The New Kid in Town

It is very rare that when I post that I will quote whole text as the bulk of a post. However I came across this little gem the other day from Time Magazine in 1961 giving a recap of the Haute Couture showings in Paris in 1961.

I am not sure who the author was, however a world of glamour and elegance is described at the eve of the beginning of the swinging sixties. Compared to the huge publicity grinding machines and spectacles that couture showings today demand, this seems like a dowager’s tea party. However I think that I would rather have tea with a dowager than attending a brash cocktail party which today’s showings tend to be.

“In the salons of haute couture in Paris last week, buyers and fashion editors from all over the world got their first look at the color and shape of the spring lines—and found themselves looking backward. The new look was the old look of the F. Scott Fitzgerald flapper in the 1920s. Skirts and coats were straight, short, with hemlines flaring. Shoes were square-toed. Bosoms were flat, backs bent and billowing, with designs that required the mannequins not only to slouch but virtually assume the posture of an expectant, concave catcher's mitt. Though Paris fashions have been irresolutely marching backward for several seasons, the big, bold step this year was apparently inspired by a hit movie running in Paris called The Crazy Years, a documentary of the '20s.

The Crazy Years designs produced as wild and improbable a week as the fashion world has known for many a year. At the house of Cardin, which drew the week's first applause for a superlative line, a mannequin was showing a new flat-chested dress to a U.S. buyer. She was suddenly interrupted with a scream from the vendeuse: "But darling, you're wearing it back to front!"

Cardin

When Madeleine de Rauch's collection failed to follow the flapper trend, the audience began to leave, and waiters dashed in with champagne to stem the bored retreat.

de Rauche

The triumph of the week and cause of the most excitement was the work of Christian Dior's little-known, untested Marc Bohan, 34. The Parisian-born son of a modiste, Bohan broke into haute couture in 1945 as an assistant designer at Patou, left Patou in 1958 to work under Dior's Boy Wonder Chief Designer Yves St. Laurent. When St. Laurent, after an unhappy stint in
the French army, "retired" from Dior two months ago because of "ill health," Bohan, one of the few married male couturiers in Paris, took over. Few in Paris expected much from his debut, and St. Laurent fans were openly hostile. Admitted the New York Herald Tribune's Eugenia Sheppard: "I had a poisoned typewriter ribbon ready."

Dior

But Bohan's hip-hugging skirts, exotic colors ("Laburnum yellow," "Provence apricot,"), and infinite attention to detail and neatness, generally embracing the flapper trend, stunned the salon and sent reporters into paroxysms of joy. "But Marc Bohan is wonderful," cried a converted Eugenia Sheppard. "Five minutes after the show started, I felt like a cat before a saucer of cream."

Dior

At the show's end, the audience was near delirium and jaded U.S. fashion editors at the outer tether of objectivity. "The shouting, clapping, surging mob at the press showing caused chaos in the elegant salon," reported the New York Times excitedly on Page One. "M. Bohan was pushed up against the boiserie, kissed, mauled and congratulated. Chairs were toppled. Champagne
glasses were broken. People were knocked down." Breathlessly cabled another U.S. reporter to her office: "Just dashed out of Dior to share with you still-boiling excitement." Wrote the New York Daily News's Monique: "Thundering applause led by a newly blonde Duchess of Windsor rolled through the elegant grey-and-white salons of the House of Dior today, the happy
ending to the suspense story of the fashion year."

*Don't forget to visit Mon Peche

Mon Peche by Savoir Faire

As an addition to Savoir Faire, I have decided to launch another blog! I have found lately that I have not been able to devote the amount of time daily to Savoir Faire as I wish. Savoir Faire will still continue as will my new blog Mon Peche, which is an going to be visual only with no text and a twist! I a m not sure how running two blogs is going to give me more time. Mon Peche is going to be a visual record of what Savoir Faire is actually thinking.

Let me know what you think!

A BIrd in the Hand

They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (especially if you are hunting), however these fabulous creations are more than that! An instant bit of Savoir Faire for a night out on the town in the Holiday Season.

Ferragamo

Maison Martin Margiela

Valentino

Mary Norton

Charlotte Olympia

Just be careful you don't run into this man and his dog.

The Original Tom Ford?

As much as I love Tom Ford and his savoir faire, sometimes he (or his publicity team) does lack a certain amount of originality.

I had touched on this once before in a previous post. (see here)

So is there any doubt as to where Mr. Ford (or his team) got the inspiration for the photo below?

I am sure that inspiration came from the below photo of Marc Bohan and model taken in the
1960’s. Or is it just a coincidence?

The Renaissance World of Pucci

When one thinks of Pucci the Renaissance palaces of Florence are one the last things that come to mind and vice versa. However the Renaissance and Pucci are so intertwined you could not have one without the other.

Reaching fame through his highly psychedelic designs of the 1960’s and 1970’s Emilio Pucci was born in 1914 of one of Florence’s oldest noble families, and would live and work in the Pucci Palace in Florence for much of his life.

The 14th -15th Century Palazzo Pucci has been in the Pucci family since it was built and is a standing testament that old and new can coexist together.

Marchesa Cristina Pucci di Barsento, widow of Emilio Pucci, still remembers how astonished she was when she first entered the house, back in 1959: ‘I was very young and quite astonished: It was a heavy house, even severe, like Florence’. Still, what looked like a timeless palazzo outside was a living house inside.

Pucci can be given credit for revolutionizing couture in the 1960s with his vibrant designs and colour and an aesthetic that was totally out of place within the environs in which his clothes were created. However the history of the Pucci family and their business interests gave rise to an evolutionary trend that had its epoch with Emilio Pucci.

In the brown room, for example, the silk draperies and wall covering were made at Antico Setificio Fiorentino, a silk workshop founded by the Puccis and other families in the 17th century; Emilio Pucci took it over in the 1950s for the manufacture of his fabrics which would become the backbone of his designs.

The late-18th-century fresco in the dining room, by Luigi Ademollo, depicts Aenes leaving Troy. Marchesa Pucci and her husband added the Venetian chairs. The crystal glassware was made for the family in the 18th century.

The 17th-century bed in Emilio Pucci’s bedroom was made in Lucca and it was among Pucci’s favourite pieces. The gilt woodwork on the headboard echoes the embroidery on the canopy.

The Wedgwood room was created by an English artist in the late 18th century. The palette and Neo-classical plasterwork were inspired by the signature ceramics. An 18th-century marble sculpture of the goddess Diana is at center.

“My husband loved and respected this house, and we changed little. He was very kind to me and didn’t want to teach me. He understood that some things should be kept the way they are, but he didn’t say, ‘Do this; don’t do that.’ And it was not necessary, because I didn’t want to interfere with the palazzo.”

The house the current marchesa “came into” is still ancestral, layered in generations of incremental change. However after nearly 50 years, Marchesa Pucci has gently made it her own—and shifted the terms for the next fortunate generation.

Splashed

It was raining all day here in Toronto. A steady rain that kind of penetrated everything. This can be great if you are inside. Only problem, was I had to walk the 1.5 kms to work at 7:30 this morning in the rain. Now that in itself is not too bad, however as puddles form quickly there is always the possibility that you will be splashed or in my case drenched by a passing car.

So instead of looking like this in the rain

It was a bit like this!

How was your day?

The Beaton Effect

Just proves that the great Cecil Beaton is still a force to be reckoned with.