The Last Dress from Paris(14)
“Here they are!” In one swift, easy move, Veronique throws back the sliding doors to reveal a lineup of dresses.
I actually take a step backward. This is no minor dress collection. Even to my totally untrained eye, the fabrics look heavy and rich. Buttons are still rigidly in place. Everything has a very ordered and deliberate symmetry. I’m guessing all the detailing has been done by hand, and one of the dresses is covered in what must be thousands of sequins and crystals. It’s all from a very different world. One that knows nothing of the fast fashion of today’s high street, its clutter of wire hangers and mass-market copies—or in other words, my wardrobe.
I can see the love here, the care and expertise in every stitch. I can feel the time it would have taken to conceive and then build something so beautiful. I’m guessing weeks, maybe even months for each. There is a lavishness that some might say borders on the wasteful. Why have one layer to a skirt, when you can have five or six? Why hope that a dress will hold its shape when you can structure it and pad it so its performance is never in doubt? Granny has always been well put together, from a generation of women who care what they look like. But this? This is not her life or her world. I can’t equate what’s hanging in front of me with the wonderful woman I just left back home, wearing a crumb-covered blanket and half watching daytime TV. Why has she never spoken to me about these dresses? This feels instantly wrong and confused, like some key detail or link is missing that would mean it all made sense.
Veronique, one hand theatrically pressed to her chest, actually looks on the verge of tears. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” she asks, rather redundantly, I would say.
“No. No, I have not,” is about all I can manage.
“It’s not even the best bit. You haven’t seen the notes that accompany them yet. I will show you.”
* * *
? ? ?
She returns from her bedroom with a small pearl trinket box that is lined with plush red velvet. Inside is a small bundle of eight identical brown cards, not much bigger than a credit card and held together with an elastic band.
“Every dress or piece has a corresponding one,” she explains. “Take a look. When Mum first showed me the dresses, she gave me the complete bundle of cards too.”
I glance down at the first one and see it is handwritten in ink that has faded over the years, but not quite enough to completely destroy its legibility.
A&A
Cygne Noir
Home
October 3, 1953
“I saw something different in you.”
There is something moving about holding this note in my hand, reading words written over sixty years ago. And the quote. How intriguing.
“Cygne Noir is the name of the dress,” explains Veronique. “It translates as ‘Black Swan.’ Instantly romantic, don’t you think? My maman never really spoke about these dresses much, except to say that they were very special. But I did some digging through the archives at work one afternoon, and it was designed by Christian Dior, back in the late forties. It’s a couture piece. It would have taken weeks to make and would have cost a significant amount of money at the time.”
“Why would anyone write a note like this about the dress? What would be the need for it?”
“Yes, I asked that question, too, and it seems if you wore couture back then, if you were that sort of woman, living that sort of life, it was quite likely you would want to keep a record of when certain pieces were worn. So you could rotate them. Important people wouldn’t see you wear the same thing twice. Imagine!”
“But my granny Sylvie didn’t know those sorts of people. I’m confused, Veronique.” It’s true Granny has always been vague about the time she and my grandfather spent in Paris in her twenties, but then you can choose to be vague when you’re her age, and I’ve never really pressed her for the details. I suppose I always assumed, without her ever correcting me, that it was her first taste of freedom away from her parents, and before they committed themselves to a more sensible married life back in England. I’ve seen the odd grainy picture of her from the time, and if she’s beautiful now, she was mesmerizing then. But still, not this.
“I was only expecting to collect one dress for my grandmother, Veronique.”
“According to my maman, all eight in the collection belong to her.” I frown while Veronique tries to fill in some of the blanks.
“Maman received many letters from your grandmother Sylvie in London over the years. They always seemed to be writing to each other. I wouldn’t mind betting I’ll find a big bundle of them around here when I start to go through everything properly. Before she died, she told me there was a good chance Sylvie would make contact about the dresses. So, when she did, I wasn’t surprised. But it was never just one dress.”
“Okay, so then what or who are A and A?”
“Now, that is the mystery.” Veronique gently opens the pearl buttons of a gray wool jacket that is hanging at the front of the rail with a densely pleated black skirt. “Can you see?”
As she lifts the designer’s label positioned at the back of the neck, there are the initials again. This time stitched on the underside of the label. “I’ve checked, and they have been sewn into every piece, where they were clearly never intended to be seen.”
“Could the dresses have been made for someone else—one half of the A and A?—and somehow my grandmother came to be given them?” It seems like the only logical explanation, although it doesn’t really satisfy the clear need for my grandmother to be reunited with them.