Hearing the story of Claire and Mireille in those years of war, I struggle to reconcile the contrast between the glamour and extravagance of the couture industry with the hardship and deprivation that the seamstresses had to endure, like the vast majority of French citizens at the time. It’s a strangely grotesque juxtaposition.
Simone tells me she has asked her grandmother to write down more of what she remembers, but of course Mireille is a very old woman now and progress is slow. So I try to curb my impatience.
By way of a distraction, while I wait for Mireille’s letters to arrive, I find myself reading a lot of books and articles about that period of history on the Internet to fill in the background to the two friends’ lives in the attic apartment. As I piece it together, I’ve continued to write down the story of Claire and Mireille, padding it out with the historical background where I can. Somehow it seems important that I do so, even if only to record it for myself so that I can go back and reread this part of my family history, taking time to digest it as each new chapter comes to light. I become so immersed that sometimes it feels strange to look up from my writing, my feet tucked beneath me as I sit curled up on the sofa in the sitting room of the little flat, and realise that Claire and Mireille aren’t just through the wall in the next room. I can almost hear their voices, picturing them sitting at their sewing: mending their own clothes, perhaps, or remaking a hat or a skirt for themselves.
As soon as I can, I go back to the Fashion Museum at the Palais Galliera and wander once again through the rooms. On my first visit here, I was dazzled by the finery, the bling and the glitz of fashion from centuries ago to the present day. But this time I look more carefully. Amongst the rooms filled with stunning exhibits that clamour for attention, there is a much more modest display. A gardener’s canvas apron; a hairdresser’s white coat; a pair of denim trousers and a shirt once worn by an unknown worker. The denim is patched and faded, but it speaks a simple truth. These clothes tell their own stories of the lives of the people who wore them, once again bringing history to life in the present day. And how ironic it is, I muse, as I stand in front of these clothes, that today distressed and torn denim is the height of fashion. It turns out that these simple, worn and aged garments have been the inspiration for modern-day designers.
From my museum visits I’ve also learned that, even in the darkest times, women managed to find a sense of pride in their appearance. Parisiennes found ways of making-do, and the styles of the war years reflect that: elegant turbans hid dirty hair or greying roots; cork wedges were glued on to shoes when high heels wore down; legs were daubed with ersatz coffee grounds, and charcoal lines drawn up the back to create the illusion of stockings. In the face of ubiquitous Nazi propaganda, the women of Paris found their own ways of sending back a message to their occupiers: dressed in their home-made fashions, they held their heads high; they were not defeated.
The luxury and excess of the modern-day fashion industry seem a world away from those war years. I’d arrived at the agency too late and too wet behind the ears to be allowed to help out in any sort of hands-on capacity at Paris Fashion Week back in September. I’d had to watch from the sidelines (or rather from behind the desk in reception) as the pace of work in the office grew more and more frenetic and then suddenly I was left alone, to man the phones that didn’t ring, as everyone was out at the week’s events, morning, noon and night. Simone had appeared at irregular intervals to fill me in on the latest collection or on who she had seen at that evening’s reception.
With a few more years’ experience than I have, Simone is a good deal more laid-back about the opportunity to sit in the audience, among the fashion editors and the celebrities, and watch as the latest couture collections, which will set the trends for a season that is still months away, are paraded down