Lace (18 page)

As always, the final item in the collection was a white bridal gown with a flutter of little lace frills frothing from the shoulder to form an eight-foot-long train. “Excellent,”
approved Aunt Hortense, “a bride should always choose something with back interest for everyone to look at when she’s kneeling at the altar. A wedding service is so boringly
predictable. Now for my fittings.”

They moved to a dressing room where the silent fitter—silent because her mouth was full of pins—made minute alterations on an apricot silk dress with billowing gypsy violinist
sleeves and a wasp waist. “Three fittings for every garment,” grumbled Aunt Hortense, “but it means a perfect fit, which is one of the main attractions of a couture
garment.” She addressed herself to the fitter. “It needs a little more room at the waist, don’t you think? . . . You want to know why I chose this dress, Judy? Because it’s
fairly original but not outrageous. Only the very rich, the very beautiful or the truly creative can carry off really original clothes. I am not one of them. But I know what effect I wish to give,
whereas most women want to look distinctive and indistinguishable, both at the same time, which is impossible.”

“That V neck doesn’t plunge as low as the one in the show,” Maxine criticised.

“No, Monsieur Dior kindly agreed to a high neck. Before six-thirty and after forty-five one should never show an inch of skin.”

“It’s very chic,” offered Judy, and was immediately contradicted.

“Very
elegant
, not very chic. Schiaparelli invented the word ‘chic’ to mean eccentric and original. One can’t be chic now and again. One either is or one
isn’t. I am not chic.”

But Aunt Hortense
was
a perfectionist. Energetic and tough enough to know what she wanted—and get it—she never spared anyone’s feelings in order to achieve perfection.
Always polite, she would return a dress, coat or hat to the workroom again and again until she considered it satisfactory. Nothing was ever better than satisfactory. Aunt Hortense did not have many
clothes, but they were all made of the finest chiffon, the softest silk, the most subtle tweeds and supple furs. Apart from her Dior clothes, her outfits were different variations of one ensemble
that she considered suitable for her age and style of life; this was a suit, a collarless jacket worn with an A-line or pleated skirt made from silk or wool, with a chiffon blouse in the same
colour, and each outfit always had two hats, a small head-hugging one and a big-brimmed felt or straw. These simple outfits blazed with exquisite jewels. Although Aunt Hortense liked discretion in
clothes she did not care for it in jewelry; she liked hunks of gold, heavy chains of platinum, chunks of emerald quartz spiked with diamonds, and long ropes of knobbly baroque pearls.

After the Dior show, Aunt Hortense took the girls for a cup of tea in the Plaza Athénée. The wide corridor was lined with clusters of little velvet arm chairs and smelled of
expensive scent, rich cigars and well-laundered Americans.

“What did you think of the show?” asked Aunt Hortense as the pastry trolley was wheeled up.

“It was splendid,” Judy said, leaning back. She enjoyed being waited on more than could possibly be imagined by anyone who had never been a waitress. “Very beautiful and very
splendid, but I think that clothes should be practical, and those weren’t. Even if I could afford them, I couldn’t afford to look after them, so I shouldn’t buy them however rich
I was.” She put her fork into a meringue. “Maxine, you needn’t look as if I’m insulting the Virgin Mary. How do you handwash a dress with five yards of fabric in the skirt?
How would you dry-clean that white crepe ball gown? And how do you keep a cream suede coat clean?”

“Your American designers can’t produce anything nearly so good as our Paris collections,” said Maxine indignantly. “That’s why they all come over
here
to
buy.”

“Look, Maxine, I said the show was divine, but I also thought that for most women who haven’t a lady’s maid and endless credit at the cleaners, it was impractical. Your Aunt
Hortense asked me what I thought and I’m telling her. I hope I’m going to be much too busy to spend half my life looking after my clothes.”

Aunt Hortense, sitting bolt upright on her little velvet chair, like a Saint Cyr cadet, said, “Interesting and practical criticism. I would tell Monsieur Dior except, of course, he
wouldn’t take the slightest notice. There are only about eighteen thousand women in the world who are rich enough to afford couture clothes from Paris and they all seem to be queueing at his
door, so he doesn’t have to bother about the practical aspects of his collection. But Judy is quite right to say exactly what she thinks; I always do. When I was your age I was a timid little
mouse—well, not little, but terrified of opening my mouth. Children were seen and not heard, you know, before the First World War.”

“The reason I always say what I think,” said Judy, “is that I don’t know how to talk any other way. I know Europeans think I’m ill-mannered, but I don’t
understand why.”

“You’re tactless and you shout,” said Maxine, still annoyed by Judy’s criticism of Dior.

“I shout sometimes when I get excited because I had to when I was little or none of the bigger kids would have paid any attention to me.”

“Don’t change,” advised Aunt Hortense. “You think for yourself, you don’t repeat other people’s opinions. You are direct and expect other people to be.
Perhaps your manner seems a little brusque to people who don’t know you, perhaps it may even irritate or alarm them, but you will soon pick up the social graces now that you are no longer a
child. Personally, I find you refreshingly straightforward, somewhat similar to myself, in fact. This charming naivete, this ruthless innocence I find fresh and appealing.”

She took a thoughtful sip of her tea. “Losing your innocence has very little to do with virginity, you know. Loss of innocence comes when you have to deal with the real world by yourself,
when you learn that the first rule of life is kill or be killed. So different from one’s nursery stories.”

She picked out another crystalized violet. “I realised this quite quickly during the war. It was only then, at the age of forty-two, that I learned what real life was like. The war was
dreadful, but sometimes it was also exciting. I still miss the action. As Maxine knows, I prefer action to discussion. You shouldn’t just sit and twiddle your thumbs and wait for something to
happen in your life.”

“No,” said Judy eagerly. “You have to make it happen!”

“Quite so. Oh, what fun we used to have in the middle of such horror and pain! Maurice, our chauffeur, was my
chef
in the Resistance and we worked on the railways.” In answer
to Judy’s unspoken query, she snapped her middle finger against her thumb. “Blowing them up. Then we became part of an escape route—not so much fun, but even more
dangerous.” Daintily, Aunt Hortense stirred her porcelain cup with a silver spoon.

“But where did you learn all that?”

“Oh, I was never taught anything useful. But you pick things up very fast when you have to.”

“What do you wish you’d been taught?”

“I wish I’d been taught to expect change as a matter of course in everything including oneself. You will find that you’re one person when you’re seventeen, but by the
time you’re twenty-five you’ve developed into quite a different person with different aims, interests, attitudes, friends.” She paused, then shrugged her shoulders. “Then
ten years later you find you’ve changed again—and so it goes on. Finally, when you get to my age, people say you get set in your ways, but what they really mean is that you like having
your own way. It is the beginning of the delightful selfishness of old age.”

She paused and lifted the silver teapot. “You two girls seem so much more adulterous than I was at your age. No? That’s not the right word? Well, my English is rusting. Judy will be
good practice for me.” Judy nodded, and Aunt Hortense continued. “To me you both seem very grown-up. At sixteen I thought I knew nothing and it caused me great anxiety; at eighteen I
thought I knew everything, then at thirty, I realised that I knew nothing—and possibly never would, which depressed me until I noticed that no one else knew anything either. Adultery implies
a certain objectivity, restraint and wisdom, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think you mean adultery. That’s other people’s husbands committing intimacy.”

“Thank you, dear child, I meant adult behaviour. My point was that you don’t necessarily grow more adult as you grow older.”

At first Judy thought Aunt Hortense a snob, but she quickly realised that Hortense was merely French and rich and old, that she was experienced and worth listening to and didn’t give a
damn for anyone’s opinion. Judy was fascinated by her. She was so different from her mom, Judy thought with disloyalty. The thought made her feel guilty. She was still frightened by the
spectre of Rossville, terrified of letting her life slip away like her mother without anyone noticing—not even herself. Unlike her mother, Judy didn’t intend to spend her life being
frightened of doing anything.

Her mother was unable to forget her memories of the thirties, when for two bad years her husband had been out of work. She had managed to pass this fear of being penniless on to Judy, who
consequently thought about financial security the way other girls did about Prince Charming. Judy couldn’t help noticing that her father had not turned out to be Prince Charming. Marriage was
no guarantee of money and security, she knew that. She’d have to work long and hard before she could pull a large bill out of her alligator purse and hand it to a waiter without looking at
the check as Aunt Hortense had just done.

Having cross-questioned Judy about her future plans, Aunt Hortense said thoughtfully, “If you have nobody to look after you, please remember that I have nobody to look after. I am not as
fierce as I look, and I remember very well what it was like to be seventeen, so telephone me if you need help. In fact, please telephone me anyway.”

Maurice drove the two girls back to Neuilly. Judy looked at his broad shoulders below the black peaked cap. “Do you think intimacy was ever committed?” she whispered.

“With Aunt Hortense, who knows?” Maxine whispered back.

As the old Mercedes sped through the centre of Paris, Judy felt as if she were in heaven. Like many an American before her, she was already in love with Paris.

T
HE DUSTY FOYER
of the Hôtel de Londres had an air of minding its own business. Faded wallpaper peeled from the top
of the walls and the baseboards were well kicked.

“Where is the elevator?” Maxine asked the receptionist.

“At the Ritz.” He jerked a thumb toward the staircase at the back of the hall. The girls walked past an exhausted palm tree that sagged in a copper pot, then climbed the creaking
stairs to the fifth floor where at the end of a dim passage they found Guy’s workroom. Small and low-ceilinged, far cleaner than the rest of the hotel, it overlooked a small courtyard.
Silhouetted in front of the window, a woman crouched over a whirring sewing machine; shirt-sleeves rolled up, a man in a white apron was cutting into a length of mauve wool on a table that occupied
most of the room. Bolts of fabric were stacked in a rack to the left of the door and on the right were two dressrails on wheels from which hung garments shrouded in white tissue paper.

“So now I show you,” said Guy, after introducing the girls to his cutter and seamstress, who were just about to leave at the end of their day. One by one, Guy took the clothes off
the rail and carefully slid off the tissue. His designs were mainly suits or separates; sensuous silk jackets and skirts in misty rose and lavender were matched to pants in darker jersey;
jewel-coloured velvet suits in garnet, topaz and sapphire could be worn with matching wool coats. The designs were simple, without boning or padding.

“These clothes should be worn with a lot of bold, gilt jewelry,” Guy explained, as the girls tried on the clothes and then admired themselves in the big mirror. “I’m only
doing one raincoat but in three different lengths; it’s reversible. It can be worn over anything in the collection with or without a belt.” He produced a cinnamon gabardine raincoat
with a purple wool lining. “I would also like to do it in pewter gray lined with pale pink, but I can’t afford to produce my designs in too many colours in my first
collection.”

“I love nearly everything,” Judy said enthusiastically after she and Maxine in their petticoats—clothes-mad like all girls of their age—had spent half an hour trying on
the garments. “They’re so easy to move in—easy to live in, as well, I should think. They feel as if you’re wearing no clothes at all. You’re not conscious of
them.”

“What I’m trying to do is to produce clothes that make a woman look smart without making her feel uncomfortable. Did you notice that all my skirt bands are elasticized? And I insist
that my model visit the bathroom in every single garment to make sure it’s totally practical.”

Guy’s comfortable clothes were very different from the exquisite but constricting ensembles that Judy had seen at Dior. Although Guy’s look was casual, it was nevertheless elegant
because of the clever cut and the beautiful fabrics he used.

He pulled a bolt of mauve silk from the rack, draped a length over Judy’s bare shoulders and started to pin it. “This isn’t the way most designers work,” he mumbled
through a mouthful of pins. “Only Madame Gres cuts straight from the fabric and pins onto a live model.”

“Do your cutter and seamstress fit people?” asked Judy.

“Never! The fit is the most important part of a garment and I do it. I don’t much like doing it, but I have nobody else who can. Good fitters are born, not made, and in Paris we have
the best fitters in the world. Keep still or I’ll jab you. I can also make patterns and samples, cut, sew, fit and supervise a small workshop, but I’m primarily a designer and when
I’m big enough I’ll never do anything else, thank you.”

“What about selling?” asked Judy. “Who sells your stuff?”