PARIS, France — Had been he alive immediately Jean Patou wouldn’t simply be an ideal couturier, he would in all probability be a tv character as nicely. Easy, urbane, all the time immaculately turned out, Patou was a peacock – and one with distinctive style. However style alone was not ample to make him, alongside Coco Chanel, one of the crucial influential couturiers in Paris within the Twenties. He needed to perceive what it was to be a contemporary lady too.
The brand new ladies to which he catered had been completely different to their moms. They had been conscious that the social world was altering, albeit slowly, and in attitudes moderately than actualities. Whereas their moms continued to patronise the grand previous Paris homes, their daughters had been on the lookout for one thing completely different, one thing particular person.
The dramatic adjustments within the arts — the affect of the Ballets Russes, the artworks of Derain and Dali — and the thrilling developments in philosophy from Cocteau and Gide had every come to their consideration. Their lifestyle had additionally modified: inside nightclubs they might dance shockingly fashionable dances akin to The Black Backside or the Charleston with hedonistic abandon, at a time when Josephine Baker — a black entertainer whose fame and race scandalised old-society — and the Dolly Sisters had been the most popular issues on the town.
Into this world Patou and Chanel fitted completely. They realised that ‘Le Sport’ was the most important cultural advance of all and if garments had been to be a part of it they needed to be modernised — and simplified. Each had been shrewd sufficient to know that they needed to annexe this new market with out dropping previous prospects. And so they each wished to be the primary to take action.
Chanel and Patou had been famed for the animosity they felt for one another. They had been deep rivals for the patronage of the brand new post-World Warfare I buyer: a person who had barely existed within the early years of pre-war Paris. Their jealousy was an obsession and a trigger for countless gossip in gatherings the place the likes of Cecil Beaton disported themselves, tearing reputations to shreds over a cocktail, as Cole Porter as soon as put it.
Every had eyes firmly centered on the American market and, particularly rich ex-patriots such because the Scott-Fitzgeralds and the Hemingways, the carefree younger Individuals drawn to Paris and the South of France for his or her ‘strangers in a overseas land’ freedoms. Specifically the supply of cocaine and drink denied to them within the US by strict prohibition legal guidelines.
Born in Paris in 1880, Jean Patou entered the world of vogue from a comfortably well-off bourgeois household, respectably engaged in commerce, making amongst different issues, high-level high quality chamois leather-based for the style world. Though as pure purveyors, the household had little direct contacts with designers, as in these days few tradesmen did.
Even earlier than the struggle, Patou had made his first transfer into the style world along with his personal small gown institution known as Parry. It was so profitable {that a} New York retailer purchased every thing within the showroom: a whole assortment. Because of this, Patou discovered the braveness to tackle the large names of Paris.
He was 27 when he was drafted into the military following the breakout of World Warfare I. He spent his time at struggle within the artillery and ultimately joined the Military of the Orient in Thessaloniki as a captain within the Zouaves the place he turned so drawn to the standard Greek peasant gown, with its complicated beading and embroidery that he introduced some house on the finish of the struggle.
He misplaced no time catching up on misplaced time. Patou introduced his first assortment beneath his personal title in 1919. It was a right away success and he in a short time had sufficient non-public shoppers to place him in the identical league as Chanel and Molyneux, who had been joint leaders within the recognition stakes at the moment. However American consumers — the large firms that paid a substantial ‘warning’ to the couture homes, which was solely redeemable towards their purchases — had been tempered of their enthusiasm. They recognised that Patou’s garments had been talking a brand new, fashionable language however they appeared so French. How would they be understood by American ladies?
Patou understood. Earlier than Chanel or some other couturier in Paris, he had a second of inspiration that was to make him well-known and exceedingly wealthy. Furthermore, it modified the face, form and tone of worldwide vogue. Patou determined that to overcome the loyalty of American ladies he wanted to point out his garments on ladies with whom they might establish. The standard runway fashions in Paris had, he realised, an old style, and definitely pre-war, homeliness which most trendy garments emphasised by highlighting their bosoms and hips. American fashions had been taller and skinnier. Some appeared to haven’t any hips in any respect; others with their cropped hair, appeared like younger boys. However essentially the most evident distinction to Patou’s eyes was their slim ankles and athletic legs. They even walked in another way to European fashions. With an excessive amount of publicity, Patou set off on the cruise liner Normandie to seek out his fashions at supply, in New York. His progress watched cautiously by different couturiers, particularly Chanel.
Patou knew that for him to make actual cash he wanted two forms of sale. One was the standard particular person sale to non-public prospects who had been primarily, however not all, European and, of these, predominantly French. However he wanted the American market to point out curiosity too — and with it the American magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, as a result of he knew the publicity they introduced was a designer’s lifeblood.
With the assistance of Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Edna Woolman Chase, he marketed for a casting in New York. The advert acknowledged: “Have to be sensible, slender, with well-shaped ft and ankles and a refined method.” Over 500 hopefuls arrived on the Ritz ballroom for the audition. The jury was actress and decorator Elsie de Wolfe, who was the nominal writer of the 1913 ebook ‘The Home in Good Style’; the photographer Edward Steichen; Woolman Chase; her proprietor Conde Nast and Patou.
Patou had come to America considering he required solely three fashions however, when he noticed the standard of the women, he determined to double the quantity and it was six fashions photographed on the decks of the Savoie liner earlier than it set off to convey them to Paris.
The French capital was intrigued by this growth however not satisfied of its price — all other than Chanel, that’s. She was livid. Not solely as a result of Patou had upstaged her within the important US market however, primarily, as a result of she needed to admit (to herself, at the very least) that he had judged the trendy temper of vogue completely.
The French press accused him of disloyalty to his nation for utilizing American fashions and, to disarm their criticism, he got here up with a slogan: ‘The French lady is Venus; the American Diana’. It reduce little ice, however in reality, Patou had grow to be too highly effective to be wounded by the press.
In 1925 he opened a department in Biarritz to promote his extra sporty strains however it was a present in January 1930 that earned him the title of the Nice Innovator. When each different couturier was nonetheless designing quick skirts, he despatched out a group with longer skirts. It had an influence akin to that of Dior’s New Look over 20 years later. For a second event, even Chanel needed to comply with. Her partisan supporters have since stated that she dropped the hem first however Woolman Chase maintained that though Chanel’s response was fast, “she hit the deck seconds behind the Nice Innovator.”
Patou and Chanel spent the remainder of their time (earlier than Patou’s early dying) being very publicly, furiously jealous of one another. They in contrast the house given to their garments in Vogue. Woolman Chase was accused of favouritism; threats of a boycott of her journal was hinted at. And, because it turned out, the extra aggressive get together was Patou.
Jean Patou the person was an archetypal boulevardier, and a playboy. He was barely seen in any casual gown besides when crusing in Biarritz and as soon as stated in an interview that, ‘to be really soigné, a person ought to have at the very least 80 fits.’ He was a ebook collector and, in a throwback to his father’s roots, had a wonderfully leather-bound library. His events rivalled these of Paul Poiret for conspicuous consumption. Janet Flanner, a extremely revered American journalist in Paris, who filed tales for the New Yorker, described considered one of Jean Patou’s events in 1930. His backyard, which had been roofed over, had each floor lined in silver foil, together with the bushes. Three small lion cubs had been in attendance for the ‘Ah’ issue. Actually, Flanner was extra amused than impressed.
He cherished powerboats, quick automobiles, the very high eating places in New York, Paris and Biarritz, and loved displaying the most recent magnificence or heiress on his arm. As he advised an interviewer (with or with out his tongue in his cheek is unknown): ‘You see, I’ve a great deal of confidence!’ Most of his mates had been male and a few years older, prompting fashionable commentators to invest on his true sexuality however that’s all it stays.
Patou died all of a sudden of an embolism on 8 March 1936. He was aged 55 and after his dying it was revealed that his agency, as soon as so profitable, had been in liquidation since July of the earlier 12 months, with a deficit of over 12 million francs. It was nearly definitely his untimely dying that saved him from a humiliating finish like that of Poiret, whose final years had been spent in abject poverty, alone, forgotten and unsung.
It has been urged that one of many causes Chanel despised Patou was that, to her, he was a fraud. She was a technician who knew every thing about making a garment. He knew nothing concerning the practicalities, was not hands-on and directed moderately than created clothes, in the way in which that many high designers work immediately.
In actual fact, Patou’s precise garments seen at this distance are not any higher or worse made than these of his contemporaries however, in contrast to them, he has different claims, akin to utilizing jersey earlier than anybody, together with Chanel, and creating sportswear as a professional a part of an elegant lady’s wardrobe. As early as 1921, he despatched the well-known tennis participant Suzanne Lenglen onto the centre court docket at Wimbledon in a brief pleated skirt — a sensation, particularly when worn along with his easy knitted pullovers and cardigans, along with his monogram prominently positioned.
However out of many achievements he’ll largely be remembered for his new method to fashions, taking the American market severely, the employment of an American publicist and having the chutzpah to decide on Elsa Maxwell, one of many best party-givers and reputation-makers within the between-war interval in Paris to take care of his public relations. It was Maxwell who got here up with the slogan ‘the most costly fragrance on the planet’ for Pleasure. Created in 1930 and containing over 10,000 jasmine flowers per ounce it’s nonetheless out there immediately.
Many designers have labored on the home since World Warfare Two, together with Marc Bohan, Michel Goma, Angela Tarlazzi, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld. However after Christian Lacroix left in 1987 to pursue his personal model the couture arm closed.
