a heavy embellishment of silver beadwork on the sleeves. I wonder whether Claire ever saw a dress like this and whether it could have been the inspiration for the midnight blue gown she created from offcuts. It’s the off season and the museum is almost deserted, so I am startled out of my reverie by the sound of footsteps on the mosaic-tiled floor behind me. A silver-haired woman in a tailored black jacket comes to stand beside me in front of the exhibit.
‘It is beautiful, is it not?’ she says.
I nod. ‘The whole thing is stunning,’ I say, sweeping a hand at the rest of the exhibition.
‘Do you have a particular interest in Lanvin?’ she asks.
I tell her that my grandmother worked in another couture house in the war years and so I am drawn to designs from that era. But this dress, especially, reminds me of what I’ve heard about her.
She smiles. ‘I’m glad. Fashion lives on to tell the story of those who created it and wore it. It is one of the reasons I am drawn to it too. Imagine how pleased Jeanne Lanvin would be to know that seventy years after her death we still remember her. Her designs live on, inspiring today’s designers. That is a sort of immortality, I think.’
We both gaze at the dress in silence for a few more moments and then she says, ‘Well, I must be getting on. Good day, mademoiselle.’
Her footsteps fade and I am alone in the gallery once more. I stoop to read one of the information sheets displayed alongside the dresses and my eye is drawn to a simple black and white image. It’s the Lanvin logo, a line drawing of two figures. A mother and child hold hands, as if they are about to begin to dance or to play a game. They are dressed in flowing robes and wear crown-like headdresses.
The image is distinctive and, I realise, curiously familiar. It must be my imagination, but the scent of flowers seems to fill the air around me. And then I remember where I’ve seen this mother-and-child image before. It was on the black flagon of perfume that sat on my mother’s dressing table.
I read on, and learn that Jeanne Lanvin created the logo to represent her close relationship with her only child, a daughter named Marguerite. And it was Marguerite who chose the name for the famous floral perfume with woody undertones that her mother created: Arpège. She named it for the arpeggio of scents – each note following the next – that brings harmony to the perfume.
The room around me seems filled, suddenly, with the sound of a piano playing and I am transported back to my childhood.
It must be the memory of the scent and of my mother’s fingers moving gracefully over the keys of her piano that makes me remember that other photograph that I found in the box of my mother’s things, the one with the light shining on her face as she gazed into mine, like a Madonna and child.
Standing there alone, in the exhibition hall surrounded by Jeanne Lanvin’s creations, I experience a moment of complete happiness, a memory of what it feels like to be filled with joy that bubbles up from somewhere deep within me. As it fades, it leaves in its wake the knowledge that I don’t feel so alone after all. It’s as if the logo depicts not just Jeanne and Marguerite but all mothers and children: my own mother and me, holding hands, full of love, preparing to dance together through our lives.
The woman’s words echo in my mind: ‘That is a sort of immortality, I think.’ And it dawns on me that perhaps there are very many different ways to keep someone alive in your heart.
1942
Since the bombing of the Renault factory in Billancourt, the war had made its presence much more keenly felt in Paris. The city streets echoed with the sounds of marching troops and the rumble of military vehicles, as the rumours continued daily of Jewish citizens being rounded up in increasing numbers and held in segregated camps at Drancy and Compiègne.
One evening, Mireille arrived back in the Rue Cardinale to find the bicycle that she’d borrowed from her neighbour on the night of the bombing raid propped against her door. There was a note tied to the handlebars, and a sob caught in her throat as she read it.
For the mademoiselle with the dark eyes. I have to leave,