Video: The forgotten couturier woman adored by Parisians and hated by the Nazis: Madame Gre
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Today the name of the "queen of draperies" Madame Gre is practically forgotten, and her fashion house has ceased to exist - all the fault is one bad deal. But once she was put on a par with Cristobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior. She urged women to abandon corsets and openly opposed fascism, her outfits were adored by Marlene Dietrich and Jacqueline Kennedy, and each of her dresses took more than three hundred hours to create …
Germaine Krebs, Alix Barton, Madame Gre … She had many names - and one recognizable creative handwriting. She was born in Paris to a bourgeois family of Jewish origin. As a child, she cherished the dream of becoming a sculptor, but her parents were against it. So Germaine started making hats, and then, teamed up with a friend named Barton, she opened her first atelier, producing elegant sportswear. Soon the companion left the business, and so the fashion house Alix appeared - under this name Germain recognized Paris. Germaine did not draw patterns, she preferred the layout method, which was used by almost all couturiers of that time, but brought it to perfection.
On live models, she ordered thousands of perfectly laid folds, creating unusual rhythms and patterns. It could take up to three hundred hours to create one dress. Each of the dresses of the fashion house Alix Barton was unique, created for a particular woman and a particular figure. She is credited with creating a new material - silk jersey.
One of the first Germain urged women to abandon corsets and shaping underwear - not the body should adjust to the fashionable silhouette, but the dress should follow the natural outlines of the figure, emphasizing the natural beauty.
In the late 1930s, Germaine-Alix married a Russian émigré, artist Sergei Cherevkov. From this marriage, she received her creative pseudonym - an anagram of the pseudonym of her husband, who was furious with such a "theft" - and the child. Soon Cherevkov left her and fled to Tahiti. Germaine did not hold a grudge against him - until his death, she continued to support him, including financially. Under the name of Madame Gre, she begins to create costumes for theatrical performances …
The war began. During the occupation of France by German troops, Madame Gre attracted the attention of the senior ranks of the Nazi army - she had Jewish roots. Germaine left her hometown, hiding with her newborn daughter Anna in a small village. There, that element appeared in her appearance, which will then charm all the ladies of high society and bohemians - a turban. There was simply no hairdresser in the village, and the designer could not afford to look inelegant even during the war years.
In 1942, she nevertheless returned to Paris at the invitation of the President of the Fashion Syndicate Lucien Lelong and resumed the work of the fashion house. French designers of those years believed that defeat in the war was not a reason to concede the primacy in the field of fashion to Germany. True, everyone found their own ways to survive, and while Chanel arranged her personal life, and Schiaparelli took a dangerous trip to the United States in search of investors, Madame Gre was openly protesting.
One could turn a blind eye to her origin … if Madame Gre agreed to dress up the wives of Nazi officers. But she firmly refused. Moreover, at one of her shows, models walked in dresses only in white, blue and red colors - instead of the complex gray and pearl shades that she loved so much. And at the end of the day, a girl appeared in a tricolor dress, as if wrapped in a French flag. Then a huge French flag appeared on the facade of Madame Gre's fashion house. The fascists could not endure this already. There was a scandal, the House of Madame Gre was closed, and she herself miraculously escaped arrest and hastily left France, but hurried home at the first opportunity.
Madame Gre's merits were appreciated at a high level - she received the Order of the Legion of Honor and became the first laureate of the D d'Or de la Haute Couture Prize, she was elected President of the Syndicate. Her fantastic draperies fascinated both Hollywood stars and aristocrats. Fans of Madame Gre's talent were Marlene Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, Greta Garbo, Jacqueline Kennedy and Grace Kelly, but at the height of her fame she chose the clients herself. The designer believed that only women of her warehouse could truly appreciate her dresses - intelligent, sophisticated, closed, with a rich inner world.
In the 50s, when Christian Dior's sophisticated new look was at the forefront of the trend, Madame Gre visited India and began experimenting with spacious cuts and ethnic motives - and again went her own way. Her complete reluctance to follow trends has cost her part of her clientele. Madame was always very mediocre in business, marketing and advertising, did not know how to make useful connections and led a reclusive lifestyle, which negatively affected the promotion of the brand. However, even in the 60s, Madame Gre remained in demand - celebrities in her outfits appeared on the covers of fashion magazines.
However, neither awards nor rich clients saved Madame Gre's House from ruin and decline. Circumstances changed, but she was not getting younger. Like many fashion houses, Madame Gre's business fell victim to the mass market. In the 80s, Madame Gre tried to release a collection for the mass consumer, but failed, and she had to sell her brainchild to French businessman Bernard Tapie. He claimed that he would take over the financing, and the designer would be given complete freedom of action, but … Three years later, it turned out that Tapi was bankrupt. All property was confiscated, a large part destroyed. The daughter took Madame Gre to Provence, where she died on the eve of her ninetieth birthday.
But in fact, for the creative legacy of Madame Gre, it was not the end. Nowadays, interest in her work does not subside. Designer Azeddin Alaya spent a lot of time, effort and money to collect her creations for the fashion museum in Marseille, where they are kept to this day - beautiful and unique ghosts of the past. Alber Elbaz and Haider Ackerman call Madame Gre their inspiration and develop her ideas.
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