Which ghost wore what at Palais Gallieria?
The Palais Galliera has been elusive all these years. We would always see its monumental Italian Renaissance façade across the Palais de Tokyo near the Eiffel Tower but its doors were always closed — apparently its fashion collection was rarely shown to the public due to conservation issues. We were lucky this year when it finally opened its hallowed halls to us with the temporary exhibition, “Anatomie D’Une Collection,” a goldmine of important historical and contemporary pieces that’s a must-see for designers, students and all fashion aficionados.
In this day and age when the most pressing question with regards to fashion is “Who are you wearing?”, the exhibit curator and museum director Olivier Saillard asks instead “Who wore what?”, shifting the spotlight from the designer to the owner of the garments and how the pieces they wore have become “relics,” incorporating the essence of the person to whom they once belonged by virtue of their shape and the intimate contact they have had with the body. “They have become a sort of spiritual double of the person who wore them,” says Saillard.
Many “ghosts” were indeed summoned, drawing around a hundred garments and accessories illustrating fashion from the 18th century to the present day, ranging from court wear to work overalls and from celebrities to unknowns. Just as interesting as the construction and embellishment of the garments are the stories of the owners, their circumstances, and the people around them.
From among all the corsets in the museum, for example, the plain silk one of Marie Antoinette circa 1785 was chosen not just because she was famous but because of little details that revealed so much. The corset at that time was worn only for health reasons or on non-official occasions so could be considered quotidian. This one, however, was kept like a holy relic between the pages of Madame Éloffe’s accounts book. Madame Éloffe, the queen’s milliner and marchande de modes or fashion designer at Versailles, was a specialist who decorated clothes with lace, gauze, feathers and artificial flowers. A closer look at the piece reveals pinholes on the front, which no doubt were experiments in decoration by the designer who valued her craft and wanted to impress Marie-Antoinette with an atypical creation. She wanted to present a corset fit for a queen, in other words.
The robe-parée of Empress Josephine also looked unremarkable until you discover that it was made of cotton muslin, a fabric forbidden by her husband Napoleon I since it was imported from India by the English who were enemies of France at the time. But since it was à la mode and typical of Josephine’s taste for white dresses, the Empress defiantly flouted her husband’s decrees and went out of her way to procure the contraband material even if she had to lie through her teeth to the Emperor, persuading him that it was French cambric or lawn. This was no surprise as Josephine followed fashion astutely and would “reform her wardrobe” twice a year, with the ladies in her entourage drawing lots on her hand-me-downs of last season.
Two identical long gowns in silk faille, one in ivory and one in gray (originally mauve), both worn by Blanche Castets, seemed like a favorite design which the owner just chose to order in two colors but it turns out that one is a wedding dress and the other is a day-after-wedding dress which her husband, Dr. Paul Gachet, chose to keep as mementos of his wife who died of tuberculosis seven years after they were married. “The highly sensitive Gachet presumably kept his late wife’s clothes out of love for her,” says Saillard. “They are unique pieces and almost identical, which surely must have duplicated the grief.”
A special section in the exhibit features the clothes of 19th-century actresses, opera singers, aristocrats, society women and demi-mondaines who were the privileged clientele of fashion designers both in the real world and the theatre world. The theater actually borrowed the word “couturiere” to describe the last rehearsal of a play or opera when the final adjustments were made to the costumes. These clients were the prime movers of fashion — making the rules, launching the “it” pieces and regaling the public with gossip about the season’s new models and latest trends. Some personalities, like the exceptionally talented actress Sarah Bernhardt, had their own individual way of dressing. Dressed by the top couturiers, “her outfits proclaim her originality,” wrote the painter Alphonse Mucha. “Sarah did not care about fashion, she dressed to suit her own taste. The tailors and couturiers, who were stuck in their own routines, often had difficulty providing for her whims.” A stunning piece of hers on show is called, appropriately enough, the “Medici,” a regal, Renaissance-inspired short cape in lamb fur and ermine emblematic of her taste for extravagance, luxury and fur.
For couture clients in the public eye, their names alone may already symbolize the image of a fashion house. With the help of a couturier, women like Catherine Deneuve, Audrey Hepburn and the Duchess of Windsor were able to put a stamp on a period with their particular look or even just their figure. A two-piece wool dress of Audrey Hepburn by Hubert de Givenchy, for example, reflected all the qualities of the actress that women of her time would admire and would look for in an outfit and would want to wear. She wore this when she was 37 but it was slender as ever, with a youthful, slightly tomboy look. Givenchy, who made her a muse, reminisced that “when she tried on a garment, she liked to move around in it, she would test it, walking around and sitting down. She wanted it to follow her movements, adapt itself to her body.” You can practically see her by just looking at the dress: the high pocket flaps have a masculine tone, the short sleeves are childlike, the severe neck emphasizes her long neck and posture. “It’s kind of a tense, balanced, almost fragile elegance.”
When Yves St. Laurent met Betty Catroux in 1967, he immediately adopted her as his muse, his “twin sister.” “She was exactly what I loved. Long, long, long,” the designer was quoted as saying. Her androgynous figure was perfect for all the archetypal items from the male wardrobe that Saint Laurent reinterpreted with subtle tweaks for women. On exhibit was a jumpsuit of Catroux from 1968, the first one the designer ever created, illustrating this signature unisex quality with a purity of line but with a nuanced interpretation through a detailed precision in working the material.
Marc Bohan, one of the designers of the Duchess of Windsor who contributed to the creation of the “Wallis style,” captured her spirit in a severe, navy-blue afternoon dress in gazar that perfectly outlined her legendary, impossibly slim figure. Known for her studied elegance and highly developed sense of perfection, “she was capable of giving cutting directions to the first atelier, having the width of an armhole adjusted, and doing away with superfluous details,” according to Bohan.
Although the major part of the museum’s collection comes from private wardrobes, fashion houses have been donating original prototypes from their runway shows. But unlike an everyday garment that reflects the personality of the woman who chose it and wore it, the prototype cannot really be called a real garment in the strict sense. “It’s more like an idea, or a fantasy garment,” says Saillard. Whereas people in everyday life choose garments that fit their character and wear them in order to make themselves look good, on the runway the designer subordinates the personality of the models, making them almost like “hangers” or supports for his ideas. Many runway clothes, in fact, never make it to the stores so are never worn in real life. “Curiously enough, the most emblematic of these prototype clothes are described as ‘museum pieces.’” In this case, it doesn’t matter as much “who wore what” with the spotlight going full circle back to the designer again.
The best example is the 2009 Maison Martin Margiela coat made of blonde wigs. The model who wore it on the runway had a flesh-colored stocking over her head and wore a blonde wig that covered her face so she was completely de-personalized. A 1984 Jean-Paul Gaultier silk velvet dress with those outrageous conical breasts was also meant just for the runway, although the model was not as anonymous. Susan Holmes McKagan remembers the moment when she wore it for the show: “Words cannot express the feeling and magic I embraced as I had the privilege of wearing it. There was such a tremendous amount of art and love poured into that one particular design. Walking that défilé in that historic dress resonated with me — the breaking down of so many societal walls, of how people expect us to dress. When I first put it on, I automatically stood a little taller and seemed to walk a bit grander. I felt more confident and liberated, as I think it signified how fashion should also be fun, whimsical and not always so mundane. It was very liberating to wear something that sparked such brilliant, nonconformist fashion. I felt rebellious, sexy and strong all at the same time.” Now a Palais Galliera museum piece devoid of a previous owner, this JPG prototype at least enjoyed one brief moment when its wearer was not just a body. She loved the dress, was transformed by it, and in the process, invested it with soul.
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“Anatomie D’Une Collection” runs until Oct. 23 at the Palais Galliera (Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris). Log on to www.palaisgalliera.paris.fr. Photos by Pierre Antoine and Eric Poltevin courtesy of Palais Galliera
