If you’re a history buff, looking for creative inspiration during hard times, or happen to be bored in Paris, there is an exhibit going on now at the Mémorial du Marechal Leclerc de Hauteclocque et de la Libération de Paris – Musée Jean Moulin, twin museums dedicated to the French Resistance and Liberation of Paris. The exhibit shows a vast collection of fashions and accessories from the era, and runs through Nov. 15, 2009. You can see first hand examples of how Parisians were using whatever materials they had available in order to maintain there forward-thinking edge in fashion.
I personally think this exhibit represents a duality in Paris, at a time when haute couture could not be made due to market and supply shortages, and where Paris was itself isolated from the global audience. Here you can see how everyday-people in Occupied Paris incorporated radical and creative pieces into their daily wardrobes, demonstrating the early ingredients of a culture that would take France beyond the couturiers of the French Court of Louis XIV, and into the modern spotlight of high-fashion after the war.
Photo By E.Emo and S.Piera/Galliera/Roger-Viollet
In 1946, Christian Dior (1905-1957) came on the scene, opening his own couture house. He was contacted by the French Minister of Fashion (what a title!), a man named Lucien Lelong, and asked to partner with French textile tycoon, “The Cotton King” Marcel Boussac, in order to reinvigorate the fashion and textile industries of France on a global scale. Jacques c, a young civil servant, was hired to serve as business administrator. Dior launched his first collection in 1947 in cooperation with Boussac. The collection embraced the “New Look”, which recalled the formerly popular S-shaped silhouette without the underlying cage. Dior abandoned the masculine look, and emphasized luxury and opulence. The look was indeed new after years of the plain, shapeless ration dresses of WW2, and came with huge amounts of layered textiles and embroideries. Dior and Boussac used their marketing skills to promote the extensive use of fabrics (promoting the textile industry) and opulent details and construction (promoting the fashion industry) by playing to the optimism that followed years of suffering.
There was a backlash to the New Look in the States in 1946-7, when people thought it inappropriate to display such opulence after such great suffering, and for women to bind themselves again after working in the place of men and revolutionizing their fashion in accordance. They weren’t the only ones speaking out against the New Look. Coco Chanel re-emerged and gave many interviews against Dior, saying that his design was an easy dress to impose on women, but that they needed to be able to be comfortable in their daily lives and be able to move independent of assistance. She remarked, “A woman should do her shopping without being teased by the housewife. Whomever laughs is always right.” (Ironically, the North American market would become Dior’s biggest by the mid-50s.)
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