Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (3 page)

Louis Vuitton’s business was doing well enough that by
1859
he needed to expand. He bought an acre of land in Asnières, a northeastern suburb situated on both the rail line to Paris and the river Seine, which allowed for easy receipt of raw materials as well as easy shipping to the store, and constructed a workshop of brick and glass with iron frames and trusses, like those used by French architect Victor Baltard at Les Halles. On the ground floor, Louis had about twenty artisans making trunks. Upstairs, he had a small apartment where he would stay when visiting the site.

Today, that two-room space serves as the Louis Vuitton Museum of Travel, which can be viewed only by appointment. The windowless gallery is clean and modern, with high-gloss blond wood floors; it traces the evolution not only of Vuitton but also of modern luxury goods. The tour begins with a stack of four old beat-up trunks. The first is the revolutionary Trianon Gray. Shortly after it was introduced, it was copied by the competition. So Louis Vuitton came up with a new canvas design—the second trunk—of red and beige stripes. He later changed the stripes to brown and beige, which have been the house’s signature colors ever since. The third trunk on display is a chocolate brown and beige checkerboard print known today as Damier, designed by Louis’s thirty-one-year-old son, Georges, in
1888
. The words “Marque Louis Vuitton Deposée”—or “registered trademark”—were written in white inside a few of the checks, thus launching luxury branding. And the fourth trunk is the monogram pattern of interlocking LVs interspersed with naïf-style diamonds, stars, and flowers, which Georges designed in
1896
also in response to counterfeiting and registered it as a trademark in
1905
. No one knows for sure where Georges found his inspiration, though it is believed that the blossoms came from the Japonisme movement of the late nineteenth century. What is certain today is that the Japanese adore the Vuitton monogram. By the end of
2006
,
40
percent of all Japanese owned a Vuitton product, primarily from the monogram line.

By the end of the nineteenth century, monarchy around the world was giving way, through social or bloody revolution, to more equitable—or democratic—societies, and the Industrial Revolution made inventors and entrepreneurs as rich as kings. This allowed the increasingly wealthy bourgeoisie to share the lifestyle and tastes of the aristocracy—and they did, wholeheartedly. As American economist Thorstein Veblen argued in his famous treatise
The Theory of the Leisure Class
in
1899
, spending became the way people established their social position in an affluent society. American Industrial Revolution families such as the Carnegies, Fords, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Guggenheims, Pierpont Morgans, and Hearsts showed their social might by building gargantuan homes filled with uniformed staff and European antiques, underwriting public institutions such as libraries and universities, and buying gobs of luxury goods. In Europe, most reigning monarchy had been abolished, but not the aspiration to emulate it. Aristocrats continued to live grandly, as before, and a new bourgeoisie spent liberally to acquire all the same trappings, from fully staffed manor houses to complete sets of Vuitton luggage.

To keep up with the demand at Vuitton, Georges added another two rows of workshops in Asnières. He opened a shop in Nice—(a favorite winter destination on the French Riviera for wealthy English, Russians, and Americans)—moved the Paris store from the Opéra district to the far-wealthier Champs-Élysées, and negotiated distribution deals in the United States. Soon Vuitton became the luggage of choice for such Hollywood stars as Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Gish, Ginger Rogers, and Cary Grant. Among the star pieces in the Vuitton museum collection is actor Douglas Fairbanks’s smart Roma suitcase from
1925
, covered with natural cowhide and lined with pigskin.

It was a glamorous time, perhaps the last true golden period for luxury, and you can feel the gaiety and refinement in the Vuitton collection in such items as singer Marthe Chenal’s crocodile toiletry case with tortoiseshell-handled grooming utensils; crystal flasks with gold stoppers; and the ever-popular drawstring Noé bag, designed in
1932
to hold five bottles of champagne—four upright and a fifth upside-down in the center. “In those days, fully furnished houses meant fully stocked households,” wrote Maria Riva in
Marlene Dietrich: By Her Daughter,
of a home Dietrich rented in Los Angeles in
1930
. “Our inventory lists never had fewer than eight complete dinner services for fifty, six separate lunch and tea services, all of bone china, dozens and dozens of crystal goblets, and linen enough to stock Buckingham palace. This house also boasted fourteen-karat gold cutlery; the sterling silver was for lunch.”

In the
1920
s, France’s luxury fashion business was composed of an astounding three hundred thousand workers, including cutters, fitters, seamstresses, embroiderers, furriers, shoemakers, weavers, spinners, and milliners. In five years in the
1920
s, the esteemed embroiderer Albert Lesage turned out fifteen hundred elaborate pieces for the Paris couture house Vionnet. In the
1930
s, Lesage used hand-blown Murano glass to make flowers to decorate dresses, and couturier Elsa Schiaparelli flecked her gowns with semiprecious jewels set in gold. At Chanel, the atelier turned out hundreds of glittering gowns for the smart set. Diana Vreeland remembered ordering one: “The huge skirt was of silver lamé, quilted in pearls, which gave it a marvelous weight; then the bolero was lace entirely encrusted with pearls and
diamanté
; then underneath the bolero was the most beautiful shirt of linen lace. I think it was the most beautiful dress I’ve ever owned.”

T
HAT ALL CHANGED
with World War II. When the Nazis arrived in Paris in
1940
, many luxury businesses and couture houses—including Chanel—closed shop. But couturier Lucien Lelong, head of the French couture association at the time, persuaded several to remain open to save jobs and preserve pride. During the Occupation, the Nazis ransacked the association’s headquarters and confiscated its archives. They closed some houses—Madame Grès and Balenciaga among them—and tried to shut down the industry fourteen times. Their plan was to move couture houses to Berlin and Vienna, which were to be Europe’s new cultural capitals. Lelong and his confreres would have nothing of it. “You can force us to do anything you like,” Lelong declared, “but Paris haute couture will never move, neither as a whole nor bit by bit. Either it stays in Paris or it ceases to exist.” To keep going, some luxury companies and couture houses sold their products to the wives of Nazi officers and collaborators. Vuitton was among them. It is a part of the family history that the company does not mention anywhere. In fact, it was effectively buried until Vuitton biographer Stéphanie Bonvicini exposed it in her book
Louis Vuitton: une saga française
, in
2004
.

The Vuittons were as divided as France. Georges’s grandson Claude-Louis joined the Second Armored Division in
1944
and fought against the Germans. Granddaughter Denyse Vuitton’s husband, Jean Ogliastro, was sent to a concentration camp, and survived; a cousin named René Gimpel, a respected art dealer, died while being deported in January
1945
. Their father, Gaston-Louis, however, sided with French general Philippe Pétain’s Nazi-backed government in Vichy for both political as well as business reasons, and instructed his oldest son, Henry-Louis, to work with Pétain’s regime to keep Vuitton going. The company had a store on the ground floor of Vichy’s elegant Hôtel du Parc next to other luxury goods shops, including the jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels. All were shut down by the Nazis except Vuitton. Furthermore, Vuitton opened a factory to produce propaganda items, including more than twenty-five hundred busts of General Pétain, and Henry-Louis was decorated by Pétain’s regime for his loyalty.

When the war concluded, it took some time for the luxury business to get going again. Materials were scarce, and some workers never came home. Most shuttered houses started up again and a few new ones opened, including Pierre Balmain, Givenchy, and Christian Dior; the latter kicked off the revival of couture with his New Look in
1947
. “The styles [during the Occupation] were incredibly hideous and I couldn’t wait to do something better,” Dior said. “I revived the ripe bosom, the wasp waist and the soft shoulders, and molded them to the natural curves of the feminine body. It was a nostalgic voyage back to elegance.”

French actress Leslie Caron remembers the period well. In
1953
, fresh from her success in
An American in Paris,
the twenty-one-year-old Caron was escorted to Dior by her former ballet master Roland Petit because, he told her, “you need to be dressed properly.” As Caron told me one summer evening in the salon of her Left Bank apartment in Paris, “It was as important to be well dressed as it was to be educated, have good manners, eat well.”

Caron and Petit met with Christian Dior and his head vendeuse at the avenue Montaigne headquarters salon. “Roland knew very well the première vendeuse, who was a
grande dame de la societé
—the vendeuses moved in those circles,” Caron said. “They knew what to wear to which event and wouldn’t let any dress be worn by two clients for the same event. Never. And they had great authority. When they said, ‘No, darling, that simply does not suit you!’ you listened.” After picking out a white satin duchesse gown with a knot in the front and a little black velvet dress trimmed in grosgrain, Caron, like so many others, became a devoted couture client.

More than two hundred thousand women worldwide wore couture in the
1950
s. It was an expected part of a bourgeois woman’s everyday life. Today, in comparison, a mere two hundred women worldwide buy haute couture. Suits start at $
25
,
000
, gowns $
100
,
000
, and are worn sparingly. I remember Ivana Trump telling me in
1988
that she wore her couture gowns a couple of times in New York and Palm Beach and then, rather than be accused of the social faux pas of being seen too many times in the same outfit, sent them to her mother in Czechoslovakia. And this was before the fall of the Berlin wall.

Buying couture in the postwar years was an exercise in high protocol. Twice a year, Dior sent out three hundred gold-embossed invitations to good clients, magazine editors, reporters, retailers, and celebrities to attend the showing of Monsieur Dior’s latest creations, which were presented each January and July in the couture salons of the early-nineteenth-century gray granite headquarters—or “house”—at
30
, avenue Montaigne. Guests were seated in rows of delicate chairs; behind them in alcoves sat giant urns of roses, gardenias, and carnations whose scent perfumed the air. The shows started precisely on time, and no special accommodations were made for latecomers. Once the duchess of Windsor arrived after the show began and was relegated to the staircase.

The swanlike models glided regally through the gold and olive rooms as an announcer called the name and number of the dress or suit, paused under the enormous crystal chandeliers, posed arms akimbo, twirled with great purpose, effortlessly slid off the jacket or wrap, twirled again, and continued. The American and European department store and boutique retailers seated in the front row scribbled potential orders in their notepads, and the chic Parisian and celebrity clients—many dressed in last season’s Diors with pearl chokers, hats, and gloves—occasionally nodded approvingly. Shows lasted three hours; today they’re twenty minutes—half an hour is considered long. The show concluded with a elaborate bridal gown, and the models would receive a thunderous applause punctuated with
“Bravo!”
and
“Magnifique!”
Dior himself was rarely there. “After all the horrors of preparing a collection,” he explained, “I wouldn’t think of attending a show.”

After the show, Caron remembers, “if you decided to buy, you stayed. The ladies would be strewn out in the big salon, and there were several salons. The vendeuse called and asked the mannequin to put on the dress you liked. You looked at it, at all its sides, and you’d say, ‘I like it, but I’d like it longer, shorter, whatever.’ Then you had a rendezvous and you went into the
cabines
”—or dressing rooms—“and there were three fittings for each dress.”

The Parisian clients were, as Dior himself put it, “singularly difficult.” “At a fitting she behaves like a contortionist,” he told
Time
magazine in
1957
. “She stands up, sits down, bends and wriggles around; actually she is testing a dress because, she knows, an unhinged strap or a clasp could mean disaster at a fancy soirée. Often she brings along her husband or her lover, and they fidget as well over stitches, seams and buttonholes. They exasperate us, but we cannot afford to ignore their fussing, however petty it may seem. Unless they leave
chez
Dior in complete self-confidence, we have blundered and our image will be tarnished as a consequence.”

The couturiers were often personally involved in fittings, and the clothes were constructed solidly so that they could be worn often and for years. “A dress or a suit was built on you, taking into consideration your own shape and above all, made to make you feel comfortable and at your best. You could relax and think of something else,” Caron said. “The dress behaved well, served you well, whether you stood or sat for long hours. Dior, Marc Bohan, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent would ask you, ‘What are you going to be doing in this outfit? Do you need to run or dance? Don’t choose velvet if you’re going to sit long hours at a gala, it makes a mark on the seat. Let’s not make it tight at the seat, it wrinkles when you stand. This length is good for you, that one is not.’