The Paris Spy (Maggie Hope Mystery #7)(43)
Around her, she saw women in smart suits and witty hats, holding crocodile purses. They burst into peals of laughter on seeing one another, embracing and giving double air kisses, careful not to smear their waxy lipstick. With fabric shortages in effect, hats were more important than ever. Maggie admired one in particular: a narrow-brimmed boater with a tiny emerald bird perched on a branch of flowers pinned to netting, seemingly just escaped from a silver birdcage. She inhaled their perfumes: jasmine, rose, civet, and ambergris, along with the scents of smoke, face powder, and, on one woman’s breath, the distinct aroma of brandy.
And she caught snippets of conversations: “You look ravishing, darling!” “How lovely to see you again!” “We’ll talk after the show…” “I hear she went to New York.” “Well, I heard—”
There were men in attendance, too. Those in suits were buyers for department stores in Italy, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and South America, Maggie guessed, or possibly journalists, but there were also uniformed Wehrmacht officers. Nazis looking for gowns for their wives back home or their Parisian mistresses? Perhaps both? Although Maggie had known in theory what the situation was in occupied Paris, seeing the reality continued to be shocking—the French mixing with Germans at a public event without shame, even with a certain friendliness. She straightened her spine, knowing the Brits would never be caught doing any such thing. Or would they?
The atelier boasted a sweeping marble staircase, its iron balustrade and railing made of twisting vines, with leaves and even the occasional thorn. The stairs’ plush steel-gray carpeting extended into a runway, lined by delicate silvery chairs arranged in rows. Maggie found her way to her seat, which had her name written in calligraphy on a tag tied with ribbon to the spindle-leg chair’s back.
“Welcome, mademoiselle.” A pretty salesgirl, dressed in a fitted black skirt and white blouse, handed her a small notebook and pencil. “Use this to check off the items you’re interested in.”
She accepted it in her gloved hand. “Thank you.” For the purposes of her mission, Maggie—who’d been aware of fashion but never as attuned to its specifics as Paige—had studied it during her downtime in Paris, exactly as she had once studied mathematics. It was far more fascinating than she’d anticipated, with relationships to news, history, and the arts she’d never realized before. The war had affected fashion, too—because of the fabric scarcities, hemlines were now shorter in both evening and day wear. In fact, no more than thirteen feet of cloth was permitted to be used for a coat and only a little over a yard for a blouse; no belt could be more than one and a half inches wide.
Is fashion in France an act of collaboration or an act of defiance? Maggie wondered. As with the ballet, the last thing the French wanted was for fashion to be moved to Berlin, to be run under German rules and regulations. And French women had vowed to remain chic and elegant, considering it a matter of national pride to maintain their looks, to show the Nazis that they couldn’t take away their beauty, confidence, and self-possession.
Maggie overheard the woman next to her, a patrician blonde, whisper to her neighbor, “I saw Reichsmarshal Goering on the Rue de la Paix this morning. He was coming out of his car with his baton. I hear it’s made of ivory and all the insignia are real diamonds and rubies!”
Hearing Goering’s name again, Maggie caught her breath.
The neighbor, the mirror image of the first, but brunette, replied, “I heard he bought his wife an eight-million-franc necklace.”
“Well, I was told he wants his wife to wear French couture, rather than German styles, in spite of all the propaganda about ‘degenerate Paris.’ My friend at Poiret told me he picks out the most lavish silk pajamas and lace gowns there.”
“I have a friend at Laroche who says the same—but swears they had them made in such a large size that it’s possible Goering’s keeping them for himself!”
As the women put their hats together and giggled, the clock ticked, and the crowd grew increasingly restless, even as flutes of Champagne were passed from silver trays. Finally, a woman with a glossy platinum-blond chignon and a triple strand of pearls as the only ornament to her severe black frock walked down the stairs, pausing on the next to last step. Instantly, the room hushed.
The woman smiled to her audience, then spoke in Italian-inflected French. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the House of Ricci.”
All applauded as the woman beamed, her arms opening. “I am Madame Ricci and today we’re presenting designs that we hope you will love as much as we do. They’ll show that, despite the times, French beauty and Parisian haute couture still thrive.”
Madame Ricci raised one plump arm toward the top of the staircase, and someone put a needle to a phonograph record. A Lucienne Boyer song began to play, and the first model descended. An elegant, long-legged young woman with an unseeing gaze, she glided down, her pelvis thrust forward and her chin high. She was wearing a flame-colored wool suit trimmed in black fur and a tiny black top hat, and held a large white card with the number 1. The audience watched intently as she promenaded down the aisle, then twirled, and posed. There were clicks and explosions of light as flashbulbs popped.
One by one, more young women holding numbered cards made their way down the staircase in dresses and suits of rich browns, blacks, and crimsons, all trimmed in furs—Persian lamb, mink, sable. The upcoming fall season’s silhouette was elongated and narrow, and, as a nod to utility, topped by last year’s hats. As more models walked down the stairs, there were oohs and aahs of appreciation, as well as furious scribbling in the little notebooks.