Les Parisiennes des Mamanset: A Sin of Pride

[botemp]

Lovers of Parisian style and fashion with a conscious mindset and lots of chatter in between.

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Favoured Parisian addresses:

Second Hand Shops

Outlets

Favoured London addresses:

Charity Shops, Dress Agencies, and Outlets

Favoured NYC addresses:

[[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FdQbdNEUpGqOyH2oqBQZBVsKISieRgxW_F67mgRLSrw/edit?usp=sharing Consignment shops, Vintage, an
d Restaurants]]

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Previous thread

Sorry everyone if I added to the confusion!

Anyway while I collect my thoughts (which may take till tomorrow) back to Chiomi Nnada heading up Vogue UK - what do we know?

Flo I saw online that A.Non said Chiomi nNada is one of the nicest people in fashion (call me cynical but I am amazed that such a nIce person could climb so high) which is highly refreshing (and/or at least it toppled my tower of prejudice). And she’s supposed to be more interested in the written word whereas Enninful came up through styling so is more image driven.

waves hello to Mitsouko as you can see not everybody has super-deep knowledge but that doesn’t stop us posting!

And dammit about the MH sample sale dates being sprung at such short notice
Red I’m counting on you and Micro to score some treasure so that I can shop vicariously.

Just to to be absolutely clear my prejudice was not against Chiomi Nnada, more against the supposed unfriendliness of fashion mags etc.

WRT Chiomi Nnada, she's been working as Vogue's digital person (I suppose it's a sort of digital editor in chief) in the US under AW. I think the whole direction Enninful took the mag really wasn't appreciated by Anna W, the previous Guardian article reporting on internal squabbles touched on that, the final straw seemed to be him wanting to turn it into a genderless magazine. I'm sure it wasn't just AW but also the finance boys, but they kind of hired him with exactly that in mind, but I think the moment for that has also passed and now it's no longer interesting from a business perspective to pursue it further.

Chiomi Nnada seems to be more in line with Vogue US' vision of commercial fashion reporting. But saying all that her personal style is somewhat out of step, much more casual interesting in way and has less of that Vogue just off the runway gloss. TBH I'm not sure she's that much into clothes the way most Voguettes are and if that's the case I suppose not being in awe of designers is probably a good thing in her new position. If it goes back to well curated writing I might actually start buying it but imho the Vogue US online written pieces commissions have never really wowed me and feel fairly out of touch. Not in a wealth gap way, more in the way they think average women are living their lives and the reality of it.

I'm drumming my fingers on the table waiting for my Uniqlo: C delivery. Probably today... I do hope the corduroy trousers are good -- it's suddenly too cold to wear the thin navy ones that I love for summer.

Thanks for the heads up on the CdC colab bo... I shall peep.

Talk about the Vogue Wars have reminded me that I've still not watched Succession. Anyway if Chiomi Nnada succeeds in reviving good fashion writing then that would be one hell of a legacy.

I'll be checking out the cDc collaboration so thanks for the info, and I'm looking forward to hearing what the Uniqlo cords are like. And welcome Mitsouko1919.

So Chanel and Diva. Well I only had one day in London and I spent pretty much all of it in the V&A so that probably tells you what you need to know. I went round Chanel twice (using members' privilege) with a lunch in between and loved pretty much all the 1920s and 30s stuff - it looked astonishingly modern. From 1954 onwards it did start to feel a bit death-by-tweed-suit. Now hear me out, I like The Suit, I can see that in the early 50s, it was pretty innovative and I also tip my hat to anyone who can make a comeback like that at 70. But I was left with the sense that this was her last big idea which she then spun out for the next 17 years. Feel free to shout at me if you're a bag lover as I've just dismissed all her iconic pieces but <whispers> I don't really like them.

As always, I'd have liked more about how the clothes were made and the fabrics, especially the work with textile manufacturers in the north of England. Did Chanel come to Huddersfield? Now that's a story I would love to hear.

It covers the allegations about her wartime activities. There was more evidence than I had realised but some of it contradictory, including new (I think?) material suggesting she'd worked for the French Resistance. She remains an enigma.

I didn't leave myself enough time to do Diva justice but I agree with Red's assessment. I enjoyed the first part - for me, it was worth it just for Bette Davis's dress from 'All about Eve'. The second half (upstairs) that takes you up to the present day seemed to lose focus and I felt it all got a bit scattergun. Some of the outfits from 2000 onwards didn't look very well made - cheap looking fabric and wavy hemlines, so that was enlightening.

But I had a lovely day, including lunch in their beautiful tearooms. I did try to check out the members' room but the queues there were longer than in the main cafe!

Thanks very much, flo, for your reflections. Tbh I was always puzzled by what seems a general love for the chanel suit, and it's good to see I am not the only one. She is quite an uneasy figure, too, living with a Nazi officer etc [going to see the show anyway]. In answer to Red and MM, will also try to go to MH sample sale. Shall we try to coordinate, Red? I understand you can't go, MM?

I had a very busy period so couldn't post, but upthread I think bo asked if anyone went to Raey sample sale. I did. It wasn't mind blowing. Raey is quite weird in styling their things so oversized that I suspect it serves two functions:
1.to make oneself stand out marked as a "fashionable" person. Severely oversized look is very different to usual clothing; lots of people in the queue were dressed like this and it felt like a uniform, a certain kind of signalling.
2.for an online-only brand, it probably serves the problem of fit. With oversized, fit doesn't have to be that precise.

In the end I managed to buy a pair of trousers and a jumper. I have to complain about The Box (where the sales are). They give you an hour and kick you out, which kind of means that after half an hour there is no point queueing for the changing rooms as you won't make it. Meanwhile they also stop you from trying trousers on the floor. Overall it just all becomes choosing under stress. Maybe that's one of the aims?

Sorry for the very long post! And welcome, Mitsouko! I also read the first threads when I joined :)))

Thanks for the welcome @microbius 🙂

Thanks for that @Floisme, very interesting. I'm excited to go now (and I wanted to make clear I wasn't attempting to tag along with an established group on here via joining the thread, I'll be going under my own steam 😀) Yes Chanel did have a connection to Huddersfield, in 1932 she set up British Chanel Limited and worked with Broadhead and Graves in Kirkheaton, along with manufacturers of lace in Nottingham and velvets in Manchester. I'm sure I once read memories of her family member - nephew perhaps? - who lived in Huddersfield as a result of her work there and recalled the garden of their house in West Yorkshire and the tall looming mills all around. Are you in that neck of the woods @Floisme ? I spent some of my childhood there.

I've got several connections from round there Mitsouko1919, including Huddersfield - recently went back and was dismayed at the state of the post pandemic town centre. As with so many things, I didn't appreciate the mills and what they made until they were mostly gone. Thanks for the info - the exhibition touches on the Broadhead and Graves connection but with tantalisingly little detail. I'm hoping there might be more info in the catalogue and also in Justine Picardie's biography (which I've still not read as it's such a nice looking book, I'm scared of wrecking it). I've just googled Broadhead and Graves and the first entry is a plea for more information so there's a project right there for someone!

Mitsouko, you are very welcome to come with us, it is not an established group :) I am certainly a newbie and have never met many participants on this thread.

In fact, I met 3 people on this thread. An ode to mm, who got up early and queued for margaret howell sale, where I met her for the first time (being able to jump half the queue), and where I got a fabulous coat (because entered earlier because of mm) which I love. All hail mm! And also red, thank you red! Red got my son a day at her workplace. And bo, for sharing her wisdom so generously. The end of my thanks :)

I'm a West Yorkshire girl originally though have lived away for many more years than I lived there now. I sometimes pop back and feel exactly the same - all the mills now demolished or converted into flats. The one I could see from my childhood bedroom window was one of the first to be converted in the early 1980s, I remember the elderly locals (who were old then and would be over 120 years old now) all eye rolling at this 'yuppie' from London who bought a disused mill for thruppence and thought people were actually going to want to live in the places they had worked pre-war 😀

Historically the women of my family all worked in the mills - my great grandmother and her umpteen* sisters could all lip read as a result of the noise. My Gran who is in her nineties worked at the British Wool Marketing Board until it closed. She's still got original pieces from 1945-1980 that are astounding in cut and quality.

Justine Picardie's book is fabulous. Feel the fear and read it anyway @Floisme - just open the pages a crack and peer in 😀

*haven't lost the Yorkshire phraseology 😉

I forgot to say, I did the same search as you @Floisme for Broadhead and Graves and got the same result - and no mention of Chanel! The good folk and local historians of Kirkheaton obviously don't know what they're sitting on 😀

Yes, Coco Chanel's wartime record is a confusing one. My personal take, I do think she played both sides, but her allegiance was mostly to herself. It very much had to do with how her business was owned, the majority investor being Jewish, that family still owns it today. As all Jewish owned businesses were being handed over to favoured collaborators she genuinely feared losing the business she built but she was already trying to get him out of her business before the war so there was definitely opportunism at play.

Anyhow, the Jewish owner had signed over his businesses to a non Jewish friend before fleeing (I think to the US) who carefully babysat it all so Chanel didn't get far in disowning him.

It's a tricky period for all French fashion houses at the time, they sort of didn't have the ability to refuse German business, there was a severe lack of materials and clients and the majority of their staff were women who were suddenly responsible as the main breadwinner for keeping large families afloat (not just their own, but extended family as well) as all young men had disappeared.

Post war, Chanel was viewed by the Parisians as a traitor so I think her contribution to the resistance was either marginal and potentially opportunistic when she saw the tide turning or overlooked on account of being a woman. Or option three, since Churchill personally intervened on her behalf it might have been outside the main French resistance and in something like the SEO. My money's on option one though.

But her post war reputation ties in well into the monotony of the tweed suit thereafter, it's with those that she found a market in the US and a new more conservative clientele as the hip and happening Parisians weren't particularly interested in her on account of the war and she couldn't quite afford to alienate this client base from then if she wanted the business to survive.

I must admit, the Resistance evidence did have the feel of 'Oh look, here's a note from my mum that I've only just found'. I'm no historian though and her whole life seems to be a tangle of contradiction and invention.

Mitsouko I know! Come on Kirkheaton, you've got a fashion archive - and quite possibly a goldmine - right on your doorstep. Your gran's clothes sound amazing, I'm very

Yes it's tricky, I think the SOE is still gradually releasing records and I assume it'll be the same elsewhere so other things might show up to give more insight.

I think she can just be best written off as a grey figure, which realistically most notable people in wars are. Post war her constant defense of her Nazi lover and complaints about him being unfairly vilified (sounds eerily similar to Lavrov and his accusations of Russophobia today) certainly don't paint her in a good light.

Diva was ok but a bit muddled and I honestly can't remember a great deal about it except the film clips of Marilyn Monroe from Some Like it Hot and listening to the Janis Joplin clip several times (despite there being nothing of Janis Joplin's there)

I'm not a huge Chanel fan. I completely missed the pop up shop in Edinburgh but then again I've walked past the shop in New Bond Street many times without going in.

As far as I remember, I'd only ever see one real life Chanel before the exhibition. It was from the early noughties: tiny, tight, low cut, shiny and, apart from being black, pretty much the Anti-Chanel. Although that said, there's a sequin trouser suit in the exhibition that's one of the glitziest things I've ever seen so even then, she was full of contradictions.

I think it was only when Justine Picardie's book came out and I read some of the reviews that I realised she'd (Chanel) had such a long career before WW2 and what a moderniser she'd been.

The Hollywood costumes and clips were definitely the highlight of Diva, but then I'm a classic film fan - I even stopped to watch a clip of Elizabeth Taylor in Antony and Cleopatra, which was probably poor casting even for the time but gob stoppingly bad taste now.

I was the same Flo stopped to watch those clips that I have watched many many times.
I felt than more than the Hollywood section taking centre stage was the contemporary singers Cher, Elton, Madona, Rihanna.
But I felt there was not a complete representation of Divas. For example just a photo and a very small mention of an Indian actress. The Bollywood and Asian cinema has grown incredibly (I do not know much about it at all) and feel that surely in this country where that part of the world is so represented, it could have featured more prominently.
Some of the less obvious things I enjoyed was seeing Billie Eilish outfit when she did her debut at Glasto at only 17 (pretty sure she was 16 or 17…).

Can I ask if anyone has any recommendations for a good place to buy buttons in Paris?

I bought a 1950s fake fur coat in Harrogate last year, which is lovely but has 2 rather silly buttons, which I'd like to replace. Duttons in Harrogate used to be brilliant but they had nothing suitable in the right size. They need to be very big, and an unusual grey-brown colour.

Poppy, iirc there's one large button store near the Sacre Coeur with all the other fabric shops, I don't really rate the area as it's more about cut prices than nice quality (you might be lucky and find a rare nice quality thing for cut prices but it's a lot of effort).

Near the more expensive fabric shops that service the Couture ateliers there's Ultramod Mercerie, their main thing seems to be ribbons but they do some nice buttons as well.

If you want to look online, Carola's Choices on Etsy has a lot of nice vintage buttons, not Paris based though, local to me instead, she's an old vintage clothing seller so she knows her vintage buttons.

Oh, and you might have some luck at the Marche les Puces if you like going out that far and having a nose and you're there on the weekend (and maybe Monday, I think Friday is a half day)

Thanks Bo! I'm in Paris in a couple of weeks time for a conference on the Thurs/Fri so will spend Saturday having a pootle, with special emphasis on the places you suggest.

Thank you @microbius that's very kind of you 🙂 I don't think I'm in London when you all are though - I'll be there w/c 9th (barring a child-related crisis!) I'll have to post my response here if I get there first!

Nice write up in The Guardian featuring MH and other familiar names.

Hope you find the buttons Poppy, if you are heading to Les Puces check out a map of the area ahead of time so you're in the right area for the fashion stuff as it is ridiculously huge and easy to get lost in. They've got some gorgeous vintage clothes there, but tend to be high value collector pieces with prices to match.

@MmePoppySeedDefage I've become obsessed with buttons recently 😀They make such a difference to the style of a garment. I bought a Chanel-style cream jacket from Zara a couple of weeks ago but it came with silver-tone heavily bejewelled buttons that IMO just ruined it. I've bought some plain cream ones and just dropped it off to a local woman who does alterations this morning. They aren't the most inspiring buttons but I only have one small local haberdashers that doesn't have a wide selection. You've just reminded me about Duttons for Buttons from where I grew up! I might call in if I'm in that neck of the woods again. I think there used to be a good place called The Button Box in Huddersfield which @Floisme might remember too 🙂

I'm getting much better at seeing past things like that in clothes, in years gone by I'd have decided not to buy that item simply because of the buttons. For some reason it's taken me years to get my head around having alterations done 🤔I think it dates to my long student days (I did BA, Masters and PhD so was a skint student for a verrrry long time) and I just couldn't afford to factor in additional work on an item of clothing. One of the things I found hardest about those years was not having the money to buy many clothes, so I budgeted super tightly and just bought what I could afford in the condition it came in. I'm also the least skilled person on the planet it when it comes to these things - a couple of years ago I replaced the loops on a pair of curtain tie-backs and lets just say it was the first time I've picked up a needle since Thatcher was in power and it's a good job they are only for dining room curtains and can't be seen 😀Luckily I've found a great local seamstress and she works magic. I've got three items already to pick up from her this week - I think I'm keeping her in business 😀