The Designer(102)

‘Let me try.’ She took over the job, and he collapsed back in his chair, panting.

‘Too many hopes are being pinned on me, ma petite. How can I possibly live up to their expectations?’

‘You’ll exceed them,’ she assured him. ‘Believe in yourself.’

He clasped his forehead. ‘If I’d known what this would turn into, I would never have begun it.’

‘The girls say you’ve become a tyrant,’ she said. The new bulb clicked into life, and light flooded his desk. ‘They say you’re driving them to despair.’

Not deigning to answer, he grabbed a sheaf of drawings and began shuffling through them. ‘Where is “Bourbon”? Someone has been confusing all my designs!’

She helped him locate the drawings he was looking for and then followed him into the next room. In here stood a patient group of tailor’s dummies, armless wooden figures known as Stockman mannequins, upon which the garments were tacked before they were finally sewn up. Dior shooed one of the premières away and examined the dress with a critical eye. It was in the toile stage, made of a white linen for testing the pattern. ‘This is “Bourbon”, but it’s all wrong,’ he groaned. ‘It should be much fuller in the hips. You’ve ruined it!’

‘They cut it exactly as you designed it, Monsieur Dior.’

‘Don’t contradict me! It’s an abomination. I want volume.’

‘But Monsieur Dior,’ the seamstress ventured timidly, ‘the mannequin’s proportions will not allow—’

‘Allow? Allow?’ Dior’s normally pink complexion had grown dangerously red. ‘Who tells me what I am allowed to do?’

‘Nobody, Monsieur,’ the girl whispered.

‘Get it off,’ Dior commanded in a terrible voice.

‘Y-yes, Monsieur.’

With shaking hands, the première unpinned the toile, revealing the naked wooden torso of the dummy. Dior glared at it for a moment. ‘Here is the error. The proportions are completely wrong.’ The Stockmans were all adjustable. Dior set to work, wrestling with the system of screws and levers that altered the vital statistics. But this particular dummy was old and stiff, and was not responding to the master’s ministrations. Dior’s colour grew even darker. He reached into the tool box and pulled out a large wooden mallet. All work ceased and a shocked silence fell over the crowded room as Dior pounded the dummy furiously, knocking the plates in here, knocking them out there. Unnoticed, Copper photographed the extraordinary performance.

Finally, panting, Dior threw the hammer down and studied the dummy with a critical eye. ‘There,’ he said triumphantly. ‘That is the perfect woman.’ He turned to the première, who was still clutching the toile to her breast, wide-eyed. ‘Now you may proceed.’

He bustled off, leaving everyone staring at the altered Stockman, with its wasp-waist, expansive hips and deep bust.

‘Mon Dieu,’ someone muttered. ‘He’s gone mad.’

‘No woman ever looked like that.’

‘We’re going to have to put the girls back in corsets.’

‘That won’t be enough,’ someone else pointed out. ‘They’ll need padding top and bottom as well.’

Copper watched these experts at their trade, the finest in Paris, as they struggled to solve the conundrum their master had posed them. Dior had taken a hammer and literally knocked womanhood into the hourglass shape that pleased him.

Copper followed Dior back to his cubbyhole. ‘How many outfits are you going to present?’ she asked him.

‘A hundred.’

She was appalled. No wonder there was such a tumult in Maison Dior. ‘That’s a huge amount for a first collection,’ she ventured. Jacques Fath had launched his collection the year before with twenty garments.

‘A hundred,’ he repeated firmly. ‘I cannot achieve my vision with less. I have to make an impact.’ She was alarmed to see that he looked slightly wild. ‘With a dozen dresses, two dozen dresses, nobody will get the point. They’ll say, “It’s just Christian and his manias.” But with a hundred outfits, people’s eyes will open wide. Nobody will be able to ignore a hundred outfits.’

‘But the expense—’

‘Boussac will have to give me more money,’ he said flatly. ‘And I will need the fabrics, the accessories, the shoes.’

Her heart sank. ‘But – how will you get buyers for so many models?’

He stared at her as though she were mad. ‘They’ll be queuing all the way down avenue Montaigne. They’ll be on their knees, begging for my outfits.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘This will be the age of Dior, ma petite.’

Ten minutes ago, he had been wondering how he could possibly live up to everyone’s expectations, and regretting that he had ever begun this. Now he was declaring the age of Dior. He seemed to veer from crippling self-doubt to megalomania, and back again.



Copper had now to prepare for the imminent arrival of Carmel Snow. The editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, and the woman who had published many of her stories over the past two years, was coming to France for her first tour since the start of the war in 1939. In fashion terms, it was as important as any state visit. Her report on the new collections of 1947 would be eagerly read from coast to coast. Her approval or disapproval could make or break a designer.