s writing on the spatialization of monumentality, in which he argues there is a continual focus on part and whole. According to Lefebvre: In an apartment building comprising stack after stack of ‘boxes for living in,’ for example, the spectators-cum-tenants grasp the relationship between part and whole directly; furthermore, they recognize themselves in that relationship. By constantly expanding the scale of things, this movement serves to compensate for the pathetically small size of each set of living quarters.38

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

Lefebvre was of course commenting on contemporary estate architecture, which he claims affected people’s sense of self in relation to the mass-populated world. A remarkable photograph by Fouli Elia that appeared in a 1965 issue of Elle illustrated this relational concept. Laid out over a double-page spread, the image depicted the section interior view of a seemingly unfinished five-storey grand ensemble. Within this ‘cement cage,’ as the structure was described in the text, one single apartment, or cellule, was lit up and handsomely furnished. The article, titled ‘Comment vivre heureux dans un grand ensemble’ (How to live happily in a housing estate), was one of many that addressed coping with this new spatial reality through home decoration.39 This imagery stressed the relationship between single apartment and entire building – like Lefebvre’s focus on part and whole – while providing a glimpse at the wider suburb in the

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Figure 5.2  Elle Bon Magique Garments. Photographs by Frank Horvat, Elle, 20 October 1961 © Frank Horvat/ELLE FRANCE

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background. Whereas in Horvat’s photographs, the constant monumentalizing of people counterbalanced the structure’s enormity to negotiate space for the self – a common treatment of fashion models alongside statuesque mid-century architectural constructions. In their monumentalization, Horvat’s subjects also constricted space. In Figure  5.2 especially, figures and objects crowded the frame and gave the impression of a two-dimensional photomontage. As Caroline Evans and Minna Thornton wrote in relation to a later fashion photograph, ‘The nearness of the model and her direct gaze suggest a relationship which in its closeness becomes confounded with a mirror image. The look – ours, hers – is one of recognition.’40 The forged connection between reader and subject, the universal elle, heightened the composition’s perceived heaviness. Objects and children became weighty appendages while the model’s hooded gabardine wool-lined raincoat jacket encased her body. In contrast, on the opposite page, the same model was photographed with this coat opened, hood detached, revealing a sleeveless shift dress underneath, posed to highlight the way the sun hit her skin, and how she basked in the open air. Another difference: she was not in the shadow of the tower block but surrounded by pavillons, with their connotations of independence and individuality in relation to the cellule d’habitation. Meanings

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

behind different architectural spaces, increasingly vocalized in resident surveys and communications, mediated pulls between women’s personal and maternal bodily space.41 Text clarified that these were the issues at stake in this editorial, at least on one level, in framing women’s consumer and maternal lifestyles in terms of physical comfort, liberty and wide space: ‘The [female] resident “outside the city” does her market shopping. On the agenda: freedom (of movement) and also children.’42 Therefore linking open space and ‘airy’ clothing was key in this portrayal of modern womanhood.43 Textual allusions to autonomy held heightened significance in view of the fact the French Family Planning Movement (Mouvement français pour le planning familial) became increasingly vocal in the early 1960s. In 1961 it opened its first public office in Grenoble, which was reported in an Elle article earlier in the year.44 Stemming from the 1956 Maternité Heureuse, discussed in Chapter 3, in addition to its aims to educate women, it began to campaign for the legalization of birth control. The name change, as Sharon Elise Cline has suggested, showed how the movement veered from the concept of motherhood, and ‘began increasingly to incorporate women’s emancipation as a rhetorical and political strategy.’45 These changing ideologies buttress the feeling of oppression in Figure 5.2. The close-up and wide-angle viewpoint suggested intimacy, yet, and in direct contrast to the text, the pictorial effect was one of crowding, which suggested that this lifestyle was more complex than sunny environments and clothing’s outward comfort led readers to believe – forecasting criticism of modernism’s dream of progress in this decade. While Fauque and Naudeix read magazines to fantasize, the sociologist, women’s rights activist and family planning proponent Evelyne Sullerot viewed the press as a tool to uncover female realities in contrast to accepted gender tropes, including the Eternel Féminin or the heroine.46 Her first book, La presse féminine, published in 1963, was essentially a history of women through magazines, which, according to the author, provided a ‘significant reflection of daily life, domestic economy, social relationships, mentalities, morals and fervent snobbism, in their monotone fever of novelty.’47 Accordingly, although the press fabricated ideals of womanhood, a Beauvoirian idea Sullerot furthered in 1965 in La vie des femmes, it also shed light on women’s quotidian. This next text was accompanied by Janine Niépce’s documentary photographs of French women in their various roles, wherein she distinguished between surface and subjectivity. She wrote that women ‘are not only their bodies and its extensions. They are also social beings, they have lifestyles, obligations, aspirations, activities that distinguish them.’48 Sullerot’s focus on women’s individualization here chimed with the stress on autonomy in arguments in support of birth control, as the family

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planning movement advanced the women’s cause through the enforcement of these ideals. Her interest in the daily, lived experiences of women resonated with journalism sources, including the television programme Les femmes … aussi, produced by Éliane Victor, which began in 1964 and ran until 1975. In one instalment that aired in 1967, titled ‘Micheline, 6 enfants, allée de jonquilles,’ director Claude Goretta was much clearer in its negative portrayal of a mother living in a cramped apartment in a housing estate outside of Paris in Nanterre. By mid-decade debates on how best to house the population shifted away from the predominance of the grand ensemble, a result of reporting, resident surveys and the easing of the housing shortage.49 Like Elle’s 1961 imagery, the episode emphasized the incongruent relationship between personal and collective. The title provided viewers with the name of the subject, the number of children she had and the address of her housing estate, and sought to uncover the story behind those figures. The opening scene, which pictured thirty-year-old Micheline walking with a pram, panned out to reveal her immense estate and wider suburb. This marked contrast between individual and mass set the tone for the subsequent sequences. Despite efforts to centre on the protagonist, she was lost in anonymity and sameness, like the multitude of other women who shared her plight. The crammed physical space of an apartment with its eight inhabitants served as a point of contrast to the vast space of the complex and underdeveloped town. Likewise, her oldfashioned interior decoration differed starkly from brightly coloured magazine imagery that showcased modernist interiors. This sense of well-worn, cluttered space was heightened for viewers by the film’s composition, wherein Micheline and other subjects were placed at the forefront. She was constantly engaged in household work when speaking, and rarely looked at the camera. Repetition of chores and hard labour, coupled with the constant presence of six children in a narrow space, signified Micheline’s entrapment. In contrast to her unique, strong personality captured in dialogue, her body did not belong to her, and mechanically worked to reproduce and uphold the family unit. Goretta’s film was timely; in it, Micheline recounted that she regretted not having gone to family planning, and thus directly connected women’s reductive, maternal lives to the estates, as Rochefort had suggested in 1961. It is not surprising that the episode was filmed during heightened discussions and campaigning that led to the Loi Neuwirth, which legalized contraception in December 1967. Micheline’s comment in relation to family planning illustrated a wider theme that often resurfaced in Les femmes … aussi, that of women’s ignorance of their political and bodily choices. These documentaries therefore aimed to mobilize women into reflecting and taking action to better their lives. In the years that

preceded their prevalence, readymade-led, documentary-style imagery in the fashion press demonstrated ways in which to view and fabricate the self. Rooted in 1950s editorials alongside changes in the nation’s physical landscape, magazines conceived women’s space as a symbol of their wider status and wellbeing, in fashion spreads, surveys and articles. In time, their messages became more explicit and negative. This was no doubt also due to the rise in probing feminine anxiety and angst, by commentators such as Sullerot, which included the 1964 translation of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963) by Yvette Roudy to La Femme mystifiée and publication of Andrée Michel and Geneviève Texier’s text that outlined women’s unequal status, La condition de la Française d’aujourd’hui. In parallel, the happy (heureuse) quality that underpinned the majority of editorials disappeared to a large extent as documentary realism took precedence, as did the need to sanction prêt-à-porter.

Housing estates and Paris: Centre and periphery

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

Although fashion imagery began to broaden its representation of the urban, Paris remained a constant albeit sometimes unseen symbolic centre. Horvat’s photographs at Sarcelles, for example, displayed a newfound emphasis on Paris’s suburbs, as well as the movement itself of women travelling between the two places. In some, models posed on a bus or on the train platform, implying their commute into the city to work. Further, their outward-looking glances suggested passage and connected them to the wider world, as represented by Paris, a departure from the domestic realm of the grand ensemble. According to Duquesne, inhabitants of Sarcelles spend most of their time within the estate, which he likened to an island, wherein ‘escape is difficult’ both logistically and mentally.50 He wrote, ‘she can, if she desires (but does she really?) flee Sarcelles. Every half hour, a train leaves her about ten minutes from the department stores […].’51 These notions of distance and spatial barrier were sustained in Elle’s imagery, which served to locate the self in relation to an elsewhere. Likewise, for Lefebvre, the urban is a construction, ‘a spectacle for itself, viewed from high on a terrace, a tower, a hilltop, a vantage point (a high point that is the elsewhere where the urban reveals itself ),’ that requires the spectator’s ‘consolidating’ glance.52 This was the effect of models’ outward gazes, such as in Figure 5.1, which lay focus on the unseen and materialized the city centre. According to Augé, the notion of centrality is highly pertinent to urban France both politically ‘as a result notably of the layout of its road and rail networks, both conceived, at least initially, as spiders’ webs with Paris at the centre.’53 Paris’s centrality in relation to the wider

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Paris region was physically reinforced between 1956 and 1973 with the erection of le boulevard périphérique de Paris, a road that encircled Paris and provided transport to the city suburbs and beyond. Constant construction in this period explicitly reminded observers of the demarcation of a central zone and its peripheral territories. Horvat’s images that connected separate places through movement of glances illustrated Lefebvre’s urban phenomenon, which comprised, as noted earlier, centrality and ‘polycentrality, omnicentrality, the rupture of the center, dispersion.’54 And although Horvat’s editorial depicted Paris’s outer regions, it constructed Paris as a ‘centre of decision-making,’55 as described by Lefebvre, through its connection to the prêt-à-porter or stylisme shopping spaces clearly identified in magazines. In Figure 5.1 for example, three models are pictured on the train platform in jersey and tweed garments sold at the boutique L’Atelier and department store Galeries Lafayette, both located in Paris. Likewise, for Lefebvre, the centrality or concentration of the urban requires content, such as ‘Piles of objects and products in warehouses, mounds of fruit in the marketplace, crowds, pedestrians, goods of various kinds, juxtaposed, superimposed, accumulated.’56 The testimonies of Monique Naudeix and Claude Fauque reinforced magazines’ connection to department stores and boutiques in Paris. In the early 1960s Naudeix even purchased a garment at the Elle boutique, centrally located in Paris, under its Bon Magique system, a shift dress with an all-over floral pattern typical of the short, unstructured silhouettes of this decade (Plate 14). Fauque pointed out that, although cities outside of Paris had their own high-fashion shops, which sold the same garments as those in Paris, magazines did not include them. She used the term ‘Parisianism’ to describe the Paris-centric mentality of the press in their promotion of certain retailers. As such, clothing drew readers to Paris instead of asserting suburb life, and reinforced the city’s centrality, as Duquesne had evoked above. Within this construction, magazines defined Paris as Lefebvre’s ‘isotopy,’ characterized by commercial or governmental centrality and, through their location ‘with respect to the initial place,’ the suburbs as ‘heterotopy,’ ‘an other place.’57 Lefebvre views these spaces in terms of relational contrasts and juxtapositions, wherein heterotopia functioned as a marginal and incongruous space. Magazines’ content and visualizations likewise spoke to the comparative aspects of space, in their constant focus on Paris with respect to the wider Paris area. They provided a means for readers to enter Paris whether or not they located themselves out of the centre physically or metaphorically. In parallel, they possibly reinforced readers’ sense of marginality or incongruity. As remarked in Chapter 4, Naudeix associated certain boutiques in the SèvresBabylone area such as Laura and Dorothée Bis with the new ready-to-wear of the

1960s. Fauque also cited Victoire as the first fashionable and modern designer boutique.58 Women interviewed unanimously mentioned the Galeries Lafayette, and Printemps to a slightly lesser extent, in discussions of Paris shopping. For many, although purchases were often unattainable, they enjoyed browsing the department stores. Naudeix spoke of the beauty of the space and admitted that, in her twenties, she ‘went to the Galeries to dream but shopped at Prisunic.’59 These shops also served as longstanding references of fashionability, often transferred from mother to daughter. Naudeix described the Galeries as ‘the temple … I remember that it was … it was my mother’s outing … she loved it … she loved it … the Galeries were her reference. But she didn’t concern herself with the small boutiques around it, never. It was the Galeries, the temple. Without a doubt also because no one obliged us to buy.’60 It was the act of purchasing, which implied working and earning money that distinguished ready-to-wear from earlier experiences of clothing accession. Fauque in particular described making her first purchases as ‘exciting’ and as giving ‘the impression of liberty.’61 As opposed to the passive act of going to the dressmaker, who always knew best, shopping ‘was truly the liberty of choosing what you like, straightaway, and having it right away. Oh no, it was a revolution. A revolution.’62 Fauque used shopping to explain a shift in her life, and how she negotiated her own modernity and autonomy. She described a purchase, made when she was about twenty years old, which launched her into a new phase of adulthood, delineated by work and fashion: I was completing my studies and at the same time I was working at a daily paper in Lyon Le Progrès, so I was beginning to earn a little money, and what I bought was one of the first jackets in synthetic fur, a real wild thing, really … but how I wanted it! You have no idea. That, a black oilskin trench […] things that of course no one would have ever made for me at home, you see.63 Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

Such trendy, youthful garments were made in a variety of price ranges. She elsewhere described the above-mentioned oilskin trench as ‘a Monoprix version of a Yves Saint Laurent style.’64 Like Prisunic, the low-budget department store Monoprix was much more accessible than couturier Yves Saint Laurent’s readymade line. As discussed in Chapter 4, avant-garde trends began to adapt to several production levels. Although certain shopping areas were not new to the fashion landscape, the possibility of purchase grew through increased disposable income and lower-priced trend-led merchandise. Fauque and Naudeix both began to work, as a journalist and biology teacher, respectively, around the time of their marriages, which took place just before the

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marriage reform law passed in 1965. With this major legislation, women were given more financial independence within marriage. Although their husbands administered the family’s common assets and remained heads of household, wives could now officially do a variety of things without their spouses’ legal consent, such as working or opening a bank account. However, this did not affect all women, especially those born during the 1940s, as Fauque and Naudeix, who recounted that they already enjoyed these rights in their households.65 The practice of making purchases for their self-styling worked to instil their sense of independence. Much clothing pictured in magazines, as seen above, also hinted at their potential or imagined use for work. In 1965, Sullerot echoed Beauvoir’s 1949 text and wrote that ‘Staying home with the children means more and more “to renounce the world,” and work: “to open oneself up to the world” […]’66 Further, she defined work outside of the domestic household as ‘that which gives a status, a place in the city […] that, potentially, allows for progression, elevation.’67 Her language evoked movement and growth, just as Horvat’s photographs suggested passage between centre and periphery earlier in the decade. The suits and shirt dresses pictured prevalently throughout the 1960s, as in earlier periods, conjured up urban professionalism. Yet the modernism and authority of the suit has to do with its ability to express larger symbolisms through its singular, unchanging form, as Anne Hollander argued.68 In one of Horvat’s images, two models leisurely strolled through the complex, pushing a pram. Labelled in the accompanying captions as ‘younger’ and ‘older,’ they acted the parts of daughter and mother. Despite the domestic scenario, the clothing they wore, darkly coloured tweed blazers, flannel skirts and cotton blouses, recalled menswear suits. During the time Micheline spent outside, she similarly wore a blazer and skirt. In both instances, clothing paired with pram, and the weight of motherhood. Imagery exposed a disconnect between industrious, professional women and garments, and the maternal body, despite the symbolic versatility of the modern suit. Readymade dress served as a means of metaphorical movement for women readers: they remained on the periphery, although clothing suitable to new independent lifestyles was now seemingly within reach.

Unproductive women in hyper-reality ­ uring the early 1960s, in the lead-up to the marriage reform, the business D district La Défense was in full construction. This ongoing project injected the frequent imagery of modernist buildings in the fashion press, with masculine

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professionalism and government authority. Yet as opposed to designated ‘office’ settings in magazines, they became associated with a more ambiguous urbanity, whose meanings oscillated between public, professional space and the residential one of the grand ensemble. Photographs by Guy Bourdin from a 1965 issue of Jardin des Modes pictured women ‘à la rentrée,’ in and around such spaces, offering glimpses of the semiotics of office building architecture, a hint of a tower block, an office plaza, marble stairs and walls, and glass door facades.69 Minimalist and expensive readymade clothing, priced between 315 and 535 francs, befitted the setting, with its cold marble, transparent glass and shiny metallic surfaces. Descriptions of the models’ garments connected them to the aesthetic of modernism, with their ‘precise cut, sober; non-extravagant fantasy.’70 In one image, models stood within, or traversed portals, within compositions of grid-like forms, of vertical and horizontal planes of architectural mass: in a suit in camel hair jersey and wool, by Léonard-Fashion to the left, and a suit by Chloé composed of a pleated skirt and jacket at right (Figure 5.3). Thus framed and camouflaged by architectural features, the models displayed a similar structural monumentality. Within this ambiguous setting, women were dressed less for function, than for protection and anonymity. The suit, an anonymous garment of modernism, was appropriated to postmodern settings and visualizations. In her writings on post-war American architecture and transitions to postmodernity, Joan Ockman argued that modernist ‘social idealism that had animated the vanguard architecture of the 1920s began to appear naïve or hollow’ in the context of the Cold War and McCarthyism.71 Instead, ‘the postwar glass-grid skyscraper seemed duplicitous in its reference, its elegant abstract transparency alluding to the utopian vision of a radiant, egalitarian, dynamically open society, while embodying the reality of panoptic, hierarchical bureaucracy.’72 These comments became relevant in 1960s France, when the dream of modernist progress was tinged with pessimism alongside the corporate shift to La Défense and the discovery of realities of collective housing estates, both part of the same governmental system. In writing about the production of space in the early 1970s, Lefebvre sought to show that space was political, remodelled by technocratic rationality. He described how, ‘The arrogant verticality of skyscrapers, and especially of public and state buildings, introduces a phallic or more precisely a phallocentric element into the visual realm; the purpose of this display, of this need to impress, is to convey an impression of authority to each spectator.’73 A prime example is Paris’s Maison de la Radio, a concrete, aluminium and glass structure which consisted of a tall tower and round wing enveloped by a circular building, constructed between 1952 and 1963. It housed the staterun television Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF). So its own

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Figure  5.3  Garments by Léonard Fashion and Chloé. Photograph by Guy Bourdin, Jardin des Modes, August 1965 © The Guy Bourdin Estate, 2020/Reproduced by permission of Art + Commerce. All rights reserved

televised news reports introduced viewers around the country to the edifice, depicting it as a paragon of modern architecture – ‘a victory against dispersion, disorder, discomfort and the dust of old buildings’ – and filming it aerially from all its angles.74 In another 1963 report its architect Henry Bernard compared the distinct circular structure to a human body or face, ‘enveloping its interior life.’75 This was reinforced for those viewing it via the screen, in the way the camera

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moved all around the structure, training the collective eye on seeing freestanding bodies in space. The building also paralleled the centralization of the city, whose arrondissements radiated from its midpoint, and the nation, with its political and structural centre in Paris, as well as the way all televised news and entertainment were dispersed from the Maison de la Radio to citizens. This authoritative, panoptic space was the setting for fashion editorials that linked modernist design and dressed bodies.76 Bourdin likewise deployed architectural features to be characters in a plot. Models did not interact with one another, with one or two exceptions in which they smiled for the camera or at one other, momentarily forgetting the forged drama of the shoot, snapped back to reality. Instead they laid attention on their movements and their relationship to the space, towards which they seemed mesmerized even faintly apprehensive, as though daunted by the prospect of access to public space. Here, it is telling that this imagery of tense, furtive subjects, alongside text that camouflaged clothing as architecture, appeared at a time when woman would have been on display, following legislation and the vocalization of activists notably the Mouvement démocratique féminin (MDF). In Bourdin’s editorial, the non-interactive subjects moved, but in long, slow motion, off-beat strides, at a time when hyperreal, slightly dark narrativity started to become a unifying thread in his oeuvre. This also signalled a strand of imagery that stood apart from urban women in motion, as the creative agents of their self-presentation and movement who took possession of city space, exemplified by active speedy bodies in the 1950s and early 1960s. There was an underlying tension; yet unlike their 1950s counterparts, models seemed unconcerned with productivity, time and rushing. These images were characterized by the priority of space over time, which David Harvey discusses as a feature of postmodernity. He describes progress, one of modernism’s aims, as that which ‘entails the conquest of space, the tearing down of all spatial barriers, and the ultimate “annihilation of space through time.”’77 Images in the 1960s that depicted frozen time, such as those by Bourdin, deconstructed utopian narratives and signalled a postmodern shift. As women began to attain actual changes, magazines ceased to picture models who acted out their progress, or ‘the process of becoming,’ that according to Harvey characterizes modernity and its focus on temporality; instead they enacted postmodernism’s ‘being in space and place.’78 Likewise, in later images, as in Bourdin’s 1965 photographs, they simply existed. Prêt-à-porter was no longer used as models’ tangible timesaver or industrial tool of productivity; in the context of the 1950s drive to repair the economy and improve the image of the industry, it became a regular and familiar element of their everyday experience.

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Models’ non-productivity relied on image makers’ enhanced or hyperreal visualizations. As noted, Baudrillard related time-space compression to the collapse of large distances through advanced technologies such as the electronics behind television. Chapter  4 discussed how by mid-decade designers such as Emmanuelle Khanh designed clothing with their reception on screen in mind, while photographs visualized invisible technology through allusion to moving cameras and satellite technology. This includes Ronald Traeger’s photographs in a 1966 issue of Elle (see Plate 15). Traeger, whose work featured widely in Elle and British Vogue, in particular, also added short films to his repertoire, including ‘Le Grenouille,’ a 1967 episode of Dim Dam Dom, made with Do McPherson and featuring Geraldine Chaplin and Twiggy.79 Its plot centres around a Citroën 2CV that flies over Paris to London, just as his 1966 spread was composed of models in open coats and capes in soft fabrics that allowed them to soar through urban space, the vast spaces of postmodernity such as parking lots, airports and anonymous modern buildings. Like many of his contemporaries, Traeger’s early 1960s fashion photography was rooted in reportage, with a focus on the active woman outdoors in the city. As his work progressed, he used technology to enhance perceptions of reality. Martin Harrison notes that, ‘he was directing his models to literally move while he photographed them, and soon, striving for extra dynamism, he was experimenting with techniques such as time exposures, panning, and partial flash illumination.’80 Jill Kennington has attested to his strong directorial relationship with models necessary to, for Harrison, ‘draw out their startling performances.’81 In his 1966 Elle editorial, filmic visualization traced the psychological state of the subject, from anxious to euphoric. The left page of a double-page spread showed the spotlit Kennington in a coat by Christiane Bailly for Nale Junior, who cautiously ran in front of a large looming structure, while to the right she vaulted through the city in a giant cape by Catherine Chaillet for Benjamin Davy (Plate 15). Traeger employed a wide-angle Distagon lens that, when used with his Hasselblad camera and Balcar flash, achieved contrasts that resulted in a dramatic distortion: monumental figures crowded the images’ surface, surrounded by vast skies.82 Artificial lighting also served to distort and construct a world that was both ‘real and imagined,’ as Lefebvre described ‘utopia,’ the third space in his urban theory, after isotopy and heterotopy.83 It was dreamlike, slightly disconnected from reality in that, as above, models moved to a slow, off-beat rhythm, or were suspended in air. Akin to the Situationists’ dérive, for Lefebvre, utopia is a space of potential that rejects capitalist spatializations of homogenization and rationality and instead houses ‘the dimension of desire, power, and thought.’84 For readers, it

was an introspective, fantasy space and their connection to it was facilitated by technology. From 1966 over 50 per cent of French households were equipped with a television, to access ORTF broadcasts.85 In fact in his text Duquesne underlined how, in Sarcelles, ‘The ultimate family leisure activity is television.’86 Ockman contends that human perception changed due to new developments in technology and increased television spectatorship, and allowed for the ‘penetration of these often invisible technologies into the unconscious.’87 And this brings us back to Baudrillard’s ideas on post-war consumer culture, discussed in Chapter 3, on how humans’ roles decreased as objects’ technology increased.88 Further in this process he contends that people no longer project themselves psychologically into their spaces and objects. Within this framework, the television screen came to replace the mirror as a source of reflection and measure of reality: In place of the reflexive transcendence of mirror and scene, there is a nonreflecting surface, an immanent surface where operations unfold – the smoother operational surface of communication. […] With the television image – the television being the ultimate and perfect object for this new era – our own body and the whole surrounding universe become a control screen.89

With the television there is no need for human action, for all action occurs smoothly and quickly on screen. Thus when viewing imagery such as Figure 5.3 and Plate 15, readers could insert themselves within the scene and simulate reality. As opposed to action, as in earlier fashion spreads, however, they entered the space of dream and reflection.

Fragmented bodies and non-place in imagery Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

Introspective models revised their motions in relation to the pictorial city’s increasing vastness and anonymity. In a 1966 Vogue editorial titled ‘Toile de Ville,’ photographs eliminated identifiable references completely (Figure  5.4). Just as Lefebvre theorized on the globalization of the urban, here the city was an omnipresent concept. Helmut Newton shot models in the studio, and as opposed to the title’s urban nod, there was no city setting. Rather, models of disparate sizes occupied the same page, set against stark white or black backgrounds, in layouts composed by Roman Cieslewicz. The effect of dramatic shadow and syncopated movement was hyperreal; and the depth of field between subjects in the overall collaged composition evoked the space of the television screen. Remarkably, it also corresponded to new representations of

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Figure 5.4 (above and opposite)  Garments by Daniel Hechter and Jean Risoli. Photograph by Helmut Newton, layout Roman Cieslewicz, Vogue Paris, July 1966 © The Helmut Newton Estate/Maconochie Photography

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Paris as a fragmented ‘non-place’ which, according to Augé, ‘cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity.’90 Unlike the fashion photographs set in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s examined in Chapter  1, for example, Figure 5.4 was devoid of iconic monuments and reference markers to which to attach meaning or measure time. The article’s title, which translates both as ‘city backdrop’ or ‘city fabric,’ also implied that the urban setting was a woven toile. Like Elia’s 1963 editorial on toile, the article laid focus on fabric, such as jersey knits, and its role was architectural and enveloping, emotional housing for models who roamed aimlessly. Articles on jersey

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were common throughout the decade, as it increasingly became a fashionable knitted material,91 and they often highlighted how the fabric felt. A 1963 Vogue article, for example, likened jersey to a chameleon in that it ‘adapts itself, changes its “skin”, look, texture [and] feel.’92 Consumers interviewed unanimously favoured clothing that allowed for freedom of movement, and often cited knitted fabrics such as jersey. Jersey was unique in that it could be fluidly draped but also, as Naudeix explained, ‘hug the body.’93 But this was not a new fabric, and her memory of her father was held within its folds as well, since he often brought her and her sisters yards of jersey for them to sew. From home sewing to later purchases of readymade garments, this fabric was an important part of Naudeix’s wardrobe throughout her life, and as such functioned as a symbolic skin.

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As Naudeix became a young adult, she encountered a new culture of clothing and imagery. These increasingly available commodities were, in the words of Joanne Entwistle, ‘the necessary “raw material” for the creation of new identities’ that modernity offered.94 What identity was she enacting or envisioning in Plate 14, as the model for her husband’s camera lens in 1963, viewing her own mirror image, a reflection of her modern garment and furniture? In order for Naudeix to experience wider currents of modernity, or feel she existed, she found it necessary to undergo a sartorial renewal. She recounted that she often changed her garments and her appearance, whether by shopping or reworking her old clothing. This often led her to copy images and looks, as noted above, mainly from what she saw in magazines, which included Elle, Vogue and especially Jardin des Modes.

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

For me, it was the … firstly the novelty … every time that I wanted [something] new and I found that a person had … well, adapted a garment to her personal allure … That’s something that fascinated me and I think that I wasn’t able to find that for myself. It’s that people seemed to … and they had maybe done it without trying? And that’s what I was sorry to not have been able to do. […] and the first time that I tried on the Dorothée Bis pullover, with the pretty little crochets, well I found that that one really worked for me … that it was just what I needed, that little short sweater with trousers.95

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Thus Naudeix used dress to search for, fabricate and unify her fragmented sense of self, which was largely measured against images of others. Naudeix sought to bridge the connection between inner self and appearance through fashion, and she felt that with a brown crocheted pullover she purchased from Dorothée Bis, she succeeded in performing her identity. She rarely found a woven garment that she felt properly fit her body, and appreciated that she never had to rework a purchased knitted one. Naudeix spoke at length about her prized knitted mohair jackets by Sonia Rykiel, so expensive that she could only afford one per year. Rykiel began making knitwear in the 1960s, first sold in Laura, then from her own boutique in 1968. Distinguished by slim fit, narrow high-cut armholes and detailing, it worked well in the context of the decade’s minimalist, body conscious styles. A 1965 example in red wool and angora with its narrow cut and high armhole shows how the designer applied novel construction details to evolve knitwear forms: a boatneck collar and all-over vertical ribbing, contrasted by horizontal stitches at the waistband and other points (Plate 16). A family photograph documented Naudeix’s first Rykiel pullover (Figure  5.5). Plum-coloured with a rounded collar trimmed in white, it too achieved the feel of jersey clothing that ‘hugged the body’ as skin. The photograph captured an intimate

moment in which Naudeix displayed a heightened awareness of her physicality and her delicately knitted garment, as she studied and fingered the strap of her sweater. Her description of other similarly knitted garments laid focus on her physical experience in them, including sweater jackets that she wore ‘long and close to the body,’ over thin wool pullovers with wide-leg trousers in jersey.96 The poses of the models in Newton’s 1966 editorial likewise highlighted the ways in which the fabric draped against their skin, and how it swathed and contained them. Models explored the feel of their elastic clothing as they walked in endless space, which resulted in the discrepancy between contained body and expanse. Clothing enveloped women who could not locate themselves in a fixed place and experienced a fragmented sense of self. Newton’s spread, which seemingly featured several photographs of the same model, functioned on a psychological level and visualized her inner

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

Figure  5.5  Monique Naudeix in a Sonia Rykiel knitted top, Versailles, 1967. Photograph by Daniel Naudeix © Naudeix private collection

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probing. It was as though one woman tried on several outfits (by designers Daniel Hechter and Jean Risoli) to explore and unite the diverse aspects of her identity, which replicated how, for Harvey, ‘Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic current of change as if that is all there is.’97 For, fixed identity does not feature into Augé’s conception of nonplace. Perhaps fashion’s increasing variety and possibility fuelled the problem of identity construction, as Naudeix’s questioning of her modern identity was complicated in view of the increase in products, images and choices available to her. Therefore she relied on clothing that functioned as second skin during this chaotic time. The above editorial’s sense of fragmentation mirrored the actual heterotopic spatialization of the Paris Region, defined by, in the words of Larry Busbea ‘circulation réseaux, or networks connecting various urban nodes (the villes nouvelles) located on their complex trame or system of branches.’98 And within these new towns was the grand ensemble, itself a system of networks and nodes, which necessitated, according to Duquesne, a `morphological adaptation’ for the resident.99 He observed how `The [Sarcelles] inhabitant must get accustomed to the absence of streets, to the spread out and dispersed aspect of buildings, to an urban idea [...] imposed in a single coup.’100 Yet the non-place, which was Paris, would have been a familiar view in the collective imagination by 1967, with the appearance of the above-mentioned documentary on Micheline, as well as Jean-Luc Godard’s film Deux ou Trois choses que je sais d’elle. The latter illustrated and critiqued this universe, with constant shots of highways, shopping centres, estates, and the in-process construction of these places. In his writing on this film, Michael Sheringham noted

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

[T]he pull between Paris as some kind of unity and la region parisienne (the Paris area) as an amalgam of irretrievably heterogeneous zones, made up of the many different ways of living that are conditioned by social, economic, political and cultural pressures, which, as they work on each individual, produce widely disparate modes of human reality and exchange.101

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Likewise, in a 1966 interview in Elle, Godard explained his portrayal of fragmented things, people, and places in space: ‘I wanted to make a film about a house and a young woman. The young woman lives in a grand ensemble. She is wearing a skirt-sweater ensemble. She lives together (ensemble) with other people, who she doesn’t understand and who don’t understand her.’102 As Godard noted above, the entire film revolved around sets of things, such as cities, bodies and objects, which he conflated in his narrative. While through the lens of fashion photography, Traeger offered a timely interpretation of women’s estrangement

Figure 5.6  Film Still, Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d’Elle (Argos Films, 1966). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

in this interconnected environment, for the 14 September 1967 issue of Elle. On one page a model posed as a puppet, with stiff stylized arms, collaged onto a suburban scape of sky and rooftops, under the hook of a crane. Moved by a higher power, she became unwittingly embedded in the landscape. Godard’s mode of filming, in which he narrates in a whispered voice-over alongside the characters’ scripted dialogues, reinforced its overall theme of fragmentation and confusion for the individual. Therefore, like the protagonist Juliette, who lives in a grand ensemble with her husband and two children, the

Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s

Figure 5.7  ‘Jeune femme à son balcon dans un grand ensemble de la région parisienne.’ 1966. Photograph by Janine Niépce (1921–2007) © Janine Niépce/Roger-Viollet

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spectator has difficulty distinguishing between reality and what is represented. In the case of Juliette, she confuses her personal feelings and desires with the things she sees around her, including magazine imagery and the profusion of readymade fashion in a boutique, Baudrillard’s simulacra: ‘my feelings haven’t always a specific object. Desire, for instance. Sometimes you know the object of your desire, sometimes not. For instance, I feel I’m missing something but don’t know what, or that I’m feeling afraid with nothing to fear. Does any expression not refer to a specific object?’103 Her sense of decentred disorientation is reinforced by the constant shots of her against the vast structure, or indeed of the overall suburban landscape (Figure 5.6).

Figure 5.8 (above and opposite)  Photographs by Jo Francki, Jardin des Modes, March 1967 170

In another graphic iteration of this theme from 1966, Janine Niépce photographed a ‘Young woman at her balcony in a grand ensemble in the Paris region.’ (Figure  5.7) The figure, seemingly lost in thought, looked out despondently, but at nothing in particular. In sharp focus, she is the subject of the image. Although she is dwarfed by the large expanse of gridded building, this, along with a green space and parking lot, is out of focus and secondary. Niépce’s work, sometimes in collaboration with Sullerot, documented women and their lives and spaces. Elements of Niépce’s image can be found in a double-page spread in a 1967 issue of Jardin des Modes (Figure  5.8), illustrating photography in a moment of flux – as were the lives of women. The

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photographer Jo Francki combined documentary realism and hyper-reality, collaging together subjects in black and white, who used their bodies to test out and interact with space. This layout fragmented reality ever so slightly, which resulted in an ambiguity as meanings transferred between genre. Its second page pictured a motionless woman who leaned against a balcony, and stared at an object outside of the gaze of the viewer. Like the models at Sarcelles in 1961, her long stare hinted at an expanse, whose imagined scope contrasted her own cramped space contained within the magazine page, a metaphor for her conflicted inner psyche. Her setting alluded to the suburban grand ensemble, and situated readers in indefinable, unfixed space. In parallel, her gaze was indecipherable. The fact that it could be any number of things was its most definable feature.

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­Conclusion A 1967 issue of Elle presented photographs by Antoni Miralda of haute couture suits for ‘life of the future’ which were set in non-places: vast suburban areas and highways where women crept cautiously as though being surveilled.1 In yet another iteration of the ‘fashion-concrete marriage’, text conflated surroundings and garments, describing, for example, ‘the most beautiful suit in Paris. Black-andwhite checked pattern in the image of these buildings that soar to the sky. Built for “modern” living.’2 As forecast in editorials leading up to this point, however, imagery acted as a foil to idealizing modernist language. Here, although women were not contained and had a wide space to explore, the road ahead was treacherous, as epitomized by one image of a woman standing precariously over the boulevard périphérique highway, in construction from 1958 to 1973 (Figure C.1). However, this was less an idealizing celebration of a modernist creation, than a deconstruction of its myths, or a comment on the dangers of modern life. If body and structure interwove into one urban fabric, what were the implications for both? As opposed to 1950s’ imagery that offered spatial solutions, this was outwardly violent. This representation of Paris and woman differed starkly to the first image printed in Elle twenty-two years prior, of a smiling model overlooking the Seine (see Figure  1.1). Although models in both instances literally held on to the architecture of the city, as they surveyed it from high above. As seen in Miralda’s editorial, magazines continued to collapse the ideas of Paris and fashion but, in its new representation, Paris was no longer the iconic fashion capital, it resembled a generic, utilitarian town, much like the visualization of Paris’s suburbs in Godard’s Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d’Elle. The setting likewise epitomized Lefebvre’s urban fabric, which he applied in 1970 not only to ‘the built world of cities but all manifestations of the dominance of the city over the country. In this sense, a vacation home, a highway, a supermarket in the countryside are all part of the urban fabric.’3 This generalization of indistinct urbanity was a metaphor for the fashion industry. In the mid-1960s, the gap between magazines’ visualizations of haute couture and prêt-à-porter garments narrowed, and fashionable clothing was purportedly more globally accessible. Haute couture, once integral to accessing the reified spaces of Paris, became, in Miralda’s pages for one, almost informal and functional. Entangled in shifting concepts of femininity and

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

Figure C.1 (above and opposite) Garments by Ungaro and Castillo. Photographs by Antonio Miralda, Elle, 2 March 1967 © Antonio Miralda/ELLE FRANCE

174

modernity, prêt-à-porter was key to this process of reshaping the idea of Paris and the symbolic construction of fashion. The events of May 1968 have been widely viewed by historians as a moment of rupture, laying bare the tensions of the post-war period. This book has considered the years leading up to them, and has noted dissonances in terms of industry identity and fashion imagery that had parallels in cultural ideologies and women’s experience. In its study of photographers and magazines’ embrace

­Conclusio

of postmodernism, for instance, it has detected their discontent with the ideal of technological progress and modernist constructions. The 1968 demonstrators voiced similar dissatisfaction with the developments and values of the post-war period, namely capitalism, consumerism and Gaullist authoritarianism. While the immediate goals of the student protesters and strikers were largely unmet, the events served to, for Alain Touraine, ‘destroy the illusion of a society united through growth and prosperity [and replace] the mirage of social rationality and the common good with a picture of society’s struggles and contradictions.’4

175

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women 176

Although the feminine press exposed these paradoxes as they related to women prior to the protests, May 1968 marked a rift and a symbolic call to arms to some, not least due to frustration that the protests were male-dominated. An article in an October 1968 issue of Elle, for instance, described the personal experience of sexual inequality of one woman, who wrote, ‘I felt deep down that the [student] revolt with its barricades was similar to my own: we didn’t want to remain marginalised.’5 And while the women’s cause was not an explicit concern in the May events, the following years saw the emergence of a more clearly articulated French feminist movement, and the 1970 establishment of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF). The protests may also have led to the États Généraux de la Femme debates, organized by Elle and the public radio channel France Inter, in which the magazine sent questionnaires and organized debates throughout the country, prior to its large-scale referendum in Versailles in late November 1970. The debates brought women into a dialogue to voice their opinions on a variety of issues. One result was clear from subsequent reports: their various backgrounds and viewpoints could not be contained within one idea of womanhood, anticipating the climate of feminism’s second wave in the coming decade.6 The multifarious identity of consumers would be implicit in much future trade discussion. As Didier Grumbach of couture ready-to-wear producer C. Mendès asserted in a 1972 interview, ‘The difference between Couture and Prêt-à-Porter is only psychological. Key is the vision of the créateur, who alone understands women’s desires, and who can predict what they will want to wear. Further, we are now interested in new designers like Emmanuelle Khanh […] a very individualised creator who corresponds to very individualised women as well as a mass market.’7 Grumbach described how, from 1967, his company leaned towards stylisme and away from couture prêt-à-porter, citing couture’s failure to evolve with the times and cater to the non-elite. These progressive ideas extended to treatment of designers. But while industrial production and boutiques facilitated wider dissemination of designers’ work, they were restricted to the guidelines imposed by manufacturers and, as Grumbach noted, remained hidden behind these labels.8 To rectify this, in 1971 he created Créateurs et Industriels (C & I), a subdivision of C. Mendès that linked manufacturers and designers, the first of whom to join were Khanh and British designer Ossie Clark.9 For the five years of C & I’s duration, manufacturers had access to a common atelier, designers used their own labels, and C & I handled the publicity, distribution and organization of fashion shows.10 Although Mendès was often identified in magazines as the manufacturer of the designs, Khanh’s own label was attached to her garments.

Despite heightened visibility in the press, Khanh claims that Grumbach produced very few actual garments, which prompted her to leave the group later in 1971. As the industry continued to experiment with commercial modes and reinvent itself, players were repositioned in shifting hierarchies. For one, the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode was created in 1973.11 Within this organization, two groups were added to coexist with the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture: the Chambre Syndicale du Prêtà-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode and the Chambre Syndicale de la Mode Masculine. The first, presided over by Pierre Bergé, showcased his brainchild, the Groupement Mode et Création. This group officially reunited haute couture and prêt-à-porter in the same trade association, including Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Emanuel Ungaro, Chloé, Dorothée Bis, Sonia Rykiel, Kenzo Takada and Khanh. This also implied the separation of ‘prêt-à-porter griffé’ (labelled ready-to-wear) and other readymade dress, notably brands represented by the Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, effectively situating certain designers on a par with couturiers and altering the fashion hierarchy as it had been since 1910. This book has explored the conditions that brought about this shift, fleshing out their significance in relation to the more developed industry of the following several decades. In emphasizing examples of both rupture and continuity, it presents a more comprehensive view of prêt-à-porter in fashion’s continuum. Readymade dress in post-war France was not a sharp break with the past or a phenomenon of the ‘democratic’ 1960s, but rather a symptom and product of circumstances and narratives that emerged in preceding periods. The lens of prêtà-porter illustrates the wider significance of the fashion industry with regard to French post-war and women’s history. These findings resulted from questioning both the ways historical developments and ideologies helped shape the industry, and how the industry and its players influenced historical and personal narratives. It has related the individual to the expanse through dual focus on the production and experience of dress, and on representation and ways of seeing, all marked by similar cultural concerns and conceptions of modernity. But there are more histories and voices that reflect the diversity of French fashion, and this book takes a small step in opening up these pathways further.

­Conclusio 177

Notes Introduction 1 2

Le Petit Echo de la Mode, 25 March 1956, 7. David Gilbert, ‘Urban Outfitting: The City and the Spaces of Fashion Culture,’ in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, ed. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 15. 3 Didier Grumbach does devote half of his informative French fashion history to the ready-to-wear industry. Didier Grumbach, Histoires de Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1993). 4 See notably Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University, 1988). 5 Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion is Spinach (New York: Random House, 1938), 122. 6 Yuniya Kawamura, The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004), 10. See also Agnès Rocamora, Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009). 7 Michael Sheringham, ‘Introduction,’ in Parisian Fields, ed. Michael Sheringham (London: Reaktion, 1996), 2. 8 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin, 1988 [1982]), 15. 9 Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas, Fashion’s Double: Representations of Fashion in Painting, Photography and Film (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), xiv. 10 See, for example, Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Vintage Books, 2009 [1957]). Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005 [1969]). 11 Nancy L. Green, ‘Art and Industry: The Language of Modernization in the Production of Fashion,’ French Historical Studies 18, no. 3 (Spring 1994), 732. 12 Florence Brachet-Champsaur, ‘Un Grand Magasin à la pointe de la Mode: Les Galeries Lafayette,’ in La mode des sixties: l’entrée dans la modernité, eds. Dominique Veillon and Michèle Ruffat (Paris: Autrement, 2007), 175. 13 Grumbach, Histoires de Mode, 126–7. 14 See also Nancy L. Green, Ready-to-Wear and Ready to Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York (Duke University, 1997), 95–9. 15 Bruno du Roselle, La Mode (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1980), 202. 16 In 1952 the magazine Elle introduced readymade dress to consumers communicating three categories of garments: ‘luxe,’ (luxury) available in couture boutiques and high luxury shops, ‘haute qualité et “classique”’ (high quality and classic) in high-end shops and ‘grosse série’ (large series) in department and chain stores. ‘Aimeriez-vous trouver vos “Robes Toutes-Faites”?’ Elle, 18 February 1952, 22–7, 57.

17 Catherine Örmen, Histoire(s) du Prêt-À-Porter: 1929–2009 (Paris: Fédération française du prêt-à-porter féminin and Etoile Rouge, 2009), 20. 18 Yvonne Deslandres, Le Costume, image de l’homme (Paris: Albin Michel, 1976), 262–3. 19 Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT, 1995), 4. 20 See Bruno du Roselle, Crise de la Mode; la révolution des jeunes et la mode (Paris: Fayard, 1973); Françoise Vincent-Ricard, Raison et passion. Langages de société: la mode, 1940–1990 (Paris: Textile/Art/Langage, 1983); Solange Montagné-Vilette, L’industrie du prêt-à-porter en France (Lille: ANRT, 1988). 21 Ingrid Brenninkmeyer, The Sociology of Fashion (Paris: Sirey, 1963), 163–5. 22 Claude Salvy, Le Monde et La mode (Paris: Hachette, 1966), 120. 23 Roselle, Crise, 1973. 24 See Claire Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France 1944–68 (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). ­25 See Kelly Ricciardi Colvin, Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944–1954: Engendering Frenchness (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 160. 26 Cheryl Buckley and Hilary Fawcett, Fashioning the Feminine: Representation and Women’s Fashion from the Fin de Siecle to the Present (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 2. 27 Jacques Godechot, ‘Preface,’ in Evelyne Sullerot, Histoire de la presse féminine en France, des origines à 1848 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1966), 5. 28 Colette Audry, ‘Elle,’ Les Temps Modernes 7, no. 78 (April 1952), 1788–94. Roland Barthes, ‘The Contest Between Chanel and Courrèges. Refereed by a Philosopher,’ Marie-Claire (September 1967), 42–4. 29 See Ross Susan Weiner, Enfants Terribles: Youth & Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945–1968 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2001); Rebecca J. Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University, 2011). 30 Evelyne Sullerot, La presse féminine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963), 241. 31 Pulju, 155. 32 Linda Sandino, ‘Introduction. Oral Histories and Design: Objects and Subjects,’ Journal of Design History 19, no. 4 (2006): 278. 33 Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, eds., The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990), 2.

Chapter 1 ‘Verdict sur l’Elégance,’ Elle, 21 November 1945, 11. Due to its wartime operation, the weekly Marie-Claire (est. 1937) was banned at the Liberation, resuming publication in 1954 as a monthly. Dominique Veillon,

Notes

1 2

179

­3

4 5 6

7 8

9 10

Notes

11

180

12 13 14

‘Esthétique et représentations de la femme à travers la presse féminine (MarieClaire et Elle, 1958–1975)’ (paper presented at Les années 68: évènements, cultures politiques et modes de vie, Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, Paris, 9 June 1997). Lettre d’information no. 26, 5. https://sirice.eu/sites/default/files/pdf_lettre_26_ veillon.pdf. Vogue was among the most expensive magazines at 400F in 1950, priced similarly to l’Album du Figaro (1942–), Femina (1901–56) and Femme Chic (1911–c.1974). Jardin des Modes cost 150F in 1950. Elle cost 30F in 1950 and was in the range of lower priced journals, including, in 1950, Modes et Travaux (40F, 1919–), Le Bonheur à la Maison. La revue pratique de la femme (c.1947–1954), Je m’habille (30F, 1940–52), Marie-France (30F, 1944–), Modes de Paris (20F, 1944–?), Votre Mode (20F, 1947–59), Petit Echo de la Mode (10F, 1879–1983) and Mode du Jour (10F, 1921–56). Marie-Claire was priced slightly above Elle when it reappeared in 1954. ‘Verdict sur l’Elégance,’ 11. Didier Grumbach, Histoires de Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 140. ‘Pliez vous à la mode,’ 6 April 1948, Elle, 10–14. This article discussed the Trois Hirondelles grouping of manufacturers, instructing readers to contact the magazine for retailer information. Claude Brouet remarked how these regulations were enforced for print media, as well as for television and radio reports. Author interview with Claude Brouet, Paris, 22 April 2013. Author interview with Brouet. Jardin des Modes, a continuation of the 1920 publication L’Illustration des Modes, was published during 1922–40, 1944–71 and 1971–96. Dominique Veillon, ‘Le jardin des modes (1922–1992),’ Vintième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 39 (July– September 1993): 109. Author interview with Brouet. Stéphane Wargnier, ‘In praise of the intermediary,’ in Glossy: Modes et papier glacé, eds. Sylvie Richoux-Bérard and Frédéric Bonnet (Marseille: Images en Manoeuvres, 2004), 164. According to Steven Zdatny, post-war Elle (along with Marie-France) helped amass a mass market comprising middle- and working-class women. Zdatny, Fashion, Work, and Politics in Modern France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 234. Elle alone had about 800,000 subscriptions in the early 1960s. ‘Si Elle Lit Elle Lit Elle,’ Time, 22 May 1964. See also Colombe Pringle, Telles qu’Elle: Cinquante ans d’histoire des femmes à travers le journal Elle (Paris: Grasset, 1995), 15; Susan Weiner, Enfants Terribles: Youth & Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945–68 (Baltimore, M.D.: Johns Hopkins University, 2001); Rebecca J. Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University, 2011), 22. ‘Paris Promenade,’ Elle, 21 April 1961, 92. Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979 [1971]), 16. ‘Paris Promenade.’

Notes

15 Ibid. 16 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume II: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, trans. John Moore (London and New York: Verso, 2002 [1961]), 1. 17 Kristin Ross, ‘French Quotidian,’ in The Art of the Everyday: The Quotidian in Postwar French Culture, ed. Lynn Gumpert (New York: New York University, 1997), 19–20. 18 John Roberts, The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester and New York: Manchester University, 1998), 9. 19 Sophie Kurkdjian, Lucien Vogel et Michel de Brunhoff, parcours croisés de deux éditeurs de presse illustrée au XXe siècle (Paris: Institut Universitaire Varenne, 2014), 766. 20 Léone Friedrich, in an interview by Susan Train and Marion de Brunhoff, 28 June 1995, Condé Nast Archives, cited in Kurkdjian, ibid. 21 Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford, 1988), 137, 135. 22 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Effets de Lieu,’ in La Misère du Monde, ed. Pierre Bourdieu (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 160–1. 23 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Randal Johnson (Cambridge: Polity, 1993), 15. 24 Ibid., 37. 25 Ibid., 35–7, 51, 133. 26 Agnès Rocamora, Fashioning the City: Paris, Fashion and the Media (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 55. 27 Ibid., 81. ­28 Lefebvre, 308. 29 Ibid., 306. 30 Urban imagery picturing readymade clothing was presented alongside photographs shot in the studio and in other outdoor settings. 31 It was less frequently photographed by Sabine Weiss, Suzy Parker, Henry Clarke and Gustav Bolin. 32 Rocamora, 156. 33 Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University, 1988), 79, 81. 34 Ibid., 80. 35 Julian Stallabrass, Paris Pictured (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2002), n.p. 36 Claude Brouet, ‘Bravo la confection française!’ Elle, 1 October 1956, 52. 37 Martin Harrison, Appearances: Fashion Photography since 1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991), 36. 38 Ibid., 55–6, 58. 39 Lefebvre, 310. 40 Pierre Schaeffer, ‘Le Bruit: élément de la vie moderne,’ Rapports France-Etats-Unis, August 1951, 18. 41 Ibid.

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Notes 182

42 Christine Moneera Laennec, ‘“The Assembly-Line Love Goddess”: Women and the Machine Aesthetic in Fashion Photography, 1918–1940,’ in Bodily Discursions: Genders, Representations, Technologies, eds. Deborah S. Wilson and Christine Moneera Laennec (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1997), 89. 43 Barthes, ‘The New Citroën,’ in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Vintage Books, 2009 [1957]), 101. 44 Ibid., 102. 45 See Michael Kelly, ‘Demystification: A Dialogue between Barthes and Lefebvre,’ Yale French Studies, no. 98 (2000): 79–97. 46 Barthes, ‘The New Citroën,’ 103. ­47 Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT, 1995), 21. 48 Ibid., 21–2. 49 Lefebvre, 64. 50 See Peter Hamilton, Willy Ronis: Photographs 1926–1995 (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1995), 30. 51 Willy Ronis, ‘Avertissement au Lecteur,’ Photo-reportage et chasse aux images (Paris: Paul Montel, 1951), s.p. 52 Brouet, 52. 53 Hilary Radner, ‘On the Move: Fashion photography and the Single Girl in the 1960s,’ in Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations, and Analysis, eds. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson (New York: Routledge, 2000), 132–3. 54 Claire Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France, 1944–1968 (London: Routledge, 1994), 178. 55 In her study of the English feminine press, Cynthia L. White similarly notes an emphasis on real life and readers’ own experiences in the 1950s. Cynthia L. White, Women’s Magazines, 1693–1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1970), 159. 56 Vogue, August 1957, 48. 57 Lefebvre, 310. 58 Ibid., 309. 59 Martin Harrison, Outside Fashion: Style & Subversion (New York: Howard Greenberg Gallery), 1994, n.p. 60 Ibid. 61 Rebecca Arnold, The American Look: Fashion, Sportswear and the Image of Women in 1930s and 1940s America (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 17. 62 Hilary Radner, ‘Roaming the City: Proper Women in Improper Places,’ in Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, eds. Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash (London: Sage, 1999), 96. 63 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1980), 52. 64 Radner, ‘Roaming the City,’ 94. 65 Peter Knapp, ‘Graphics and Photographic Works,’ in Peter Knapp (Paris: Paris Art Center, 1986), 141.

­ 6 6 67 68 69

‘Silence on Admire,’ Elle, 8 April 1960, 99. Email correspondence with Peter Knapp, 4 September 2020. Author interview with Brouet. See Peter Brunette, ‘But Nothing Happened: The Everyday in French Postwar Cinema,’ in The Art of the Everyday: The Quotidian in Postwar French Culture, ed. Lynn Gumpert (New York: New York University Press and Grey Art Gallery Study Center, 1997), 78–93. 70 Alexandre Astruc, ‘La Caméra-stylo,’ L’Ecran français, 30 March 1948, cited in The New Wave: Critical Landmarks, ed. Peter Graham (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1968), 20–2. 71 Charlotte Cotton, The Photograph as Contemporary Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 2014 [2004]), 49. 72 ‘Paris Promenade,’ 92. 73 ‘Les sur-chandails dans la rue,’ Jardin des Modes, August 1966, 27. 74 ‘Vogue vous met dans le mouvement,’ Vogue, February 1961, 33. 75 Ibid. 76 By 1961 Klein had made Broadway by Light (1958) and How to Kill a Cadillac (1959). William Klein, Life is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance, Witness, Revels [museum catalogue] (San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1995 [1956]), 32. 77 ‘Vogue vous met dans le mouvement,’ 33. 78 La femme au XXe siècle, no. 1, s.d., 1. 79 Nancy Forgione, ‘Everyday Life in Motion: The Art of Walking in Late-NineteenthCentury Paris,’ The Art Bulletin 87, no. 4 (2005): 664. 80 Steven Ungar, Cléo de 5 à 7 (Hampshire and New York: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 36. The many examples of this theme include Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient (1961), where the camera followed the main character Anne in her journeys around Paris; her complex paranoid psychological state reflected the city’s labyrinthine physical space. 81 Roland Barthes, ‘Semiology and Urbanism’ [1967], in The Semiotic Challenge, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 195. 82 Guy Debord, ‘Théorie de la dérive,’ Internationale Situationniste 2, December 1958, cited in Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981 [1961]).

Chapter 2 1

Notes

2

‘Les Trois Hirondelles à New-York,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, Autumn 1953, 25. Didier Grumbach, Histoires de La Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 154.

183

Notes

3

184

See, for instance, Brian Angus McKenzie, Remaking France: Americanization, Public Diplomacy, and the Marshall Plan (New York: Berghahn, 2005), 4. 4 ‘Les “Hirondelles” visitent New York,’ Vogue, September 1953, 128. 5 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York: Penguin, 1988 [1982]), 288–9. 6 Georges Duhamel, America the Menace: Scenes from the Life of the Future, trans. Charles Miner Thompson (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931). 7 See Georges Soria, La France deviendra-t-elle une colonie americaine? (Paris: Pavillon, 1948), 13, 15, 22–3. 8 Nancy L. Green, ‘Art and Industry: The Language of Modernization in the Production of Fashion,’ French Historical Studies 18, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 736. See also Nancy L. Green, Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York (Durham: Duke University, 1997), 99. 9 Green, ‘Art and Industry,’ 724. 10 Ibid., 732. 11 Lucien Romier, La Confection (Paris: Association nationale d’expansion économique, 1917). 12 Marjorie A. Beale, The Modernist Enterprise: French Elites and the Threat of Modernity: 1900–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University, 1999), 72. 13 Author interview with Jean-Claude Weill, Paris, 2 December 2014. 14 Ibid. See also Jacques Lanzmann and Pierre Ripert, Cent Ans de prêt-à-porter: Weill (Paris: Editions PAU, 1992), 69–70. 15 Catherine Örmen, Histoire(s) du Prêt-À-Porter: 1929–2009 (Paris: Fédération française du prêt-à-porter féminin and Etoile Rouge, 2009), 15. 16 As far as I could discern L’industrie francaise du vêtement féminin was first published in 1930, but was possibly the continuation of an earlier publication begun in 1921, and its title changed to Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin in 1951. The last issue consulted dated to 1963, which may correspond to the end of its publication. 17 E. Max Brunhes, ‘Evolution,’ L’industrie française du vêtement féminin, February 1932, 3. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ellen Furlough, ‘Selling the American Way in Interwar France: Prix Uniques and the Salon des Arts Ménagers,’ Journal of Design History 26, no. 3 (1993): 509. 22 Brunhes, 3. 23 Green, ‘Art and Industry,’ 738. 24 Brunhes, 3. 25 Lanzmann and Ripert, 61, 83. 26 Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, January–February 1947, 5. Albert Lempereur gave the keynote speech, titled, ‘La situation générale de la

Notes

Confection féminine’ and the other speeches by Robert Weill, Pierre Garçin, M. Leclerc, and Maurice Warnery addressed fabric supplies to manufacturers, professional training, industrialization, and exporting. 27 Grumbach, 134. See also Lanzmann and Ripert, 79. 28 See Rebecca Arnold, The American Look: Sportswear, Fashion & the Image of Women in 1930s and 1940s New York (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009). 29 ‘La Confection “sur mesures”,’ Les Cahiers du Centre d’etudes techniques des industries de l’habillement, ­September 1949, 2. 30 ‘Distinguer … ce n’est pas confondre,’ L’Officiel de la Mode, 1947, 64. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Edmond de Semont, Le Monde, 2 April 1947, 5. 34 Rebecca J. Pulju, cites ‘Alerte à Paris … New-York attaque: Cet été, sur toutes les plages, la mode américaine a triomphé’ La femme 66 (1946): 6–7, in Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University, 2011), 157. 35 Dominique Veillon, La Mode sous L’Occupation (Paris: Payot, 1990), 144. 36 For information on fashion dolls in the eighteenth century, see Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe 1715–1789 (London: Batsford Ltd., 1984), 51. 37 See Sylvie Roy, ‘Le patron couture, outil de démocratisation de la mode,’ in Les années 50: La mode en France, 1947–1957 (Paris: Paris musées, 2014), 178–80. 38 Grumbach, 136. 39 Ibid. 40 Pulju, 6–7. 41 ‘Etude d’une fabrication de chemise d’hommes dans une entreprise américaine,’ Les Cahiers du Centre d’études techniques des industries de l’habillement, September 1946, 1. 42 Jacques Roux, ‘Les Progrès de la Technique Française,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin 11, no. 4 (1948), 31. 43 Ibid. 44 Patrick Fridenson, ‘Un tournant taylorien dans la société française 1904–1918,’ Annales ESC 43, no. 5 (September–October 1987): 1032. Furthermore, Caroline Evans has shown that haute couture also utilized concepts of Fordist assembly line production in the 1920s. Evans, The Mechanical Smile: Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America, 1900–1929 (New Haven and London: Yale University, 2013), 147–8. 45 Richard F. Kuisel, ‘L’american way of life et les missions françaises de productivité,’ trans. Christian Cler, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, no. 17 (January–March 1988), 22. 46 See Régis Boulat, Jean Fourastié, un expert en productivité (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2008).

185

Notes 186

47 The Centre des Jeunes Patrons, for example, organized a two-month study trip for members in the Habillement-Travail des Etoffes section from 1946 to 1947 to United States and Canada. See E. Binot, ‘Impressions d’Amérique,’ Les Cahiers du Centre d’etudes techniques des industries de l’habillement, February 1947, 1. A trip to Great Britain in 1948 was cited in ‘La Confection Masculine et Féminine en Grande-Bretagne,’ Les Cahiers du Centre d’etudes techniques des industries de l’habillement, November 1948, 1. In 1949, Didier Colette of the Fédération organized a trip to Sweden. See Örmen, Histoire(s), 28. 48 In addition to the missions, the European Recovery Program also provided raw materials, the creation of research centres, and allocated funding for the Plan d’Équipement. For an explanation of mission type see Pierre Badin, Aux sources de la productivité américaine. Premier bilan des missions françaises (Paris: Société auxiliaire de diffusion des éditions de productivité, 1953), 13. 49 Archives of the French Plan Commission: 1948–60, Archives Nationales. For a list of productivity missions in the textile industry, see Thierry Maillet, ‘Histoire de la médiation entre textile et mode en France: des échantillonneurs aux bureaux de style (1825–1975)’ (PhD thesis, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2013), 413–14, 420–1. 50 For a list of attendees see Notes de voyage de la Mission aux U.S.A. de la délégation du ‘vêtement féminin,’ novembre-décembre 1952 (Paris: Fédération française des industries du vêtement féminin, 1954), 8; Pierre Garçin, ‘Notre mission aux Etats Unis,’ Cahiers de l’Industrie du vêtement féminin, 15 April 1953, 9. 51 Vincent Guigueno, ‘What They Saw, What They Wrote, What We Read: The American Experience in the Reports of French Marshall-Plan Missionaries,’ in Catching up with ­America: Productivity Missions and the Diffusion of American Economic and Technological Influence after the Second World War, ed. Dominique Barjot (Paris: Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002), 197. 52 Notes de voyage, 71. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 41. 55 Thierry Maillet has noted that none of the reports mentioned the words mode, prêt-à-porter, ready-to-wear or style, and missions had no wish to study design. Maillet, ‘Histoire de la médiation,’ 413. 56 Notes du voyage, 44. 57 ‘La Gageure de Weill,’ Entreprise. L’essor des matières plastiques, 1 April 1955, 22. See also Robert Weill, ‘Vendre beaucoup au plus grand nombre,’ Prestige de la Qualité. Les industries de l’Habillement. Tome II. L’art vestimentaire et le prêt-à-porter 10 (Paris: Mauranchon-Lamy, 1954), 55. Jean-Claude Weill attended the trip with production director Philippe de Castro. See Lanzmann and Ripert, Cent Ans, 86. 58 Notes du voyage, 73. 59 Grumbach, 163. 60 Guigueno, 203.

Notes

61 McKenzie, 7. 62 Guigueno, 202. 63 Garçin, 9. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid. 66 Green, ‘Art and Industry,’ 744. 67 ‘Triomphe du Prêt à Porter,’ Elégances, Autumn–Winter 1950–1 [Weill catalogue], n.p. 68 See, for example, ‘La Gageure de Weill,’ 21. 69 ‘La Propagande. Deux grands réalisations: la manifestation du 17 Mars le referendum,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 15 April 1953, 5. 70 Green, ‘Art and Industry,’ 746. 71 Productivité française, January 1953, 1–3. 72 Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: the ­dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1993), xi. 73 Ibid., 18. The author cites Pierre Nora, who argued that French rejection of American culture was a defence mechanism against its liberators. Pierre Nora, ‘America and the French Intellectuals,’ Daedalus 107 (Winter 1978): 325. 74 Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London and Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), 131. 75 Union nationale des intellectuels, Bibliothèque historique de Nanterre, 0 document 28382 (brochure, n.p.), cited in Guilbaut, ibid., 125. 76 Nicola White, Reconstructing Italian Fashion: American and the Development of the Italian Fashion Industry (New York and Oxford: Berg, 2000), 11–12. 77 David Ellwood, ‘The Impact of the Marshall Plan on Italy,’ in Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe, eds. Rob Kroes et al. (Amsterdam: VU University, 1993), 100. 78 McKenzie, 35. 79 Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution, 1997), 2. 80 Gay McDonald, ‘Selling the American Dream: MoMA, Industrial Design and PostWar France,’ Journal of Design History 17, no. 4 (2004): 397. 81 Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, 1. After the War, 1944–1952, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Paragon House, 1992 [1963]), 39. 82 Solange Montagné-Vilette, L’industrie du prêt-à-porter en France (Lille: ANRT, 1988), 19, 53. 83 Bruno du Roselle, Crise de la Mode; la révolution des jeunes et la mode (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 35. However, Elle used the term ‘prêtes à porter’ in its description of garments by Les Trois Hirondelles in 1948. ‘Pliez vous à la mode,’ 6 April 1948, Elle, 10. ­84 ‘Triomphe du Prêt à Porter,’ n.p.

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85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 Albert Lempereur, ‘Originalité du “Prêt à Porter”,’ Prestige de la Qualité, 15. 89 Kuisel, Seducing the French, 3. 90 ‘Première étape de la campagne de propagande par Albert Lempereur,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 10 March 1953, 2. 91 Ibid. 92 Notes de Voyage, 66. 93 Author interview with Claude Brouet, Paris, 22 April 2013. 94 Notes de Voyage, 66–7. 95 Lanzmann and Ripert, 92. 96 Örmen, 28. 97 ‘Première étape,’ 2. 98 Ibid. 99 McKenzie, 2. 100 ‘Vers la création d’un comité de coordination des industries de la mode,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 15 May 1955, 4. 101 See, for instance, ‘Du “prêt à porter imbattable,”’ Elle, 12 March 1951; ‘Aimeriezvous trouver vos “Robes Toutes-Faites”?’ Elle, 18 February 1952, 22–31, 57; ‘Cahier Collections-Confection,’ Les Cahiers d’Elle, September 1953, 36–43; Claude Brouet, ‘Bravo la confection française!’ Elle, 1 October 1956, 52. 102 ‘Voici pourquoi les Françaises s’habillent ou ne s’habillement pas en prêt à porter,’ Elle, 6 April 1953, 56. 103 See Author interview with Brouet. 104 Simone Baron, ‘Habillez Vous à l’Heure Présent,’ Elle, 14 September 1953, 26. 105 Georges Fontganal, ‘Le Progrès au service de la technique industrielle du vêtement,’ Prestige de la Qualité, 1954, 24. 106 ‘Voici pourquoi les Françaises s’habillent ou ne s’habillement pas en prêt à porter.’ 107 Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, May 1955. Cited in Grumbach, 137. 108 Ibid. 109 Alice Chavane and Annie Rivemale, ‘D’Amérique, nous vous rapportons mille “Idées-mode,”’ Elle, 25 July 1955, 12–15. 110 Ibid., 13. 111 Ibid. 112 Simone Baron and Claude Brouet, ‘Les 7 points du “prêt à porter” et à emporter de la mode d’automne,’ Elle, 25 July 1955, 18–25. 113 Chavane and Rivemale, 14. 114 Throughout the 1950s, articles in the Cahiers regularly brought up the issues of coordination and communication. In a 1951 issue, for example, Raymond Boisdé’s plan was presented to group representatives from different sectors

Notes

of the industry to improve professional solidarity and, in particular, amend the client-supplier relationship. See Didier Colette, ‘Préparer dès maintenant la rentrée!’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 10–20 July 1951, 3. 115 ‘Vers la création,’ 4–5. Representatives from the Syndicat général Cotonnier, Comité central de la Laine, AFFT, International Wool Secrétariat, and Soierie et Textiles Artificiels attended. 116 Ibid., 4. 117 See Grumbach, 138. See also Örmen, 25. 118 ‘L’organisation des Marchés par Albert Lempereur Président de la Fédération … ’ Elégance ‘prêt à porter’, 1956, 6. 119 ‘Vers la création,’ 4. 120 ‘Un appel du President Lempereur,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, December 1955, 1. 121 Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 1 February 1955, 1. 122 See, for example, ‘Cette semaine la Presse a parlé du “Prêt a Porter féminin”,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 20 February 1952, 9. ­123 Thierry Maillet, ‘Two non-profit organizations shaped the French Fashion Industry after World War II’ (paper presented at the 14th Annual Conference of the European Business History Association, Glasgow, 26–28 August 2010). 124 Trade magazines such as Première Vision, which targeted retailers, featured the garments that would appear subsequent issues of fashion magazine Jardin des Modes. 125 See Author interview with Weill. 126 ‘La Gageure de Weill,’ 20. 127 Ibid. 128 ‘Triomphe du Prêt à Porter,’ n.p. 129 Ibid. 130 See ‘La Gageure de Weill,’ 21. 131 Notes du voyage, 66. 132 Estelle Lamy, ‘Le Prestige de la Marque,’ Prestige de la Qualité, 21. 133 Yvette Delsaut and Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Le couturier et sa griffe: contribution a une theorie de la magie,’ Actes de recherches en sciences sociales 1 (1975): 20. 134 Isabelle Montérou, ‘L’Evolution de la Couture en Gros,’ Elégance ‘prêt a porter’ 1956, 25. Grumbach, Histoires, Annexe 12: Règlements relatifs à la couture en gros, 288–92. An annual list of members was published in the journal Prêt à Porter and directory Elégance ‘prêt à porter’. 135 ‘Le concours Couture en Gros,’ Cahiers de l’industrie française du vêtement féminin, 20 October 1952, 4–5. 136 Lamy, 21. 137 Grumbach, 156–7. 138 ‘Présentation de Collections de Printemps chez les Couturiers en Gros,’ Cahiers de l’industrie française du vêtement féminin, Spring 1953, n.p.

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139 Marcel Villeminot, Sous le signe des ‘Trois Hirondelles’, Prestige de la Qualité, 18. 140 Ibid. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 Nancy J. Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT), 9. 144 Grumbach, 156. See also ‘Quand les “3 Hirondelles” Apportent le message de la soie,’ Prêt a Porter. Revue professionnelle de la mode française, n. 2, 1956, 33. 145 Maurice Warnery, ‘De Paris s’envole la mode … ’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, 20 February 1952, 9. 146 Le Petit Echo de la Mode, 25 March 1956, 7. 147 Jean Teissèdre, ‘Les Relations Commerciales France-U.S.A.: bilans et perspectives,’ Rapports France-Etats-Unis, June 1951, 23. 148 White, 44, 46. 149 Villeminot, 19. 150 Clark’s photographs were featured in the October 1952, April 1954 and June– July 1955 issues. 151 Thomas Michael Gunther, ‘Henry Clarke photographe de mode,’ in Catherine Join-Diéterle et al., Henry Clarke:photographe de mode (Paris: Somogy and Paris Musées, 2002), 20–1. 152 ‘Les “Hirondelles” visitent New York,’ 130. 153 Berman, 289. Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume II: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, trans. John Moore (London and New York: Verso, 2002 [1961]), 308. 154 Mission aux Etats-Unis de l’industrie de l’azote (3 November–17 December 1950), 1952, cited in Guigueno, 205, 205n25. 155 Berman, 301. 156 Ibid., 289. 157 Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture, London and Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001 [1995], 2. 158 Ibid. 159 McDonald, 405. 160 Boris J. Lacroix, ‘Une Ambassade Moderne,’ Art et Décoration, April–May 1956, 10. 161 Ibid. 162 Nadeane Walker, ‘French Invade U.S. Ready-to-Wear Market,’ Associated Press, 1955. This article appeared in several newspapers under this and variations of this title. 163 Members included Maïmé Arnodin (then editor at Jardin des Modes); Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (editor of Elle); representatives from Vogue and Marie-Claire; representatives from couture houses (Jean Dessès, Jacques Griffe, Jacques Heim, Grès, and Carven); other producers (Chloé, Hermès, Roger et Gallet, Gants Alexandrine, Elizabeth Arden, Comité de Coordination); and consultants

(Primerose Bordier, Denise Fayolle of Prisunic). ‘Welcome to Membership (July– September 1957),’ Bulletin, October 1957, 14. Box 146, F.1. The Fashion Group International Records, ca. 1930–97, Series XII Regional Groups Affiliated with the FGI. New York Public Library Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division. 164 In May 1957, French members of the Fashion Group, including Albert Lempereur, attended its biennial meeting in New York. They also held a ‘Paris … Ready-to-Wear Luncheon,’ on the theme, ‘problems of French wholesale couture.’ ‘Regional Group News, The Fashion Group, Inc.’ Bulletin, June 1957, 4. Box 146, F1. The Fashion Group International Records, ca. 1930–97. 165 To face these new challenges, the article discussed the Fédération’s forthcoming Front Commun de Defense et d’Action, a grouping of representatives in the Union Textile, Union Interféderale des Industries de l’Habillement, and unions of various retailers. ‘Pour un front commun de défense et d’action,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, November 1958, 3. 166 Elégence Européen, 1960, 15. 167 Brussels. The World on Show, British Pathé archive, Film ID: 1527.11 [1:08]. 168 Ibid., [1:37]. 169 A. V. de Walle, ‘Bruxelles prépare l’exposition 1958,’ Petit Echo de la Mode, 12 January 1958, n.p. 170 Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, 1958. Les Participations Etrangères et Belges (Brussels: Commissariat General du Gouvernement près l’Exposition, 1961), 68. 171 France won several prizes for its womenswear industry including a grand prix for Weill and Diplômes d’honneur for the Paris-based couture en gros houses Pierre Billet and Levasseur. Honours list (Brussels: Commissariat général du Gouvernement, 1958), 183. 172 ‘Les audaces de la mode dans le monde de l’audace,’ Elle, 30 December 1957, 25. 173 Ibid. 174 de Walle, n.p.

Chapter 3 1

Notes

Annie Rivemale, ‘Elle a vu les 7 Miracles de Donzère-Mondragon,’ Elle, 10 November 1952, 22. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Roland Barthes, ‘Ornamental Cookery,’ in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Vintage Books, 2009 [1957]), 89. 5 Colette Audry, ‘Elle,’ Les Temps Modernes 7, no. 78 (April 1952): 1793. Both Barthes and Audry were referencing the way food was visualized in colour.

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6

192

Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (New York: Beacon, 1968 [1951]), v. 7 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York, Penguin, 1988 [1982]), 288–9. 8 Rivemale, ‘Elle a vu les 7 Miracles,’ 22. 9 Ibid. 10 See Andrée Braive, ‘Si vous êtes une mal logée,’ Elle, 16 February 1953, 50–3; Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Un toit pour chaque Français,’ Elle, 3 August 1953, 28–33; Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Où, comment, avec quels [moyens] acheter un appartement,’ Elle, 14 October 1957, 16–17. 11 In 1950 the magazine’s distribution was 500,000 and rising. Karine Grandpierre, “Elle: un outil d’émancipation de la femme entre journalisme et littérature 1945–1960?” Contextes 11 (2012). https://contextes.revues. org/5399?lang=en#toc. 12 Susan Weiner, Enfants Terribles: Youth & Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945–1968 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2001), 30. 13 Rebecca J. Pulju, Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University, 2011), 3. 14 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, trans. Richard Nice (London and New York: Routledge, 2010 [1979]), 165. 15 R. Moutard-Uldry, ‘De la recherche scientifique à l’art de la maison,’ Mobilier et Décoration, 3 April 1956, 2. 16 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley (London: Picador, 1988 [1949]), 13. 17 See, for example, Monique Danon, ‘Pièces détachées pour femmes pressées,’ Elle, 20 April 1948, 12–13; Claude Brouet, ‘Le Prêt à porter pour personnes pressées,’ Elle, 16 February 1959, 33. 18 ‘Aimeriez-vous trouver vos “Robes Toutes-Faites”?’ Elle, 18 February 1952, 57. 19 Simone Baron, ‘Habillez-vous à l’heure présente,’ Elle, 14 September 1953, 26. 20 Rebecca Arnold, ‘Wifedressing: designing femininity in 1950s American fashion,’ in Surface Tensions: Surface, Finish and the Meaning of Objects, eds. Glenn Adamson and Victoria Kelley (Manchester: Manchester University, 2013), 131. 21 Before Chevalier built the laboratory, he sent rolls of colour film with models en route to the United States to be developed at the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, thanks to his close relationship with Eileen Ford of Ford Models, with whom he worked closely in the days before she had an official office in Paris. Phone conversation with Remy Chevalier, 18 May 2021. 22 Ibid. 23 As noted in Chapter 1, Vogue created its periodical ready-to-wear section, titled ‘Tout Prêt Tout Prêt-à-Porter,’ (all ready all ready-to-wear) in 1952. 24 Jacques Roux, ‘Les Progrès de la Technique Francaise,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin 11, no. 2 (1948), 31.

Notes

25 Jacques Roux, ‘Les Progrès de la Technique ­Francaise,’ Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin 11, no. 4 (1948), 31. 26 Françoise Giroud, ‘A la recherche du temps à gagner,’ Elle, 14 September 1953, 22. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Baron, 26. 30 Alexandra Bosc, ‘Les paradoxes de la mode des années 1950, entre nostalgie et modernité,’ in Les Années 50: La mode en France, 1947–1957 (Paris: Paris Musées, 2014), 235–6. See Jacques Géliot, ‘L’expérience du lancement de “Flésa” (contrôle de qualité) en France,’ Rayonne, fibranne et fibres synthétiques 2, no. 3, 15 March 1952, 43–52. 31 Giroud, ‘A la recherche,’ 22. 32 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume I, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 1991 [1947]), 8. 33 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume II: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, trans. John Moore (London and New York: Verso, 2002 [1961]), 75. 34 Françoise Giroud, Leçons particulières (Paris: Livres de poche, 1990), 122; Kristen Ross, trans., Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT, 1995), 79. 35 Françoise Giroud, ‘Ou en est la Haute-Couture française,’ Elle, 23 November 1951, 39, 22. 36 Giroud, ‘A la recherche,’ 22. 37 Claude Brouet, ‘Bravo la confection française!’ Elle, 1 October 1956, 52. 38 Susan Weiner, ‘Two Modernities: from Elle to Mademoiselle. Women’s Magazines in Postwar France,’ Contemporary European History 8, no. 3 (1999): 395. 39 Annie Rivemale, ‘J’habite hors la ville,’ Elle, 13 February 1956, 34. 40 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005 [1969]), 23. 41 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume II, 156. ­42 Roland Barthes, ‘The Structuralist Activity,’ in Critical Essays, trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1972 [1963]), 214. 43 Arnold, 123. 44 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume II, 48. 45 Marshall McLuhan similarly described in 1951 how Vogue illustrated the ‘huge passivity [that] has settled on industrial society’: ‘It often plans whole months for its readers, giving exact instructions for what to see, say, eat, read, or wear for each hour of the day.’ McLuhan, 21–2. 46 Giroud, ‘A la recherche,’ 61. 47 Beauvoir, 467. 48 Ibid., 445. 49 Giroud, ‘A la recherche,’ 22, 23. 50 “Un personage mysterieux, un esprit lucide, une femme simple, un ecrivain violent: Simone de Beauvoir Prix Goncourt 1954,” Elle, 3 January 1955, 22.

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51 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Maison 1954: le “Prêt a monter,”’ Elle, 15 February 1954, 46. 52 Jacques Luzeau, ‘Le prêt à habiter,’ Elle, 1 July 1960, 44–50; Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘La “Maison Minute” Coupée Batie,’ Elle, 20 May 1957, 74. 53 Luzeau, 44. 54 Ibid. 55 Raimond, ‘Maison 1954,’ 46. 56 Ibid. 57 Joan Ockman, ‘Mirror Images: Technology, Consumption, and the Representation of Gender in American Architecture since World War II,’ in The Sex of Architecture, eds. Diana Agrest et al. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 201. 58 Raimond, ‘La “Maison Minute”,’ 74. 59 Ibid. 60 Article 24 of the October 1946 constitution stipulated: ‘The nation guarantees women the exercise of her functions as citizen and worker in conditions that allow her to fulfil her role as mother and her social mission.’ Cited in Susan Weiner, Enfants Terribles, 23. ­61 Ibid., 26. 62 Kelly Ricciardi Colvin, Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944–1954: Engendering Frenchness (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017), 167. She cites among others, Sylvie Chaperon, ‘Feminism is dead. Long live feminism!’ in Claire Duchen and Irene Bandhauer-Schoffmann, eds., When the War Was Over: Women, War, and Peace in Europe, 1940–1956 (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2001), 147. 63 Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Volume II, 49. 64 Ibid., 80. 65 Audry, 1791. 66 Ibid., 1790. 67 Ibid., 1790, 1793. 68 Claire Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France 1944–68 (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 71; Kelly Ricciardi Colvin, ‘Solidarity or Suspicion: Gender, Enfranchisement, and Popular Culture in Liberation France.’ Journal of Women’s History 24, no. 2 (2012), 91. See also Colvin, Gender and French Identity, 165. 69 Marjorie Ferguson, Forever Feminine: Women’s Magazines and the Cult of Femininity (Hants, UK and Brookfield, Vermont: Gower, 1985 [1983]), 49. 70 Beauvoir, 469. 71 Ibid. 72 For more on housing crisis, see Nicole C. Rudolph, At Home in Postwar France: Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), 118–20. 73 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Moderne, Révolutionnaire: Saint-Dizier Présente ses Nouvelles Demeures,’ Elle, 30 November 1953, 55. 74 Rudolph, 3.

Notes

75 Ibid. 76 Andrée Braive, ‘L’Art d’économiser et de vous économiser en cinquante leçons,’ Elle, 29 January 1951, 30. 77 See, for example, ‘Tout d’une pièce’ Cahiers d’elle, March 1953, 62–3; Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘En Vedette: Meubles Pliants,’ Elle, 22 February 1954, 48–51. See also ‘La Ménagère Ingénieuse. 3 m. 10 sur 2 m. 15: C’est une cuisine et une salle à manger,’ Elle, 13 July 1953, 40–1; J. M. Courtial, ‘Confession d’un jeune décorateur,’ Elle, 1 February 1954, 42–3; Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Un (petite) installation témoin,’ Elle, 6 April 1959, 82–5. 78 Braive, 30. 79 Beauvoir, 469, 470. 80 Paulette Bernège, De la Méthode Ménagère (Paris: Dunod, 1934 [1928]), 5. 81 Ibid., 21. 82 Duchen, 71. 83 See Marianne Andrau and Paul Gérin, ‘Si vous êtes une des sept millions de Françaises: “Epouses au Foyer” cet article s’adresse à vous,’ Elle, 8 August 1955, 12–15. 84 Pulju, 63. 85 Anne-Marie Raimond and Madeleine Peter, ‘Aujourd’hui à Rézé-les-Nantes: 250 familles radieuses dans la maison de demain,’ Elle, 25 July 1955, 38. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid., 36, 38. 88 Ibid., 38. 89 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Au Salon des Arts Ménagers: Elle expose la Maison Heureuse qu’elle a construite pour vous,’ Elle, 21 February 1955, 34. 90 Ibid. A 1956 article which discussed the use of partitions to readapt small space for multiple usages, also noted how they fostered human separation: ‘to isolate certain parts of a room and stop people looking.’ Madeleine Peter, ‘Avec une cloison changez votre maison,’ Elle, 30 January 1956, 40. 91 Rudolph, 137. 92 G. A., ‘Le coin “à penser”,’Art et Décoration, February–March 1956, 10. 93 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space. The Classic Look at how we Experience Intimate Places, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon, 1994 [1958]), 136, 4. 94 Ibid., 137 95 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘La Maison Heureuse vous livre ses secrets,’ Elle, 14 March 1955, 52. 96 Jean Hérin, ‘Une étude psychologique et scientifique qui vous permettra de découvrir Votre bonheur en couleur,’ Elle, 2 November 1953, 24–7. 97 Annie Rivemale, ‘Quatre jeunes femmes “aiment bien” la couleur … ont trouvé leurs couleurs et leurs harmonies,’ Elle, 2 November 1953, 30–3. 98 Sharon Elise Cline, ‘Feminité à la Française: Femininity, Social Change and French National Identity: 1945–1970’ (PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008), 82. Cline situates Maternité Heureuse in the context of twentieth-century

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natalist social policies. She argues that a 1920 law that banned contraceptives, abortion and related publicity, was reinvested with importance following the loss of life due to the Second World War. See Cline, 74–5. 99 ‘Belle et bien chez soi,’ Elle, 25 November 1957, 50. 100 Ibid., 54. 101 ‘Les robes et manteaux vedettes pour l’automne 1956 dans le cadre du Salon des artistes décorateurs,’ Prêt à Porter, June 1956, 34. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid., 37. 104 Pulju, 182. 105 Ellen Furlough, ‘Selling the American Way in Interwar France: Prix Uniques and the Salon des Arts Ménagers,’ Journal of Design History 26, no. 3 (1993): 495. 106 Elle, 19 February 1951, cover. 107 ‘“Elle” vous enseigne l’art de vous ménager au Salon des Arts Ménagers,’ Elle, 19 February 1951, 12. 108 Elle, 21 February 1955, 45. 109 Ibid., 44. 110 Term used in Jill Carrick, Nouveau Réalisme, 1960s France, and the Neo-avantgarde: Topographies of Chance and Return (Farnham, etc.: Ashgate, 2010), 68. 111 Michael Lane, Introduction to Structuralism (New York: Basic, 1970), 4. ­112 Baudrillard, System of Objects, 59. 113 Jean Baudrillard, La Société de consommation: ses mythes, ses structures (Paris: Denoël, 1970), 199. 114 ‘Quoi de neuf?’ Elle, 29 August 1955, 26. 115 Ibid. 116 Arnold, 127. 117 GAL2004.60.29 118 ‘Quoi de neuf?’ 119 Valérie Guillaume, ed., ‘Introduction’ and ‘Industries, Techniques et Politiques Industrielles en Mutation,’ in Mutations, Mode, 1960–2000 (Paris: Paris Musées, 2000), 22. See ‘Depuis cinq ans, cinq cent familles éprouvent chaque jour votre garde robe,’ Elle, 18 August 1958, 72–3. See Prêt à Porter, Winter 1955–6, and Prêt à Porter, Spring 1957, for articles on rhovyl and orlon. 120 Elle, 24 January 1955, 28–9. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid. 124 Quoi de neuf? 125 Barthes, ‘Plastic,’ in Mythologies, 117. 126 Claude Fontenay, ‘Savez-vous, que vous vivez à l’âge de plastique,’ Elle, 24 January 1955, 16.

127 Ibid., 18, 16. 128 Barthes, ‘Plastic,’ 117. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 131 ‘Quoi de neuf,’ 26. 132 Barthes, ‘Myth Today’ and ‘Ornamental Cookery,’ 131, 89. 133 Elle, 24 January 1955, cover. 134 Ibid., 79. 135 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Elle expose une réalisation unique au monde: la maison tout en plastique,’ Elle, 27 February 1956, 42. 136 Ibid. 137 Rudolph, 98. 138 Ibid., 43. ­139 Arnold, 131. 140 Raimond, ‘Elle expose,’ 42.

Chapter 4 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Notes

13

Albert Lempereur, ‘Le Prêt à Porter Féminin Français, l’Exposition de Bruxelles, et le Marché Commun,’ Elégance ‘prêt à porter’, 1958, 7. ‘Le Prêt à Porter français devient le meilleur du monde,’ Elle, 9 September 1965, 66. Nancy L. Green, ‘Art and Industry: The Language of Modernization in the Production of Fashion,’ French Historical Studies 18, no. 3 (Spring 1994), 732. Joan Ockman, ‘Mirror Images: Technology, Consumption, and the Representation of Gender in American Architecture since World War II,’ in The Sex of Architecture, eds. Diana Agrest et al. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 206. ‘Le Prêt à Porter français devient le meilleur du monde,’ 66. Jane Pavitt, Fear and Fashion in the Cold War (London: V&A Publishing, 2008), 10. Ibid., 16. Author interview with Claude Brouet, Paris, 22 April 2013. Ibid. See also Claude Brouet, ‘Peter Knapp,’ in Dancing in the street: Peter Knapp et la mode, eds. François Cheval et al. (Vanves: Editions du Chêne, 2018), 132. ‘Extraits d’une interview de Peter Knapp,’ Dossier: La mode des années soixante, Bulletin de l’IHTP, no. 76, November 2000. Author interview with Brouet. Lydia Kamitsis, Michèle Rosier: VdeV (Vêtements de Vacances) et Autres 1962–1972 (Paris: Editions du Regard, 2016), 12. ‘Michele Rosier: le Point sur le Style,’ Dépêche Mode, February, 1970, 42.

197

Notes 198

14 Roger Chatelain, La Typologie Suisse du Bauhaus à Paris (Lausanne: Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, 2008), 53–4. 15 Dim Dam Dom, ‘Trois Modélistes,’ dir. Peter Knapp, prod. Daisy de Galard (Paris: O.R.T.F., 1965). 16 Officiel du Prêt à Porter, December 1965, 78. 17 ‘Trois Modélistes.’ 18 ‘Fashion in PVC,’ International Textiles 6, no. 409, 1966, 130. 19 ‘Trois Modélistes.’ 20 ‘Les écoles de style,’ Dépêche Mode, September 1968, 28. 21 Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society,’ in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (New York: The New Press, 1998), 131. 22 Ibid., 128–9. 23 Bruno du Roselle, Crise de la Mode; la révolution des jeunes et la mode (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 3. Extracts of the book were published in the Officiel du Prêt à Porter, no. 70, Spring 1973 (pages 104–5 and 118). 24 See also Bruno Remaury, ‘Rituel de Mode et Objet de Consommation,’ in La mode des sixties: l’entrée dans la modernité, eds. Dominique Veillon and Michèle Ruffat (Paris: Autrement, 2007), 159. 25 Cited in Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 139. 26 Emma McClendon, ‘“First Paris Fashions Out of the Sky”: The 1962 Telstar Satellite’s Impact on the Transatlantic Fashion System,’ Fashion Theory 18 (June 2014), 300. 27 See Christian Dior, Je suis couturier, propos recueillis par Alice Chavanne et Elie Rabourdin (Paris: Conquistador, 1951), 110–11. 28 Author interview with Brouet. 29 Rosalind Krauss, ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde [1981],’ in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (London and Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1985), 162. (Krauss’s italics) 30 Françoise Vincent-Ricard, Raison et passion. Langages de société: la mode, 1940–1990 (Paris: Textile/Art/Langage, 1983), 123. 31 McClendon, 297. 32 Ernestine Carter, With Tongue in Chic (London: Michael Joseph, 1974), 126. 33 McClendon, 307–8. The author cites the following articles: Eugenia Sheppard, ‘Heim Drops Bomb,’ New York Herald Tribune, 23 July 1963; Carrie Donovan, ‘Paris Fashion Secrecy Imperiled by Telstar Showing of Pictures’ New York Times, 26 July 1962, 1. 34 Roselle, 34. 35 Ibid., 5–6. 36 Author interview with Brouet. 37 ‘La Française et le Prêt-à-porter,’ supplement to Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin, March 1961, 65.

Notes

38 Ibid. 39 Albert Lempereur, ‘Le textile et le prêt-à-porter,’ Elégance ‘prêt a porter’, 1963, 269. 40 André Bercher, ‘L’Industrie Française du Prêt-à-Porter,’ Elégance ‘prêt a porter’, 1964, 143. 41 Ibid. 42 ‘Le Prêt à Porter français,’ 66. 43 Ibid. 44 ‘Ready to Wear Style,’ International Textiles 6, no. 409 (1966), 90. 45 Ibid. 46 Emmanuelle Khanh, unpublished manuscript, s.d., 49, Emmanuelle Khanh private collection, Paris. 47 Grumbach, 142. 48 Author interview with Brouet. See also Author interview with Emmanuelle Khanh, Paris, 27 April 2009. 49 Author interview with Brouet. 50 Claude Berthod, ‘Le French Khanh Khanh,’ Elle, 28 September 1967, 89. 51 Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author,’ in Image Music Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontina, 1977 [1968]), 143. (Barthes’s italics) 52 Ibid., 148. ­53 Grumbach noted a similar system with designer Gérard Pipart at Jardin des Modes. Grumbach, 142. See also Roselle, 33–4. Le Petit Echo de la Mode featured patterns from named couture en gros houses from as early as 1954. 54 Author interview with Brouet. 55 Ibid. 56 Khanh, 53. 57 See Author interview with Khanh. 58 Dany Simon, ‘Coquettes??? Plus que ça!!!,’ Elle, 16 February 1962, 73. Elsewhere, Khanh was discussed in relation to other young women celebrities that enhanced these characterizations. See for instance, ‘Françoise Hardy & Emmanuelle Khanh,’ Vogue (USA), August 1964, 52–7. 59 Simon, 72. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 In her theory of 1970s ‘postfashion,’ Vinken similarly described ready-to-wear as ‘a co-production between the createur and those who wear the clothes.’ Barbara Vinken, Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cycles in the Fashion System (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), 35. 63 Roselle, 75. 64 Ibid., 102. 65 Jameson, 131. 66 Simon, 73.

199

Notes 200

67 ‘Rising Young Fashion Designer Challenges Paris Couturiers,’ Nevada States Journal, 26 December 1963, 5. 68 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Haute Couture and Haute Culture’ in Sociology in Question, trans. Richard Nice (London: Sage, 1993 [1984]), 132–8. 69 Ibid., 133. 70 Ibid. 71 Author interview with Khanh. 72 Khanh, 76–7. 73 Grumbach, 157. 74 ‘La Française et la Mode du Prêt-à-porter 63,’ Elle, 14 September 1962, 76. ­75 Author interview with Brouet. 76 In the early 1950s, Zyga and Julien Pianko manufactured adaptations of couture garments, under the name Piantex, to sell at their boutique Lise Avril. They changed the company name to Pierre d’Alby in 1958 and Daniel Hechter became their first designer. Daniel Hechter, Daniel par Hechter: Mode, politique PSG et autres coups de gueule (Paris: Pygmalion, 2013), 43. 77 Author interview with Brouet. See also Ginette Sainderichin, La mode epinglée … sous toutes les coutures (Paris: Edition 1, 1995), 43. Grumbach, Histoires, 158–62. 78 Khanh, 75–6. 79 Marylin Bender, The Beautiful People (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), 194. 80 ‘Rising Young Fashion Designer,’ 5. 81 ‘Le Prêt à Porter français devient le meilleur du monde,’ 67, 70–1, 78, 87. 82 ‘Paris on en parle,’ Vogue, February 1964, 81; Aline Mosby, ‘Woman Revolutionizing Paris Through Ready-to-Wear Styles,’ Daily Independent Journal, 19 February 1964 [originally appeared in United Press International], 20; Eugenia Sheppard, ‘French Magazine, Store Start Young Look Craze,’ Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 16 February 1964 [originally appeared in New York Herald Tribune], 37; ‘Power of Positive Patches,’ Life, 13 March 1964, 61–6; Roberte Pey, ‘Nono & Co.,’ Vogue, August 1965, 68–73, 82; ‘Emmanuelle Marches On.’ New York Herald Tribune, section 2, 21 February 1965, 3; ‘Le Point de vue de Vogue: qui est derrière la mode prêt à porter?’ Vogue, January 1966, 33; Eugenia Sheppard, ‘Young Designer Zooms on N.Y. Fashion Scene,’ Florence Morning News, 16 June 1966, 1. 83 Angela McRobbie, British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? (London: Routledge, 1998), 9. 84 Ibid., 13–14. After Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin, 1984), 101. 85 Bender, 192. 86 ‘The Force of Emmanuelle Khanh,’ Vogue (USA), January 1965, 79. 87 ‘Rising Young Fashion Designer,’ 5. ­88 See also ‘Quoi de Neuf,’ Elle, 16 August 1963, 40. Berthod, 89. Régine Gabbey, ‘The Ready-to-Dare Designers,’ Réalités 218, 1969, 32.

Notes

89 Hebe Dorsey, New York Herald Tribune, November 1963, cited in Dorsey, ‘Conclusion: Prêt à Porter v Couture,’ in Couture, An Illustrated History of the Great Paris Designers and Their Creations, ed. Ruth Lynan (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1972), 244. 90 Bourdieu, ‘Haute Couture,’ 133. 91 See, for example, ‘Le Point de vue de Vogue’ 33. ‘A vous pour vous 26 modèles P.A.P. 67,’ Elle, 8 September 1966, 71. Berthod, 89. 92 ‘Trois Modélistes,’ 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 See, for example, ‘Le Carnet de Vogue. Rush sur la Rive Gauche,’ Vogue, November 1965, 37. 98 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Effets de Lieu,’ in La Misère du Monde, ed. Pierre Bourdieu (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 160–1. 99 Other shops on the Left Bank that opened throughout the 1960s were located in the sixth arrondissement, including Gudule (72, rue Saint-Andrée-des-Arts), Magoo (6, rue Montfaucon) and La Gaminerie (137, boulevard Saint-Germain). The Right Bank’s rue Tronchet and boulevard Haussmann housed several noted boutiques. ‘6 Boutiques dans le vent le style … la mode!’ Officiel du Prêt à Porter, Spring-Summer 1967, 13–16. See also Sainderichin, La mode epinglée, 48–9. Vincent-Ricard, 35, 66–7. 100 Boutiques there included Dorothée Bis (17, rue de Sèvres), Bistrot Bazaar (rue Récamier), Tiffany (12, rue de Sèvres), and Nadine Berger (rue de Sèvres). ‘Bistrot Bazar,’ Officiel du Prêt à Porter, April 1968, 183. 101 ‘Maïmé Arnodin: Le style et l’industrie française,’ Dépêche Mode, October 1967, 21. 102 Author interview with Monique Naudeix, Paris, 1 December 2014. ­103 Khanh, 83. 104 Author interview with Brouet. 105 Colombe Pringle, Telles qu’Elle: Cinquante ans d’histoire des femmes à travers le journal Elle (Paris: Grasset, 1995), 14, 87. 106 See Vincent-Ricard, 119, and Grumbach, 142–3. Françoise Vincent-Ricard pointed out that Jardins des Modes had its own vente en magasin during the 1960s where stores would be given advanced notice of what garments to promote. Galeries Lafayette also staged Marie-Claire window displays in the mid 1960s. V. Gisors-Isabey and Lila Marabini, L’art de décorer les vitrines (Paris: Hachette, 1967), 164. 107 ‘La Française et le Prêt-à-porter,’ 70. See also Gisors-Isabey and Lila Marabini, 41. 108 Vincent-Ricard notes the ‘revolutionary architecture’ of this ‘grotto-boutique.’ Vincent-Ricard, 66. 109 ‘La Française et le Prêt-à-porter,’ 111.

201

Notes 202

110 Gérald Chevalier, ‘La Boutique des années 1960: un nouvel espace pour un nouvel mode de consommation,’ in La mode des sixties: l’entrée dans la modernité, eds. Dominique Veillon and Michèle Ruffat (Paris: Autrement, 2007), 197. 111 Eliane Richard, Officiel du Prêt-à-porter, April 1965, 43. 112 ‘La Française et le Prêt-à-porter,’ 109. 113 Chevalier, 193, 194, 199. 114 Richard, 43. 115 Maillet views them as a key group in his mediation theory of the French fashion industry. Thierry Maillet, ‘Histoire de la médiation entre textile et mode en France: des échantillonneurs aux bureaux de style (1825–1975)’ (PhD thesis, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2013). 116 In addition to private agencies, department stores employed consultants in the 1950s. 117 Author interview with Françoise Vincent-Ricard, Paris, 9 October 2012. 118 Grumbach, 149. Vincent-Ricard, 85, 165. 119 See Vincent-Ricard, 85–8. ­120 ‘Les tendances de la mode pour 1957,’ Cahiers, Winter 1956, 49. 121 Nathalie Mont-Servan, ‘Le role des stylistes,’ Le Monde, 2 June 1966, 13. 122 Sophie Chapdelaine de Montvalon, Le beau pour tous. Maimé Arnodin et Denise Fayolle, l’aventure de deux femmes de style: mode, graphisme, design (Paris: L’iconoclaste, 2009), 93. See also Khanh, 71–5. 123 She co-founded the MAFIA consulting agency with Denise Fayolle on 1968. Denise Fayolle and Maïmé Arnodin, Mafia 1968/1978. Dix ans déjà [promotional booklet] 1978, n.p. 124 ‘Maïmé Arnodin: Le style et l’industrie française,’ 20. 125 Ibid. 126 Jocelyne le Boeuf, ‘Jacques Viénot and the “Esthétique Industrielle” in France (1920–1960),’ Design Issues 22, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 46. See also Mont-Servan, 13. 127 Author interview with Vincent-Ricard. 128 Ibid. 129 ‘Maïmé Arnodin: Le style et l’industrie française,’ 20. 130 Ibid. 131 Khanh, 83. 132 Ibid., 73. 133 John Lancaster, Introducing Op Art (London and New York: BT Batsford and Watson-Guptill, 1973), 23. 134 Lesley Jackson, ‘Op, Pop, and Psychedelia,’ in Twentieth-Century Pattern Design: Textile & Wallpaper Pioneers (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), 134–65. 135 Khanh, 124. 136 Gérard Blanchard, ‘L’op art à Prisunic,’ Opus International, April 1967, 90. 137 Mont-Servan, 13.

Notes

138 Michel Ragon, ‘Op Art? Sa place et dans la rue,’ Vogue, July 1965, 98. 139 Cyril Barrett, An Introduction to Optical Art (London: Studio Vista, 1971), 148. ­140 ‘Fashion It’s OP from Toe to Top,’ Life, 16 April 1965, 52. 141 Oral history with Larry Aldrich, 25 April–10 June 1972, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oralhistory-interview-larry-aldrich-12596. 142 Ibid. 143 Jameson, 143. 144 Elle, 3 February 1966, 78–9. 145 Blanchard, 92. 146 Betty Werther, ‘Is Fashion an Art?’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, November 1967, 139. 147 Remaury, 155. 148 Remaury, 160. 149 Elle, 7 April 1966, 175. 150 Gabriel Bauret, Peter Knapp (Paris: Editions du Chêne, 2008), 29. 151 ‘Décoration Style Elle: le Op’ Art Apprivoisé,’ Elle, 7 April 1966, n.p. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 154 Eye on New York, ‘The Responsive Eye,’ Gordon Hyatt (New York: CBS, 1965). 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid. 157 René König, The Restless Image: A Sociology of Fashion (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973 [1971]). 158 Elle, 7 April 1966, n.p. 159 Khanh, 124. 160 Ragon, 98. 161 Vogue (USA), January 1965, 79. 162 Barrett, 11. 163 Domus, April 1965, n.p. 164 Gordon Hyatt, ‘Working with Mike Wallace,’ Columbia Journalism Review, 10 April 2012. http://cjr.org/behind_the_news/working_with_mike_wallace. php 165 Ibid. ­166 Press Release, The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art Press Relieve Archives, 1965. https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_ archives/3439/releases/MOMA_1965_0015_14.pdf?2010 167 Email correspondence with Peter Knapp, 4 September 2020. 168 Khanh, 111. 169 ‘Trois Modélistes.’ 170 Peter Knapp, Photos d’elles. Temps de pose: 1950–1990 (Geneva: Camera Obscura, 1993), 12.

203

171 Two years later William Claxton similarly filmed Rudi Gernreich’s clothing in ‘Basic Black.’ 172 ‘Curtain Up on a New Promotion Idea,’ International Textiles 12, no. 402, 1965, 90. See also K. D. Kaupp, ‘La “capo maffia” du vêtement féminin,’ Nouvel Observateur, 27 October 1965, 24. 173 Email correspondence with Knapp. 174 Cited in Chapdelaine de Montvalon, 94n11. 175 Blanchard, 90. 176 ‘Curtain up on a new promotion Idea,’ 93. 177 This was printed in several regional newspapers in the United States, including the Waukesha Daily Freeman (6 November 1965, page 2), The Bee (6 November 1965, page 13), The Vernon Daily Record (7 November 1965, page 14), and the Dixon Evening Telegraph (6 November 1965, page 3). 178 Daniel Hechter described his own avant-garde fashion show in the context of artists’ happenings. Hechter, 125. 179 Bernard Roshco, The Rag Race: How New York and Paris run the breakneck business of dressing American Women (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1963), 162. 180 See, for example, ‘A vous pour vous 26 modèles P.A.P. 67,’ 71. Philippe Bouvard, ‘Ils luttent maintenant pour la mode,’ Le Figaro, 1 December 1967. 181 Dorsey, ‘Conclusion: Prêt à Porter v Couture,’ 246. 182 Ibid. 183 ‘Vogue’s own Boutique,’ Vogue (USA), January 1967, 135. ­184 Ibid. 185 Eugenia Sheppard, ‘French Fashions Glitter with Metals and Mirror,’ The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 4 December 1966, 70.

Chapter 5 1 2 3

Notes

4 5 6

204

7 8

‘Faites vos plans sur la toile,’ Elle, 3 May 1963, 102. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994 [1981]), 1–2. Jean Baudrillard, ‘The Ecstasy of Communication,’ trans. John Johnston, in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Forster (New York: The New Press, 1998), 149. Ibid., 153. Maryse Huet, Les femmes dans les grands ensembles (Paris: CNRS, 1971), 22. Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Une enquête une révélation une révolution: le visage et la vie des nouvelles banlieusardes,’ Elle, 20 October 1961, 84. Christiane Rochefort, Les Petits Enfants du siècle (Paris: Grasset, 1961), 124–5. Arthur Marwick, ‘Six Novels of the Sixties – Three French, Three Italian,’ Journal of Contemporary History 28, no. 4 (October 1993): 568.

Notes

9 ‘Faites vos plans sur la toile,’ 96. 10 Ibid., 99, 100, 102. 11 Susan Weiner, Enfants Terribles: Youth & Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945–1968 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2001), 24. 12 ‘Faites vos plans sur le toile,’ 99. 13 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota, 2003 [1970]), 3. 14 Ibid., 14. 15 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London and New York: Verso, 1995 [1992]), 31. 16 See Henri Lefebvre, Le droit à la ville (Paris: Anthropos, 1972 [1968]), 196. 17 Augé, 51. 18 Ibid., 60. 19 Jean Duquesne, Vivre à Sarcelles? Le grand ensemble et ses problèmes (Paris: Cujas, 1966), 23. 20 Augé, 58. 21 See, for example, Paul Clerc, Grands ensembles banlieues nouvelles: enquête démographique et psycho-sociologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967). 22 See Nicole C. Rudolph, At Home in Postwar France: Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), 158–60. 23 See Duquesne, 98–103. 24 Ibid., 43. 25 Ibid., 117. 26 Frank Horvat, Please don’t smile (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2015), 109. 27 From the early 1950s, Horvat’s photo-reportage work appeared in Paris-Match, Picture Post and Life. He joined Black Star agency in 1956 and Magnum in 1958. When, during that time, Horvat began to work for fashion magazines, notably first for Le Jardin des Modes, ‘he had no studio, and no experience of fashion, so he placed models in familiar situations where he could work in a relaxed, natural manner.’ Martin Harrison, Appearances: Fashion Photography since 1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991), 106. 28 The average annual salary for women in 1961 was 5,567 francs. Christian Baudelot and Anne Lebeaupin, ‘Les salaires de 1950 à 1975,’ Economie et statistique 113, no. 1 (1979): 16–17. 29 Horvat, 43. 30 Author interview with Claude Fauque, Paris, 25 November 2014. 31 Author interview with Monique Naudeix, Paris, 1 December 2014. ­32 Roland Barthes, ‘The Contest Between Chanel and Courrèges. Refereed by a Philosopher,’ The Language of Fashion, eds. Andy Stafford and Michael Carter, trans. Stafford (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004), 109. Originally published in ‘Le match Chanel Courrèges arbitré par un philosophe,’ Marie-Claire, September 1967, 42–4.

205

Notes 206

33 Raimond, 84. 34 Ibid. 35 ‘Les grands villes éclatent,’ Elle, 20 October 1961, 88. 36 Shirley Jordan, ‘The poetics of scale in urban photography,’ in Globalization, Violence and the Visual Culture of Cities, ed. Christoph Lindner (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 137. 37 Ibid. 38 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991 [1974]), 98. 39 ‘Comment vivre heureux dans un grand ensemble,’ Elle, 11 March 1965, 138–9. 40 Caroline Evans and Minna Thornton, Women and Fashion: A New Look (New York and London: Quartet Books, 1989), 102. 41 These materials reveal a preference for detached single-family homes. See Rudolph, Chapter 6, 186–222. 42 Ibid., 90. 43 ‘Les grands villes éclatent,’ 88. 44 Michèle Perrein, ‘Est-ce enfin une solution? Le 1er centre de planning familial s’ouvre à Grenoble,’ Elle, 7 July 1961, 35. 45 Sharon Elise Cline, ‘Féminité à la Française: Femininity, Social Change and French National Identity: 1945–1970’ (PhD Thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008), 96. 46 Evelyne Sullerot, La presse féminine (Paris: Armond Colin, 1963), 269. 47 Ibid., 6. 48 Evelyne Sullerot, La vie des femmes (Paris: Gonthier, 1965), 90. ­49 See Rudolph, 188–9. 50 Duquesne, 138. 51 Ibid., 137. 52 Lefebvre, Urban Revolution, 116. 53 Augé, 64–5. 54 Lefebvre, Urban Revolution, 119–20. 55 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 333. 56 Lefebvre, Urban Revolution, 116. 57 Ibid., 38. 58 Fabric maker Alain Lalonde created Victoire in 1964, conceived as a ‘boutique des créateurs.’ Françoise Chassagnac who took over its direction in 1967, listed some of these seminal creators: Emmanuelle Khanh, Marc Audibet, Christiane Bailly, Patrick Kelly and Christiane Aujard. Xavier Chaumette, ‘Rencontre avec Françoise Chassagnac: Victoire. Une Boutique consacrée à une nouvelle génération de créateurs,’ Cahier d’Esmod 3, January 2000, n.p. 59 Author interview with Naudeix. 60 Ibid. 61 Author interview with Fauque. 62 Ibid.

Notes

63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Writers such as Duchen have discussed how marriage reform reflected changes already underway in French society. Claire Duchen, Women’s Rights and Women’s Lives in France, 1944–1968 (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 175. 66 Sullerot, Demain les femmes. Inventaire de l’avenir (Paris: Laffont-Gonthier, 1965), 136. 67 Ibid., 133. 68 Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits: the Evolution of Modern Dress (New York: Kodansha International, 1994), 4. 69 Jardin des Modes, August 1965, 8. 70 Ibid. 71 Joan Ockman, ‘Mirror Images: Technology, Consumption, and the Representation of Gender in American Architecture since World War II,’ in The Sex of Architecture, eds. Diana Agrest et al. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 205. 72 Ibid. 73 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 98. 74 ‘La Maison de la Radio,’ Edition spéciale, ORTF, 5 September 1963. https://www. ina.fr/video/CAF93073298. 75 ‘Visite de la maison de la RTF,’ RTF, 14 December 1963. https://www.ina.fr/inaeclaire-actu/video/caf96032435/visite-de-la-maison-de-la-rtf. 76 See the February 1964 issue of Jardin des Modes and the 2 September 1965 issue of Elle, for instance. 77 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1980), 293. 78 Ibid., 205. 79 Ibid., 130. 80 Martin Harrison, in Harrison and Tessa Traeger, Ronald Traeger: New Angles (London: Victoria and Albert Museum/Munich, Paris and London: Schirmer/ Mosel, 1999), 72. 81 Ibid., 73. 82 Tessa Traeger, ‘Ronald Traeger: A Memoir,’ in ibid., 8. 83 Lefebvre, Urban Revolution, 130. 84 Ibid. 85 Jean-Jacques Cheval, ‘Mai 68, un entre deux dans l’histoire des médias et de la radio en France,’ Groupe de Recherches et d’Etudes sur la Radio, January 2009, 4. 86 Duquesne, 136. 87 Ockman, 206. 88 See Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005 [1969]), 59. 89 Baudrillard, ‘Ecstasy of Communication,’ 146. 90 Augé, 77–8.

207

91 See, for example, ‘Dans l’actualité: le jersey,’ Vogue, February 1963, n.p.; ‘En Petite Robe du Matin au Soir,’ Jardin des Modes, February 1965, 62; ‘Pour l’explosion Jersey!’ Jardin des Modes, March 1966, 130. 92 ‘Special Jersey,’ Vogue, August 1963, n.p. See also: ‘Une mode sous le manteau,’ Jardin des Modes, September 1965, 149. 93 Author interview with Naudeix. 94 Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 117. 95 Author interview with Naudeix. 96 Email correspondence with Monique Naudeix, 11 February 2015. 97 Harvey, 44. 98 Larry Busbea, Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960–1970 (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT, 2007), 10. 99 Duquesne, 254. 100 Ibid. 101 Michael Sheringham, ‘Introduction,’ Parisian Fields (London: Reaktion, 1996), 2. 102 Anouk Lautier, ‘Godard-Vlady, un film ensemble,’ Elle, 22 September 1966, 95. 103 Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d’Elle, dir. Jean-Luc Godard (Paris: Argos Films, 1967).

Conclusion

Notes

1 Elle, 2 March 1967, 55. 2 Ibid. 3 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota, 2003 [1970]), 4. 4 Alain Touraine, The May Movement: Revolt and Reform, trans. Leonard F. X. Mayhew (New York: Random House, 1970 [1968]), 27. 5 Michèle Perrein, ‘Le droit de renaitre,’ Elle, 21 October 1968, 35. 6 See Jean Mauduit, La révolte des femmes. Après les Etats généraux de ‘Elle’ (Paris: Fayard, 1971). 7 Emmaline Aidan, ‘Didier Grumbach de Mendes,’ Officiel du Prêt à Porter, SpringSummer 1972, 150. 8 Didier Grumbach, Histoires de la Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 216–17. ­9 Ibid., 217. 10 Ibid. In 1973, a C & I boutique opened at 45, rue de Rennes in Paris. ‘Boutique en Vogue: C&I,’ Vogue, November 1973, 142. 11 Grumbach, 230.

208

Bibliography Primary Material Archives Used France: Paris: Archives de Paris; Les Galeries Lafayette Archives; Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Costume Collection and Centre de documentation, Les arts décoratifs; Costume Collection and Centre de documentation, Musée de la Mode, Palais Galliera; Emmanuelle Khanh private archive; Maison Weill archives. United Kingdom: Bath: Costume Collection, Museum of Costume and Research Centre; London: Costume and Textiles and Department, Victoria and Albert Museum; Manchester: Manchester Costume Gallery. United States: New York: Costume Collection, The Museum at FIT; Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

Interviews Peter Knapp, ‘Extraits d’une interview de Peter Knapp,’ Dossier: La mode des années soixante, Bulletin de l’IHTP, no. 76, November 2000.

Author Interviews Claude Brouet (22 April 2013) Claude Fauque (25 November 2014) Emmanuelle Khanh (27 April 2009) Françoise Vincent-Ricard (9 October 2012) Jean-Claude Weill (2 December 2014) Monique Naudeix (1 December 2014) Peter Knapp (email correspondence, 4 September 2020)

­Video Recording ‘Avez-vous du style?’ Pour le plaisir (1er chaine, 2 fevrier 1967). ‘Basic Black’ (1967), dir. William Claxton. ‘Bilan des États généraux de la femme,’ Vingt quatre heures sur la deux (OFTF, 23 November 1970). Brussels. The World on Show (1958) British Pathé archive, Film ID: 1527.11. Cleo de 5 à 7 (Tamaris, 1962), dir. Agnès Varda. ‘Des jupes à la chaîne,’ A dossier ouvert (ORTF, 1969), dir. Jacques Lefebvre, INA archive. Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais d’Elle (Paris: Argos, 1966), dir. Jean-Luc Godard. ‘États généraux de la femme à Versailles,’ JT 20H (ORTF, 22 November 1970), INA archive. ‘États généraux de la femme,’ JT 20H (ORTF, 20 November 1970), INA archive. French Fashion Reporter (1960–9), British Pathé archive, Film ID: 2619.31. ‘La mode et à l’op art,’ Dim Dam Dom (1965), dir. Pierre Koralnik, prod. Daisy de Galard. ‘Le Prêt à Porter,’ Page de la Femme (ORTF, 9 January 1961), INA archive. ‘Le prêt-à-porter de style ou qui fait la mode,’ Régie 4 (ORTF, 1969), INA archive. Les 400 Coups (Paris: Carrosse, 1959), dir. Francois Truffaut. ‘Les conclusions des états généraux de la femme,’ Auvergne actualités (ORTF Clermont-Ferrand, 26 June 1971), INA archive. ‘Micheline, 6 enfants, allée de jonquilles,’ Les femmes … aussi (1967), dir. Claude Goretta, prod. Éliane Victor. ‘Mode Styliste,’ JT 13H (ORTF, 27 April 1970), INA archive. Mon Oncle (Paris: Alter, 1958), dir. Jacques Tati. ‘Ouverture des États généraux de la femme,’ JT 13H (ORTF, 20 November 1970), INA archive. Paris Nous Appartient (Paris: Carrosse, 1960), dir. Jacques Rivette. ‘Prêt-à-porter et Haute Couture,’ Vingt quatre heures sur la deux (ORTF, 27 November 1971), INA archive. ‘The Responsive Eye,’ Eye on New York (CBS, 1965), prod. Gordon Hyatt. ‘Trois Modélistes,’ Dim Dam Dom (1965), dir. Peter Knapp, prod. Daisy de Galard.

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Album du Figaro (1948–54) Ambassador (January 1964, April 1964) Amica (4 November 1962) Annuaire Professionel du Prêt-à-porter (1962–73) Art et Decoration (1955–6) Bonheur à la Maison (1947–51) Cahiers de Elle (1952–3) Cahiers de l’industrie français du vêtement féminin (1930–63) Cahiers du Centre d’etudes techniques des industries de l’habillement (1946–9) Dépêche Mode (1967–72) Elégance ‘prêt à porter’ (1956–64) Elle (1945–74)

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Theses Cline, Sharon Elise. ‘Feminité a la Francaise: Femininity, Social Change and French National Identity: 1945–1970.’ PhD thesis (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008). Coons, Lorraine. ‘Women Home Workers in the Parisian Garment Industry, 1860–1915.’ PhD thesis (New York University, 1985). New York and London: Garland, 1987. Kurkdjian, Sophie. ‘Lucien Vogel et Michel de Brunhoff, parcours croisés de deux éditeurs de presse illustrée au XXe siècle.’ PhD thesis (Université Paris 1, Paris) Paris: Institut universitaire Varenne, 2014. Maillet, Thierry. ‘Histoire de la médiation entre textile et mode en France: des échantillonneurs aux bureaux de style (1825–1975).’ PhD thesis (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, 2013). Montagné-Vilette, Solange. ‘L’industrie du prêt-à-porter en France.’ PhD thesis (Université de Paris I-Sorbonne, Paris, 1987). Romano, Alexis. ‘Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and the Image of Women, 1945–1968.’ PhD thesis (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2016).

Papers Presented Maillet, Thierry. ‘Two Non-Profit Organisations Shaped the French Fashion Industry after World War II.’ European Business History Association Conference, University of Glasgow, Scotland, 28 August 2010. Veillon, Dominique. ‘Esthétique et représentations de la femme à travers la presse féminine (Marie-Claire et Elle, 1958–1975).’ Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, Paris, 9 June 1997.

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Index advertising 5–6, 23, 46, 54–65, 75, 107, 118–19, 138–9: Neuville 57, 59; Publicis 54–5, 57, 61, f2.2 (see also Les Trois Hirondelles and Weill) Aghion, Gaby 49, 109 alienation 3–4, 15, 82, 86–7 (see also fragmentation) Aldrich, Larry 127 allocations familiales 89, 144 Alviani, Getulio 131 American fashion 39, 45, 48–51, 53, 58–9, 67, 69, 127–8; sportswear 13, 40, 44 Americanization 6, 13, 40, 43, 47, 51–2, 75, 81, 94, 99 Amos and Parrish 57, 59 April in Paris Ball 139 architecture 14, 16–17, 40, 52, 66–9, 88, 91, 142–4, 147–153, 158–61, 168–71 (see also housing estate; International Style; prefabricated houses) Arnodin, Maïmé 13, 104–5, 122, 124–6, 128, 135, 138, 190 n.163 (see also bureaux de style) Arnold, Rebecca 27, 78, 84, 96, 99 Arsac, Guy, see photographers Art et Décoration 68 Association des maisons de couture en gros, see Maisons de couture en gros Association Française pour l’Accroissement de la Productivité (AFAP) 48, 58–9 Association Maternité Heureuse 92, 153 Astruc, Alexandre 33 Atomium 70–1 Audry, Colette 7, 75, 87, 99 Augé, Marc 10, 144–5, 148, 155, 164, 168 Auriol, Vincent 46, 73 automobiles 5, 14, 22–5, 28, 97–8, 151, 162

Bachelard, Gaston 91 Bailly, Christiane 104, 109, 115, 117, 119–20, 134, 139, 162, 206 n.58, pl.15 Balenciaga, Cristóbal, see couturiers Balmain, Pierre, see couturiers Barbas, Raymond 106 Baron, Simone 57, 78–80, 82, pl.4–5 Barrett, Cyril 126, 131 Barthes, Roland: auteur 112–15, 132; city 37; consumer culture 4, 9, 23, 75; media and myth 4, 7, 23, 75, 150; plastic 97–8; structuralism 83 Basta, see Maisons de couture en gros Baudrillard, Jean: consumer society 9, 82, 95–6; hyper–reality and simulation 10, 142, 145, 162; media 4, 7; system of objects 95–6, 100, 163, 169 Beale, Marjorie 42 de Beauvoir, Simone 9, 53, 77, 84–5, 87–9, 91, 153, 158 Belleteste, Pierre 119, 124 Bender, Marylin 119 Bercher, André 108, 128, 135 Bergé, Pierre 177 Berman, Marshall 3, 40, 66–7, 71, 75 Bernège, Paulette 89 Bleustein-Blanchet, Marcel 54 Bouët-Williaumez, René 16–17, 19, f1.3 Bourdieu, Pierre: griffe 62; haute couture field 115, 120; space 17, 77, 121; symbolic production 17–18 Bourdin, Guy 159–61, f5.3 boutiques 26, 49, 97, 121–3, 149, 156–7, 169, 176, 200 n.76: Bus Stop 123; Claude Mérel 96; Dorothée Bis 119, 122, 126, 156, 166, 177, 201 n.100; La Gaminerie 123, 201 n.100; Knack 123; La Machinerie 123; Laura 122, 156, 166, pl.15; Orphée 117; Réal 15, f1.2, f3.2, pl.15; Victoire 157

Index

Braive, Andrée 88–90 branding 5, 9, 40–1, 60–4, 124 brands: Algo pl.2; L’Atelier f5.1; Benjamin Davy pl.15; Blizzand 56; Cacharel 119; Casalino f3.1; Fouks 24, 115, f1.6; Franck et Fils 19, f1.4; Georges Rech f1.10; Gil Coutin f1.11; I.D. 9, 119, 124–6, 134, 138, 141, f4.6, pl.12; Intexa f5.1; J. Divoy pl.2; Léonard Fashion f5.3; Marie Martine 26; Nale Junior 9, 115, 119, 162, f1.10, pl.15; Paul Bon f1.11; Paulette Maïer f1.10; Pierany 97; Pierre d’Alby 102, 119, 200, pl.11; Raimon 38, f1.11; Rodier 56; Stanley 141, pl.13; Tiktiner 115; Timwear 34, 56, f1.10; Tricosa 56, 97; Ulrique 28, f1.8 Brassaï 25 Brenninkmeyer, Ingrid 6 Brodovitch, Alexey 21 Brouet, Claude 13, 20–1, 23, 25, 31, 54, 56, 103, 106–7, 109–14, 118–19, 122, f.2.6 Brunhes, E. Max 43, 50, 53, 58 de Brunhoff, Michel 16 Brussels Exposition, also known as Brussels World’s Fair, Expo 58, Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles 70–72, 75, 77, 100–1 Buckley, Cheryl and Fawcett, Hilary 7 bureaux de style 9, 123–6, 134; Relations Textiles 124 Buron, Robert 47–8, 50–1, 54

236

C. Mendès 176 Cacharel, see brands Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin 39–40, 42–4, 46, 50, 54–9, 62, 64, 70, 79, 108, 122–4 Carter, Ernestine 103, 107 Centre d’Etudes Techniques des Industries de l’Habillement 46 Centre Nationale d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) 102 Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture 106, 177 Charles-Roux, Edmonde 13 Chavane, Alice 57–8, 94

Chevalier, Jean 75, 79, 81, 92, 95, 99, pl.4–5 Chloé 26, 35, 49, 109, 115, 141, 145, 149, 159–60, 177, 190 n.163, f5.3, pl. 2, pl.13, cover Cieslewicz, Roman 32–3, 103, 163–4, f5.4 Cité Radieuse 88, 90–1 Clair, Jean-François, see photographers Clarke, Henry, see photographers Cléo de 5 à 7 33, 37 Cline, Sharon Elise 92, 153 Cluett Peabody & Company 46 Cold War 40, 52, 70, 159 Colette, Didier 58, 186 n.47 colour film photography 75, 78–9, 81, 90–2, 95–7, 99–100, 102, 149 Comité de coordination des industries de mode (CIM) 58–60, 124 Comité Européen de Liaison des Industries du Vêtement Féminin 70 Comité National de la Productivité 48 Commissariat général du Plan 5, 46 confection 3–4, 6, 20–3, 25, 39, 43–5, 48, 50, 53, 56–8, 60–2, 78–9, 81–82, 85, 108, 120–1 confectionneurs 4, 45 Connors, William, see photographers Cotton, Charlotte 33 couture en gros 5, 20, 23, 39, 44–5, 57, 62–5, 71, 79, 101, 106–7, 115, 118, 149 (see also Maisons de couture en gros) Couturiers Associés 65 couturiers: Balenciaga, Cristóbal 109–10, 120, f4.2; Balmain, Pierre 17, 107, f1.3; Bohan, Marc 92; Castillo 174, fC.1; Féraud, Louis pl.8; de Givenchy, Hubert 26, 109, 120; Grès, Alix 17, f1.3; Lelong, Lucien 11–12, 17, f1.1, f1.3; Schiaparelli 49, 92; Saint Laurent, Yves 106, 127, 135, 157, 177; Ungaro, Emanuel 174, 177, fC.1 Créateurs et Industriels (C & I) 176 cultural diplomacy 39, 51–3, 68 Dambier, Georges, see photographers Darnat, Jean-Pierre 122 Debord, Guy 37

Delahaye, Jacques, see designers Delsaut, Yvette 62 department stores 4, 8, 57, 59, 73, 97, 109, 122, 126, 149, 155–7: Le Bon Marché 122; Printemps 80, 115, 122, pl.3, pl.6 (see also Galeries Lafayette) dérive 37, 162 designers: Chaillet, Catherine 135, 162, pl.15; Clark, Ossie 176; Delahaye, Jacques 119; Hechter, Daniel 104, 164, 168, f5.4, 200 n.76, 202 n.178; Marucelli, Germana 131; Pipart, Gérard 104, 124, 199 n.53; Risoli, Jean 164, 168, f5.4; Takada, Kenzo 177 Deux ou Trois choses que je sais d’elle 168–70, 173, f5.6 Dior, Christian 45, 49, 107, 177 Dim Dam Dom 104–5, 107, 120, 134–7, 142, 162, f4.1, f.4.9 Doisneau, Robert, see photographers Donzère-Mondragon dam 73–7, 93, 98, 100, 101 Dorothée Bis, see boutiques Dorsey, Hebe 120, 139 dressmakers 23, 45, 78, 111, 157 Duchamp, Marcel 105 Duchen, Claire 26, 87, 89 Duffy, Brian, see photographers Duhamel, Georges 40 Duquesne, Jean 148, 155–6, 163, 168 Dupont 54

Fabre, Annie 76 fabric 34–5, 54, 58–9, 62, 64, 78, 80, 96–7, 115, 118, 125, 127–8, 130–1, 134, 138, 141, 164–7: jersey 35, 73, 85, 95, 134, 156, 159, 164–7; movement in imagery 34–5, 162; synthetics 80, 96–100, 104, 157: Cristal-plastique 97; Crylor 97, 100; fibranne 80, 141; Flésa 80, 95, 141; nylon 97–9, 103; Orlon 97; PVC 103–4, 128; rayon 80, 103; Rhodia 97; Rhovyline 97; Tergal 97, 100; Triconyl 97; vinyl 103–4, 134–5, 139 Family Planning Movement 36, 92, 141, 153–4 fashion consulting agencies, see bureaux de style fashion film: Géométrique 138–9, 142; La Mode et à l’op art 135; Trois Modélistes 104–5, 120–1, 134–7, 142 Fashion Group International 57–8, 70 fashion illustration 14, 16–18, 20, 28, 31, 60–1, 92, 95, 100, 113–14, 131–3, f1.3, f4.7, f4.8 fashion industry: coordination 43, 48–9, 54, 57–60, 70, 94, 100, 105, 124; internal discussion 40, 42–51, 53–4, 56–65, 78–80, 104–9, 124–5, 176–7; modernization 4–6, 20–3, 42–4, 46–50, 53, 76, 78, 81

Index

Eames, Charles 68 Eastman Kodak Company 75, 79, 81 economic planning, see Commissariat général du Plan Ektachrome 75, 79 Elle 7–9, 103–4, 121, 127, 129–30, 135, 173–6 (see also Chapters 1, 3, and 5): Bon Magique 77, 94, 149, f5.2, pl.14; Patrons Elle–va–bien 77; ready–to–wear involvement 12–13, 54–8, 71, 76–8, 101, 108, 112–19, 122; ‘Style Elle’ 122, 130 Elia, Fouli, see photographers Ellul, Jacques 5

Emma Christie 115, 117–19, 121 Entwistle, Joanne 166 États Généraux de la Femme 176 Eternel féminin 7, 153 European Economic Community 9, 70, 101 European Recovery Program 5, 48 Evans, Caroline and Minna Thornton 152 everyday: clothing 1, 3, 14, 71, 104, 125; discourses of 9, 14–16, 23, 37, 105; magazine discussion 84, 86, 91, 94, 98 (see also Chapter 2); women’s experience 18, 26, 100, 153 (see also fashion photography and Lefebvre, Henri) Exposition internationale des arts et de l’industrie 4, 42

237

Index 238

fashion photography: containment 26–7, 34; the everyday 15, 25, 27, 31–3, 148–9; modernization 20–30, 73–5, 78–80, 97–8, 100; movement 20–37, 135–8, 161–2; narrative 26–7, 31–4, 82–4, 161; nostalgia 13–4, 20; and photojournalism 25, 65, 149; studio photography 14, 27, 82, 163; subjectivity 26, 31–7, 142, 152, 167–8; time 22–3, 31–2, 78–87, 141–2, 161–3 (see also Paris and the street) fashion press: Album du Figaro 11; Le Bonheur à la Maison 11; Femina 11, 57; Femme et la Vie 11; La Femme Chic 11; Je m’habille 11, 18; Jours de France 57, 129; Marie-Claire 7, 11; Marie-France 54, 57; Mademoiselle 58, 129; Modes de Paris 11; Modes de Saison 11; Modes et Travaux 11; l’Officiel de la Mode 44 (see also Elle; Jardin des Modes; Petit Echo de la Mode; Vogue) Fauque, Claude 8, 145–6, 149–50, 153, 156–8 Faure, Edgar 142 Fayolle, Denise 127–8, 130, 191 n.163 Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode 177 Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin 5–6, 9, 20, 39–40, 42–4, 46, 48, 54, 56, 58–9, 62, 64, 105, 108, 124, 128, 177 feminine press, see fashion press Ferguson, Marjorie 87 Ford, Henry 46–7 Fordism, see Henry Ford Fourastié, Jean 5, 47–8 Fournier, Henry 79 fragmentation 145, 163–71 Francki, Jo, see photographers Franco-American dialogue 9, 13, 45–6, 48–52, 57–8, 62, 64–9, 75, 107, 138–9 France: Civil Code 26, 86; decolonization 3, 5–6, 49, 70, 142; Fifth Republic

politics 70, 101; Fourth Republic politics 5, 7, 9, 39, 49, 70, 86; German Occupation 1, 4–5, 16, 22, 51; Liberation 12, 16, 42; modernization project 3–6, 9, 13, 22–3, 26, 46–7, 51, 70, 73–4, 76–7, 81, 98; natalism 89, 144; Vichy government 5 (see also national identity) French fashion: history studies 1–3, 6, 8, 177; mythologization of 1–3 (see also Chapter 1) Frenchness 1, 5, 51, 62, 68 (see also national identity) Friedan, Betty 155 Friedrich, Léone 16 Furlough, Ellen 43 Galard, Daisy de 104–5, 136, f4.1, f4.9 Galeries Lafayette 4, 122, 126, 129, 156–7, f4.6, f5.1 Garçin, Pierre 48–50 Gattegno, Jean-Pierre, see Maisons de couture en gros de Gaulle, Charles 7, 101 Germaine et Jane, see Maisons de couture en gros Gilbert, David 1 Gilbreth, Frank Bunker 47 Girard, Christian 123 Giroud, Françoise 80–1, 84, 86–7, 91 de Givenchy, Hubert, see couturiers Givenchy-Université 26 Godard, Jean-Luc 168–9, 173 Godechot, Jacques 7 grand ensemble, see housing estate grands magasins, see department stores Green, Nancy L., 4, 6, 42–3, 50, 101 Grès, Alix, see couturiers griffe, see label Groupement Mode et Création 177 Grumbach, Didier 64, 176–7 Guariche, Paul 88 Guigueno, Vincent 48–9 Guilbaut, Serge 51

habitation à loyer modéré (HLM) 89, 142, 148 (see also housing estate) Harper’s Bazaar 13, 21, 58 Harrison, Martin 21, 27, 162 Harvey, David 10, 28, 161, 168 haute couture 1, 4, 6, 8, 11–13, 16–20, 23, 25–6, 41–46, 49–53, 56–7, 64, 67, 76, 81, 92, 100, 102–3, 106–9, 111–2, 114–5, 117–8, 120–1, 123, 129, 135, 138–9, 149, 173, 176: versus ready-to-wear 1, 9, 44–5, 81, 100, 103, 106, 120–1 Hawes, Elizabeth 2 Hechter, Daniel, see designers Henry à la Pensée 26 heterotopy 10, 145, 156, 162, 168 (see also Lefebvre, Henri) Horvat, Frank, see photographers housing estate 68, 88–9, 148–55, 168–72 (see also habitation à loyer modéré and Sarcelles) hyper-reality 142, 145, 158–63, 172 (see also Baudrillard, Jean) I.D., see brands immobilisme 6, 23, 26, 81 industrial aesthetics 9, 108, 125 industrial design 71, 76, 93–9, 125, 128 industrialization 4, 9, 14, 22, 39–40, 42–4, 47, 49–53, 73–8, 80, 88, 98–102, 108, 121, 124–5, 127–8, 135, 144 Institut national d’études démographiques (INED) 59 International Style 40, 65–8 (see also Cité Radieuse) Jacobson, Elie and Jacqueline 122 Jameson, Frederic 105, 113–15, 127 Jardin des Modes 13, 33–4, 54, 118, 124, 145, 159–61, 166, 170–1, f1.10, f5.3, f5.8 jersey, see fabrics

label 60–3, 96, 176–7 Laennec, Christine Moneera 22–3 Lamy, Estelle 62–3 Lauwe, Chombart de 148 Lazareff, Hélène 13, 81, 103, 110, 190 n.163 Le Corbusier 67, 88, 90 Lefebvre, Henri: alienation 4, 80–1, 86–7, 98; the everyday 9, 14–16, 23, 25, 27, 33, 37, 80–1, 84; monuments 18, 20, 22, 66, 74; production of space 10, 151, 155, 159; the street 27; structuralism 82; urban (space) revolution 144–5, 148, 155–6, 162–3, 173 Lempereur, Albert 5, 20–1, 23, 38, 41, 46, 53–4, 56–9, 66, 70, 73–4, 79, 101, 108, 115, 124, 149, f1.5, f1.11, f2.1, f3.1, pl.3–4 Lépicard, Marie-José 13 Les femmes … aussi 154 Les Petits Enfants du siècle 143, 150, 154 Les Temps Modernes 7, 87 Les Trois Hirondelles 93, 119, f2.4; advertising 63, 68–9, f2.5; branding and publicity 41, 61–3, 67–9; New York visit 39–41, 65–7 magazines, see chapters 1, 3 and 5: shaping consumer identity 7–9, 13, 77, 86, 90, 92, 112, 149–50, 153; the home and interior decoration in magazines 77–8, 85–96, 99–100, 151; ‘The Happy Family’ discourse 87–2 mail-order 11, 18, 77, 112, 149 Maisons de couture en gros 1, 5, 9, 20, 39, 44, 46, 53, 62, 64–5, 101, 106–7,

Index

Kawamura, Yuniya 3 Kazan, Lionel, see photographers Khanh, Emmanuelle 9, 102–4, 106, 108–39, 162, 176–7, f4.2–4, f4.6–9, pl.11–12

Khanh Quasar 139 Klein, William 32, 36 Knapp, Peter 9, 31–2, 103–5, 120, 130, 134, 136–8, f4.1, f4.9 knitwear 27, 35, 95, 164–7 Kodachrome 75, 79 König, René 130 Koralnik, Pierre 135 Krauss, Rosalind 107 Kuisel, Richard F. 47, 51, 54

239

Index 240

115, 118: Alayne pl.2; Basta 1, 5, 23, 39, 65, 93; Cisele B.V.R. f2.5; Germaine et Jane 149, f2.5, pl.2; Lise France 45, pl.1; Jacqueline Monnin 75, 79, pl.2–4; Jean-Pierre Gattegno 67, 74, f3.1; Max Mozès f2.5; Waser f2.5; Wébé 1–2, 5, 23, 65, 71–2, 115, f.2.6 Maison Heureuse 90–2 Maison Minute 85–7 Maison Plastique 99–100, pl.10 Maison Weill, see Weill Marshall Plan 48, 51–2, 56, 67, 94 May ’68 6, 174–6 McClendon, Emma 106–7 McCracken, Grant 20 McKenzie, Brian Angus 49, 56 McLuhan, Marshall 75 McRobbie, Angela 119–20 Michel, Andrée 155 Ministère de la reconstruction et de l’urbanisme (MRU) 77, 88, 142, 148 Mode Côte d’Azur 5, 119 models: d’Aillencourt, Simone 20–1, 24–6, f1.5, f1.6; Bassenave, Dany 96, pl.9; Bettina 78, pl.4; Gigi 78, pl.4; Kennington, Jill 162, pl.15; de Lamargé, Nicole 31, f1.9; Nivoix, Marie-Claire 73–4, f3.1; Parker, Suzy 78, pl.4; Russell, Mary Jane 41, 66, f2.1 modernism 8, 10, 143, 153, 161: in design 67, 88, 95, 97, 158–9; in imagery 16, 25, 28, 30, 149 modernity 3–5, 7, 9, 13–15, 20, 22, 26, 30, 40, 42, 47, 65–7, 71, 75–8, 80–2, 86–8, 100, 125, 128, 143–5, 166, 173–4, 177 Monoprix 4, 124, 157 Monnet, Jean 5, 46–7 Moses, Robert 66 Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF) 176 Mouvement démocratique féminin (MDF) 36, 161 moving imagery 31–3, 36, 138–9, 160–3 (see also fashion film and New Wave Cinema) Musée des Arts Décoratifs pl.16

Museum at FIT pl.12 Museum of Modern Art 52, 126 Mythologies, see Barthes, Roland Nale Junior, see brands national identity 1, 4–6, 9, 39–40, 51–2, 62, 70 Naudeix, Monique 8, 122, 145–6, 150, 153, 156–8, 165–8, f5.5, pl.14 New Look 95 New York City 27, 39–41, 48–9, 52–3, 56–7, 65–8, 70–1, 87, 126, 139 New York clothing industry, see American fashion New Wave Cinema 33, 37 (see also Godard, Jean-Luc) Newton, Helmut 163–5, 167, f5.4 Niépce, Janine 153, 169, 171, f5.7 non-place 145, 164, 168, 173 Norell, Norman 128 Nouveau Réalisme 105 Nouvelle Vague, see New Wave Cinema Ockman, Joan 86, 102, 159, 163 Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) 159, 163 Offrey, Robert 58 Op Art 126–31, 135, 138: Khanh’s Op Art dress 125, 129, 131–2, 134–5, 138, pl.12 Opus International 126, 138 Oral History 8, 145 Palais Galliera 45, 63, 96, f2.4, pl.1, pl.6 Parent, Claude 90 parisienne 11, 19–20 Paris: boulevard périphérique 156, 173; Eiffel Tower 19, 65; fashion centralization 1–3, 16–20, 64–5, 156–7, 173; gardens 1, 10, 65; La Défense 142, 158–9; magazine representations of 1–2, 8, 65, 68–9, 173–5 (see also Chapters 1 and 5); monuments 16–20, 22, 31, 60–1, 64–5, 74, 164; Place de la Concorde 16, 19; post-war renovation 3, 5, 13, 22, 142–4, 158–9; suburbs and

122–3 (see also Cahiers de l’industrie du vêtement féminin); news: Agence France-Presse 57; Associated Press 68, 138; France-Soir 57, 103; Herald Tribune 120; Life Magazine 25, 54, 127; Paris-Presse 57 prêt-à-porter, see ready-to-wear Printemps, see departments stores Prisunic 8, 31–2, 109, 114, 124, 128, 157, f1.9 productivity: economic planning and industrialization 44, 46–9; fashion industry dialogue 40, 46–50, 53, 79–80; imagery and representation 30, 76, 78, 80–1, 83–4, 86, 161–2 (see also productivity missions) productivity missions 40, 48–50, 53–4, 57–60, 62, 68, 124 propaganda 52: fashion industry dialogue 56–8, 62, 64, 78; fashion press 56–8, 78; post-war politics 68 progress, discourses of 10, 22, 46–7, 52, 56–7, 70–1, 77, 80–1, 86, 88, 94, 97, 121, 143–4, 153, 159, 161, 175 Pulju, Rebecca L., 8, 45–6, 77, 89 Quant, Mary 119 quotidien, see everyday Rabanne, Paco 139 Radner, Hilary 26–9 Raimond, Anne-Marie 76, 85, 87–8, 99–100, 143, 145, 148, 150, pl.7, pl.10 ready-to-wear: accessibility 8, 13, 18, 20, 26, 31, 79, 92–3, 108–9, 145, 173; discourse of practicality 14, 18, 27, 78, 82, 85, 93–4, 97, 104; industrial modernity 9, 42, 76, 107, 128 (see also Chapter 3); poor consumer opinion of 4, 6, 44, 56, 60 Remaury, Bruno 128–9 The Responsive Eye 126–7, 130, 133 Restany, Pierre 105 Rivemale, Annie 13, 54, 57–8, 73–6, 83, 92, 94, f3.1, pl.3 Rocamora, Agnès 18–9

Index

la région parisienne 28, 142–9, 152, 154–6, 168–71 patterns 49, 106: in magazines 11, 13, 77, 92, 106, 110–17, 149 (see also Elle: Elleva-bien) patrons, see patterns Pavitt, Jane 102 Peclers, Dominique 59 Perriand, Charlotte 88 Petit Echo de la Mode 1–4, 8, 10, 65, 70–1, fI.1 photographers: Arsac, Guy 31–3, 96–8, f1.9, pl.9; Boucher, Jacques 19, 68–9, f2.5; Bouillaud pl.10; Clair, JeanFrançois 71–2, 83, 92, 97, 112, f.2.6, f3.2; Clarke, Henry 25, 41, 65–7, 71, 179 n.31, f2.1; Connors, William 13–15, 28–30, 32–3, 111, f1.2, f1.7, f1.8, f4.3; Cosiva, Germaine pl.7; Dambier, Georges 92; Doisneau, Robert 25; Duffy, Brian 102, pl.11; Elia, Fouli 32, 104, 114, 116–18, 120, 138, 141–4, 151, 164, f4.4, pl.13, cover; Forlano, Sante 19; Francki, Jo 33–4, 170–1, f1.10, f5.8; Horvat, Frank 25, 146–52, 155–6, 158, f5.1–2; Kazan, Lionel 20–3, 36, 95, 100, f1.5, pl.2, pl.8, pl.10; Lattès, Jean pl.7; Miralda, Antoni 173–5, fC.1; Randall, Robert 18–20, 33, f1.4; Ravasse, Jacques 73–5, f3.1, pl.3; Ronis, Willy 24–6, 31, f1.6, 31; Russell, Knight 37–8, f1.11; Weiss, Sabine 25–7; Yoshida, Daiho 129, 132, f4.6 photography, see fashion photography (see also technology: of image-making) Pierre d’Alby, see brands Pipart, Gérard, see designers plastic 75, 81, 96–100, 103–4, 139: plexiglass 93, 98, 123; Rhodoid 139 (see also synthetic fabrics) postmodernism 105, 113–15, 168–72, 175: postmodern turn 8–9, 30, 145, 159, 161 prefabricated houses 85–6 Présentation l’Industrie propagandepresse 54, 56 press: fashion trade: Elégence Européen 70; International Textiles 104, 109, 138; Officiel du Prêt à Porter 104,

241

Index

Rochefort, Christiane 143–4, 150, 154 Rodier, see brands Romier, Lucien 42 Ronis, Willy, see photographers du Roselle, Bruno 6, 105–7, 114 Roshco, Bernard 139 Rosier, Michèle 9, 103–5, 109, 119–20, 123, 128, 134–5, 139, f4.1 Ross, Kristen 5–7, 15, 23 Roudy, Yvette 155 Roux, Jacques 46–7, 79–80, 84 Rudolph, Nicole C. 88, 90, 99 Rykiel, Sonia 104, 166–7, 177, f5.5, pl.16

242

Saint Laurent, Yves, see couturiers Salon de la Chimie et de la Matière Plastique 98 Salon des Artistes Décorateurs 93–4 Salon des Arts Ménagers 77, 90, 94, 99 Salon International du Prêt-à-Porter Féminin 138 Salvy, Claude 6 Samuel, Raphael 8 Sainderichin, Ginette 138 Sandino, Linda 8 Sarcelles 143, 147–9, 155, 163, 168, 172 Schaeffer, Pierre 22 Schein, Ionel 99 scientific management 47, 49, 86, 89: in magazines 78, 84, 86, 88–9, 94–5, 100 Seitz, William C. 126, 130, 134 Sheringham, Michael 3, 168 shirtdress 14, 34 Simbarakiva 16 Simon, Dany 113–14, 119 simulacra 142, 163, 170 Situationist International (SI) 16, 37, 105, 162 Smith-Mundt or US Information and Educational Exchange Act 51–2 Société Parisienne de Confection (SPC) 4 Sontag, Susan 13 Soria, Georges 40, 52 Space Age 71, 102–3, 138 sportswear, see American fashion

Steele, Valerie 17 the street: in imagery 14, 26–7, 31–2, 34; in trend creation 108, 113–14, 126–7, 130 Structuralism 82–6, 88, 95–6 stylisme (prêt-à-porter de style) 6, 9, 146, 156, 176 (see also Chapter 4) Studio Astorg 79, pl.10 Sudreau, Pierre 142 suits 42, 45, 49–50, 69: in imagery 1, 19, 28, 30, 32, 34–5, 67, 116, 118, 150, 158–9, 173 Sullerot, Evelyne 8, 92, 153, 155, 158, 171 symbolic production of fashion 2–4, 8, 42–6, 60–72, 104, 107–8, 128, 138–9: in magazines, 78–86, 93, 98, 101, 112, 114–15, 120–1 (see also Chapter 1) Takada, Kenzo, see designers Taylor, Frederick Winslow, see Taylorism Taylorism 47–8, 89 technology 6, 26, 70, 80, 89, 94–5, 102–3, 107, 123, 128, 130, 138, 142: of clothing production 42–3, 47, 49, 56–7, 76, 80, 98, 128; of image-making 4, 14, 25, 31–2, 75, 79, 81, 91–2, 95, 102, 107, 121, 130, 134–8, 149, 162–3; represented in imagery 22, 71–7, 81, 93–100, 103, 121 Teissèdre, Jean 65 television 10, 31, 57, 89, 102, 104, 107, 130, 133, 150, 154, 159–60, 162–3 Telstar satellite 102, 138 Texier, Geneviève 155 Théâtre de la Mode 45 Tiktiner, see brands Tobé 57, 59 Traeger, Ronald 162, 168–9, pl.15 Tricosa, see brands Trigère, Pauline 127 trade syndicate 4–5, 106–7, 177 (see also Fédération française de l’industrie du vêtement féminin) Treaty of Rome 70 trend forecasting 59, 124 Trente Glorieuses 5

VdeV (Vêtements de Vacances) 103 Varda, Agnès 33 Vasarely, Victor 126–7, 135 Victor, Éliane 154 Viénot, Jacques 125 villes nouvelles 88, 91, 168 Villeminot, Marcel 64–5 Vincent-Ricard, Françoise 125 (see also bureaux de style) Vogue 56–8, 63, 68–9, 71, 75, 119, 121, 126, 131, 133, 139, 149, 163–6 (see also Chapter 1): ‘Tout Fait Tout Prêt à Porter’ 18–20, 39–41, 65–7, f1.4, f4.8

Wébé, see Maisons de couture en gros Weill 42, 49–50, 53–5, 58, 60–1, 74, 115, f2.2, f2.3, f3.1 Weill, Jean-Claude 42, 55 (see also Weill) Weill-Hallé, Marie-Andrée 92 Weiner, Susan 82, 86 Weiss, Sabine, see photographers White, Nicola 51–2 Wigley, Mark 67 window display 122–3 women: identity and photographic representation 1–3, 7–8 (see also Chapters 1, 3 and 5): modern identities 4, 7–8, 36, 56, 66, 75, 77–80, 82, 86–8, 94, 100, 109, 143, 145–6, 150, 153, 157, 165–8; suffrage 12, 14, 26, 38, 86; women’s rights 8, 26, 36, 38, 84, 141, 153, 158 World War II 4, 39–40, 42–4, 47, 67, 70, 73 world’s fairs 4, 42, 70–72, 75, 77, 100–1 Wright, Frank Lloyd 68

Wallace, Mike 130, 133–4, 138 Warnery, Maurice 44, 64, 185n26

Yoshida, Daiho, see photographers Young Jaeger 103

Troy, Nancy 64 Twiggy 162 United Nations Secretariat (U.N.) 40–1, 66–7, 75 Ungaro, Emanuel, see couturiers urbanization 5, 25, 76, 142–3

Index 243

244

245

246

Plate 1  Lise France, miniature garments, 1948, Palais Galliera, GAL2008.33.4, 8, 5 © Paris Musées/Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris

Plate 2  Clothing by Alayne, J. Divoy, Jacqueline Monnin, Algo, Chloé and Germaine et Jane. Photograph by Lionel Kazan, Elle, 1  October 1956 © Lionel Kazan/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 3 Dress by Jacqueline Monnin (large image). Photographs by Jacques Ravasse, Elle, 10  November 1952 © Annie Rivemale, Jacques Ravasse/ELLE FRANCE.

Plate 4  Garments by Lempereur, Jacqueline Monnin and Lempereur (clockwise from top). Photograph by Jean Chevalier, Elle, 14 September 1953 © Simone Baron, Jean Chevalier/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 5 Photographs by Jean Chevalier, Elle, 14  September 1953 © Simone Baron, Jean Chevalier/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 6 Printemps, printed dress and belt, 1948–58, Palais Galliera, GAL1961.82.4. Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris, Paris, France © Paris Musées, Palais Galliera, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/image ville de Paris/Art Resource, NY

Plate 6  Selvedge detail © Paris Musées, Palais Galliera, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/image ville de Paris/Art Resource, NY

Plate 7  Anne-Marie Raimond and Madeleine Peter, ‘Aujourd’hui à Rézé-les-Nantes: 250 familles radieuses dans la maison de demain.’ Photographs by Germaine Cosiva and Jean Lattès, Elle, 25  July 1955 © Anne-Marie Raimond et Madeleine Peter, Jean Lattès, Germaine Cosiva/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 8  Dresses by Marcelle Venon, Louis Féraud, Jacqueline, Laetitia and Marcelle Venon (left to right). Photograph by Lionel Kazan, Elle, 21 February 1955 © Lionel Kazan, Studio Chevalier/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 9  Photographs by Guy Arsac, Elle, 29 August 1955 © Guy Arsac/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 10 Anne-Marie Raimond, ‘Elle expose une réalisation unique au monde: la maison tout en plastique.’ Photographs by Bouillaud (of building) and Lionel Kazan (of model), Elle, 27  February 1956 © Anne-Marie Raimond, Bouillaud-Studio Astorg, Lionel Kazan-Studio Astorg/ ELLE FRANCE

Plate 11 Coat by Emmanuelle Khanh for Pierre d’Alby. Photograph by Brian Duffy, Elle, 9 September 1965 © Duffy Archive

Plate 12 Emmanuelle Khanh for I.D., dress, cotton, 1966, The Museum at FIT, 77.57.2 © The Museum at FIT

Plate 13  Garments by Chloé and Stanley (left to right). Photographs (of models) by Fouli Elia, Elle, 3 May 1963 © Fouli Elia, Edi Vogt/ELLE FRANCE

Plate 14  Monique Naudeix in an Elle Bon Magique dress, Rome, 1963. Photograph by Daniel Naudeix © Naudeix private collection

Plate 15  Coat by Christiane Bailly for Nale Junior (left page), cape by Catherine Chaillet for Benjamin Davy over a dress by Laura (right page). Photographs by Ronald Traeger, Elle, 8  September 1966 © Ronald Traeger/ELLE FRANCE. Image courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology | SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archive

Plate 16  Sonia Rykiel, sweater, wool and angora, A/W 1965, Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs, 2009.68.1 © MAD, Paris/Jean Tholance