Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

as
cartes couture,
issued to buyers, proved otherwise. The Germans took only 200 per year out of a total which dwindled from 20,000 in 1941 to 13,000 in 1944.
    At the Liberation, Lelong called for a
comité interprofessionnel d’épu-ration
for the couture industry. The committee looked into fifty-five cases of collaboration, most of which had to do with textile handling rather than the running of the great couture houses. It was a remarkably mild
épuration,
for one simple reason. Rich women all over the world, particularly in the Americas, were willing to pay a fortune for fine clothes; and France was desperately short of foreign currency.
    French
haute couture,
however, was no longer in the commanding position it had enjoyed before the war, when fashion was dictated from Paris. American designers in particular had found their own style and expanded their markets in the four years they had been cut off from France, and they had been encouraged by the belief that Paris
haute couture
was dead. After the Liberation, something had to be done to show the world that the vitality of French fashion was as strong as ever and that it was ready for business.
    In the autumn of 1944 an idea arose which was to relaunch the French fashion industry in a most spectacular way. The spark, curiously enough, came from Entr’Aide Française – an umbrella organization for French war charities. Its president, Raoul Dautry, suggested that the couture industries put on a fund-raising exhibition.
    Robert Ricci, the son of the designer Nina Ricci and head of the Chambre Syndicale, recognized the idea as a wonderful opportunity. The exhibition could display the first post-war Paris collection (spring and summer, 1945) in miniature, modelled on dolls. French dressmakers had always used exquisitely dressed dolls to show the courts of Europethe latest styles from Paris; but the dolls for this very special collection must be entirely new and unexpected. The design for the new dolls was entrusted to Éliane Bonabel, barely twenty but already known for her illustrations in Céline’s
Voyage au bout de la nuit
. They were made entirely of wire, looking more like modern sculptures than toys, and the Catalan sculptor Joan Rebull was commissioned to make plaster heads for the figures, which he insisted should remain free of make-up.
    Christian Bérard was appointed artistic director of the exhibition and he gathered together a remarkable group of artists to paint backdrops for the models. Among the painters, sculptors and set-designers involved were Bérard’s lover Boris Kochno, Jean Cocteau, Grau-Sala, Georges Geffroy, the young André Beaurepaire, and Jean Saint-Martin, who specialized in wire sculptures and had made the dolls from Éliane Bonabel’s design. All gave their services free.
    The image that was to unify the whole exhibition came from Ricci: ‘I finally had the idea of a little theatre in which each of the artists would construct a set and we would put on the stage dolls dressed by the couturiers.’
    Each couture house had to produce between one and five models. Christian Dior is thought to have been responsible for two of the miniature dresses presented by Lucien Lelong, for whom he worked as designer. With their nipped-in waists and full skirts, they stand apart from much of post-war fashion, which had not yet shaken off the war years.
    The couture houses set to work with a will. Throughout that winter, in freezing studios, seamstresses, shoemakers, milliners and glovers warmed their fingers every few minutes over candle flames and plied their craft in miniature, and such was the rivalry between the couture houses that no trouble was too great. Patou had one fabric specially woven so that it would fold properly on the model. The striped fabric on a Carven dress called ‘
Sucre d’orge
’ was cut up and resewn to make the stripes sufficiently small.
    The exhibition opened on 27 March 1945 at the Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre, and was accorded such importance that the Garde Républicaine,
en grande tenue,
formed a guard of honour on the opening night. Over 100,000 people came to see the exhibition over the following weeks. Most of them had had no new clothes since 1939 and
haute
couture
was way beyond their means. Yet the numb, grey years of the Occupation had made them thirsty for colour and luxury, and the effect of these beautifully dressed wire dolls in their fantastic settings was magical. Some of the sets were