French fashion fever

Films such as Coco avant Chanel and a showcase of rare French couture have brought a resurgence of French fashion fever to Australia, writes Lexi Landsman.

THE French have always been leaders in fashion and trends. Everything about French culture is enticing — except perhaps delicacies such as les escargots. With films like Coco avant Chanel (directed by Anne Fontaine and featuring Audrey Tautou), which tells the story of Chanel’s journey from rags to riches, it appears the Australian fashion scene is yet again enamoured by French trends.

Stripes are back, the backless V-lined dresses, black-and-white Chanel-style blazers, elaborate hair-pieces — even berets are popping up. Our casual seaside attire appears to be smartening up, with winter-skinned Australians returning from European summers with sun-kissed glows, gloating about all things Parisian while holding their Louis Vuitton bags and sporting French eau de parfum. And with Facebook, it’s difficult not to be swept along with them as you follow friends’ photos (or friends of friends in this voyeuristic cyberworld) through the streets of Paris, or the French Riviera of Cote d’Azur.

Add that to a pret-a-porter fashion parade hosted by the State Library of NSW this month, at the distinctly French-inspired Sofitel Wentworth Hotel in Sydney, and it’s difficult not to be enraptured by French-influenced glamour. The parade showcased the Darnell Collection I’Ecole Superieure des Arts et techniques de la Mode (ESMOD Australia), a collection of French couture compiled from 27 countries and 287 donors. The collection is now in the care of Charlotte Smith, who was bequeathed with the 3500 items traversing two centuries. The dresses are made of silk, wool, printed cotton, linen, velvet and lace by famous designers who helped revolutionise fashion. They include Lucile, Madeleine Vionnet, Chanel, Dior, Jean Muir, James Galanos and Pucci. Speaking at the parade, State Library of NSW curator Margot Riley noted that many important figures — going back to the 1920s in Australia’s high-fashion landscape — were heavily influenced by the dictates of Paris.

One of the key figures was Madame Germaine Rocher, a Jewish-Russian expat, who operated one of the first two couture houses in Sydney. Established in 1935, its interior decor replicated the extravagances of Parisian haute couture right down to the imported French pins. “Rocher was a very stylish woman … very elegant and she had the most elegant parades … You would always see in the social pages of the newspapers, ‘dressed by Rocher, hat by [Madame Henriette] Lamotte’,” Riley said.

At the dawn of the 1960s, Flair magazine reported that celebrated dressmaking establishments, such as Le Louvre and Madame Rocher, “[were] known to every woman with a trace of fashion in her veins, although only a few ever get to cross the portals of their exclusive salons … they strive to give to the Australian fashion world that touch of Paris that only haute couture can impart”.

Later this year, Dreaming of Dior: Every Dress Tells a Story (by Charlotte Smith) will be published by HarperCollins. In the meantime, the rest of us can catch a glimmer of French couture on screen, or hope (albeit in vain) to find French-inspired pieces on Australian shelves at an affordable price.

The other side of Coco Chanel

The film Coco avant Chanel about the iconic French designer Coco Chanel has drawn criticism for not depicting allegations that Chanel was a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite. The film follows her “fairytale story”. Abandoned by her father and with her mother dead, Gabrielle Chanel — her real name — was taught to sew by nuns. She went on to become one of the world’s best-loved designers.¬† According to a number of sources, after the Germans occupied France in 1940, Chanel had an affair with Nazi officer Hans Gunther von Dincklage at Paris’ Ritz hotel. In Carmen Callil’s recent book, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France, Chanel is described as “indomitably anti-Semitic”.