Helena Rubinstein & David Hicks, a Match Made in Heaven

What would a blog about savoir faire be without the meeting of two of my most favourite style icons? Helena Rubinstein, one who had enough savoir faire for 10 of us and David Hicks, interior designer extraordinaire who showed us what living with savoir faire was all about. So put these two together and what do you have? A match made in heaven whose offspring showcased how brilliant each was. Both were headstrong and had their own ideas on how things should be accomplished.

David Hicks has been considered to be at the forefront of interior designers in the 20th century. However after his marriage in 1960 to Lord Mountbatten’s daughter his career was on the wane. However fortunes changed with a commission from Madame Rubinstein to decorate her new Knightsbridge apartment in London. The result showed that Hicks was at the top of his game and put him back in the limelight. Most major newspapers and magazines ran features of the result, unleashing on an unsuspecting public a masterpiece of bold colour schemes and savoir faire. Hicks managed to incorporate Madame’s compulsive acquisition of objects and art into an intelligent mix of old and new. Vitrines inset into silk coloured walls held Madame’s collections. Radiators were covered in gold mesh that looked like Faberge. Old Portuguese carved wooden doors were used as bedheads, and Victorian furniture was painted white and recoverd in daring colours.

With true savoir faire when Hicks inquired as to what colour she would like the walls of her new drawing room painted, she called for a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut a swatch of purple silk from the lining of the Balenciaga she was wearing. And like a true gentleman, Mr Hicks carried out her wishes, the result being a pink, scarlet and magenta room that Hicks referred to as “one of the most dramatic, and daring colour schemes I have ever assembled”. I don’t have any photos of the finished result, however below are two examples of what the end product would have been like.

Decorating Savoir Faire

Shabby Chic. MMmm, a movement of interior decoration that conjures to mind lots of frills, flounces, white distressed furniture, and increasingly feminine schemes. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it can reach overkill very quickly. However just a few of the right pieces in the right setting and you can create interiors that are both eclectic, and stunning at the same time. I say buy the furniture then accessorise with things that are not necessarily in the shabby chic vein.

Here are some of the pieces I have already or are coveting. I have also teemed some design classics which are poles away from the ‘shabby chic’ style such as the Wassily Chairs and the cowhide rug with the glass fronted cabinet. To look at each piece individually they are in totally different design ranges, but together they seem to work.

I am currently coveting the two chairs below and am just looking for ways to make them work with what I already have. The obelisks currently sit on a cream lacquered Chinese sideboard, and I am looking for the perfect piece of art to hang in between them.

So whatever your decorating style is, have fun with it and mix and match for some savoir faire.

Some Friday Savoir Faire

If you were jetting of for a sun filled weekend in the 1960’s there was no better place to jet off to than the Hotel St Georges in Beirut. Home away from home for the rich and famous, also home to the best bikinis on the Mediterranean, this was the place to be. So sit back and enjoy the sun, sea and savoir faire!

Savoir Faire Without the Corset

What can you say about a man who had such a sway over fashion and style that he liberated women from the corset of the 19th Century only to shackle their legs with the hobble skirt in the 20th? C’est Magnifique! He styled himself as the “King of Fashion” and practically dictated style before World War 1, only to die poverty stricken and in obscurity on 1944. He was influenced by many and in turn was the source of inspiration for other designers such as Schiaparelli who had closets full of his clothes.
Paul Poiret born in 1879 went on to become the driving force behind Parisian fashion in the early 20th Century. He trained with Jacques Doucet (another arbiter of savoir faire and style) and then left there for Worth (the doyenne of the haute mode), finally opening on his own in 1903. Throwing all the rules out the window of his Rue Arbor premises, he freed women from the restraints of the corset creating directoire style dresses with brilliant uses of colour, fabric and texture. Inspired by Leon Bakst and the Ballets Russe, Poiret’s style was a riot of orientalism and exoticism. Nothing was left untried. His sense of colour and texture were unrivalled, and the exotic was hunted out to try and then be unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Although appearing extremely complicated and extravagant the cut was on the other hand extremely simple, with dresses created from rectangles of fabric being draped on the body.

From abolishing the corset he went further with hobble skirts, "harem" pantaloons, and "lampshade" tunics, using the fabulous soirées he threw in his garden to promote such whimsies. His most famous soirée was The Thousand and Second Night party he threw in 1911 with himself playing the part of a sultan with his wife Denise dressed in a tunic dress playing his favourite slave girl. Apperntly she was carried into the party encased in a gilded cage, and then set free by her husband. In cases in which guests attended improperly attired, they were requested to either outfit themselves in some of Poiret's 'Persian' outfits, or leave.

His wife played a major part in his success, by being his muse, and modelling his creations.

Poiret’s aim was not only to influence fashion! He wanted to tell you how to live! Poiret's house expanded to encompass furniture, decor, and fragrance in addition to clothing. In 1911, he established the company Parfums de Rosine, named for his eldest daughter. Poiret's name was never linked to the company, but it was effectively the first fragrance launched by a designer.

He launched the Ecole Martine, named for his second daughter, to provide artistically inclined, working-class girls with trade skills and income. Martine provided furniture, wallpapers, rugs and every other decorating item for the complete Poiret look.

Unfortunately post war Europe and the public were not akin or sympathetic to Poiret’s style. New designers like Chanel (curse her) sounded the death knell for this fertile mind. Chanel designed smart functional clothes which women preferred. Poiret referred to her style as “poverty deluxe”. Legend has it that Chanel, dressed in black, once met Poiret and he asked: “Madame, for whom do you mourn?” She replied: “Why monsieur, I mourn for you!”

Poiret was out of fashion, in debt, and lacking support from his business partners, and he soon left his fashion house. In 1929, the house itself was closed, and its leftover clothes were sold by the kilogram as rags. When Poiret died in 1944, his genius had been forgotten. Luckily through a recent exhibition in New York we had the good fortune of looking upon a lost and forgotten empire.

As a footnote, one of my most prized possessions is a first edition copy of one his auto biographical works, “My First 50 Years”.

When Two Minds Meet

Mmm, we hear the name Goldfinger and we are inexplicably led to one of 007’s arch enemies, who had a bit of a penchant for gold. However dig a little deeper and we come across another man of the name Goldfinger who had a penchant for architecture. Erno Goldfinger was a Hungarian born architect and furniture designer who worked primarily in England and who was a key member of the Modern Movement.

His style which was very austere and severe and almost brutal at times ended up being an integral part of modernist architecture in England during the 1920’s and 1930’s. His buildings and designs contrasted dramatically with the surroundings in which they were located in. In the setting of old London and other areas his designs stood alone and thus demanded to be looked at and studied for their own merits and then as to how they related to their surroundings. Even right through to the late 1960’s Goldfinger was there, and England is dotted to testaments of his legacy, like the Trellick Tower in London, one of the landmark attempts of high-rise residential living.

The façade of the Georgian mansion he updated for Helena Rubinstein’s new London salon on Grafton Street in 1925. was a triumph of modernist design. The salon was located in chic Mayfair. Goldfinger's original design included Madame’s name illuminated in lights, repeated four times down the side of the building, which Madame vetoed as she thought it bad taste. Goldfinger resented Rubinstein as being overbearing- an adjective often used to describe himself, however in retrospect, he could see how interesting she was. Stubbornly, Goldfinger forced through the starkly modern design which was to the taste of neither Madame or of her customers, nor indeed of the builders who tried to add decorative touches to Goldfinger's drawings in the belief that he must have accidentally forgotten them. Although he struggled even to be paid for the project, Goldfinger succeeded in building 'the first modern shop in London' with a fully glazed façade which is today's standard treatment.

I don’t have a photo of the salon’s exterior however it would have been similar to the below.

The interior of the beauty salon was designed in a minimal way, with chrome and glass fittings faintly reminiscent of hospital interiors.

Sadly destroyed during World War II, Madame’s London Salon was redone in a totally different style. As usual Madame, had a knack for sourcing hitherto unknown talent and paving the way for their success.

Savoir Faire From All Angles

Growing up in Australia in the mid 1970’s one could not help but notice the amount of artwork that proliferated schools. Schools were invariably the recipients of prints of art works by famous artists that took pride of place in classrooms, usually above the blackboard. One Australian artist who had this unlikely honour, not only in schools but other public spaces was Sir Sidney Nolan. Nolan was one of Australia’s premier artists, with his most famous works being the highly stylised series based on the Australian Bushranger Ned Kelly, created in 1946-1947. These are instantly recognisable for the depiction of Kelly and his famous iron mask and body armour, as a black silhouetted figure.

Fast forward to 2003, where Sydney furniture designer, Johnny Charmaki, has used this series of paintings as inspiration to design a chair! This is art evolving and changing as how art should. Take something or an image that we are all familiar with and turn it into something else, while maintaining the original focus of the original work. Look at paintings and chair individually and that is what they are painting and chair, however put both together, and we have an evolving piece of work that spans 60 years. The parts of the chair carefully relate to Nolan’s paintings and Kelly’s gun battle scenes. For example there are three holes in the seat that relate to bullet holes in Kelly’s armour. The arms represent guns ready to fire.

True to the savoir faire style, I will have one please!

Royal Savoir Faire

Princess Alice of Battenberg, later Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and mother in law of the Queen, although having a troubled life, possessed true savoir faire, and did basically what she pleased later in life. Not particularly fashionable, at one stage committed to a sanatorium for schizophrenia, turning to religion and becoming a nun, her life shaped her into a person who was completely herself.

For all the wealth and privilege she was born into, she developed a true sense of self and ended up devoting her life to helping others, on somewhat reduced circumstances. During the Second World War in Greece, she worked for the Red Cross organization, helped organize soup kitchens for the starving populace and flew to Sweden to bring back medical supplies on the pretext of visiting her sister, Louise who was married to the Crown Prince. She organised two shelters for orphaned and stray children, and a nursing circuit for poor neighborhoods, and founded a nursing order of Greek Orthodox nuns, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary. Because of her actions, she was a puzzling enigma to her family with her mother the Marchioness of Milford Haven once saying, "What can you say of a nun who smokes like a chimney and plays canasta?"

When she died she left no possessions, having given everything away. Before she died she had expressed her wish to be buried at the Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem (near to her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, a Russian Orthodox saint). When her daughter, Princess George of Hanover, complained that it would be too far away for them to visit her grave, Princess Andrew jested, "Nonsense, there's a perfectly good bus service!" Her wish was finally realized on 3 August 1988 when her remains were transferred to her final resting place in a crypt below the church.