Monday, July 05, 2004
Elegance, indeed.
Finished the Tessaro Elegance the other day. I'm not too disappointed, because I wasn't expecting much. The voice is standard chick lit, although it's got a strange twist: the narrator, like the author, grew up in Pittsburgh but lives in London, so goes back and forth rather jarringly between English and American slang and turns of phrase. The characters are standard chick lit, from the down-at-the-heels narrator who makes herself over to the gay male best friend, from the unbelievably hip female best friend to the husband/boyfriend who's so boring he doesn't even have a name. The plot has all the standard chick lit elements, including glitzy jobs where nobody actually does any work, a disastrous house party in the country, and the heroine's complete inability to keep from embarrassing herself in front of the man or men she's trying to impress.
Trust me, you've read this one before. But judging from the number of hits I get on Mme. Dariaux's name, I'm assuming that the book has sparked an interest in her book by the same title, so I will start blogging her again. [I had stopped until I was able to read the novel, in order to avoid looking like I was using someone else's literary device. Since that's ALL it was in the book, I feel no guilt about blogging Genevieve again.]
So here goes, from a random flipping-through of Elegance, by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux.
FINISHING
"The few remaining fashion fanatics get almost as much satisfaction from the inside of a beautifully made garment as from its outer aspect. I can remember how my mother always used to turn a new dress inside out in order to inspect carefully the way in which it was finished."
If you ever buy vintage clothes, you know how different they look on the inside than new ones. I've got a dress from the 40s or 50s with a Neiman-Marcus tag in it--not exactly haute couture, but probably about as close as you could get in the 50s in Dallas. It's purple lace, with a lavendar taffeta underdress. Every seam is finished beautifully. The bodice of the underdress is boned almost invisibly. The zipper is perfect. The overdress is lined with chiffon that is actually stitched in the pattern of the lace. I've had it for nearly 20 years, and it's at least two sizes too big now, but I have to just take it out and admire the construction every once in a while.
However, even this dress doesn't have some of the details Genevieve talks about:
"Among the finishing touches that help to keep a dress in place are an inside grosgrain belt, even in an unfitted dress (although in this case the grosgrain is attached only to the front of the dress), and tiny snap-fastened shoulder-strap holders made from a narrow bias of the same silk as the lining. A low V neckline is guaranteed to plunge smoothly if a small dressmaker's weight is endcased in a length of ribbon and attached inside the point of the V. Wide, deep trapeze necklines will not budge even when you lean forward over a dinner table if a length of elastic is sewn inside each corner of the décolleté, and these two bands are then joined together at the back by hooks and eyes. Finally, the only tried and true way of maintaining in place an off-the-shoulder necline is to sew a short length of elastic inside the top part of the sleeves--uncomfortable to the wearer, but most effective."
Because you see, this is the foundation of Mme. Dariaux's elegance: it's painful. It's a lot of trouble. Dressmaker's weights? Where would you even get something like that? It's not likely to be found in the sewing display at Target. Maybe not even on the notions aisle at Jo-Ann Fabrics (which seems to be the only place to get any kind of sewing supplies in most middle-to-large cities anymore, but that's another rant). Shoulder-strap holders? Why bother? So somebody sees your bra strap--so what?
But her philosophy also holds that elegance is worth the pain and the trouble. I think the narrator of Ms. Tessaro's Elegance missed the point when she used Mme. Dariaux's Elegance to transform herself into a fashionista. She's not really willing to trade in the fashionable for the timeless, to forfeit comfort for elegance. Because of that, the plot gimmick never becomes a plot element.
In a genre of literature that's overrun with stupid gimmicky hooks, this is actually one of the better ones. Too bad there was so little of the attention to detail, so little of the finishing, that Mme. Dariaux was a stickler for.
Finished the Tessaro Elegance the other day. I'm not too disappointed, because I wasn't expecting much. The voice is standard chick lit, although it's got a strange twist: the narrator, like the author, grew up in Pittsburgh but lives in London, so goes back and forth rather jarringly between English and American slang and turns of phrase. The characters are standard chick lit, from the down-at-the-heels narrator who makes herself over to the gay male best friend, from the unbelievably hip female best friend to the husband/boyfriend who's so boring he doesn't even have a name. The plot has all the standard chick lit elements, including glitzy jobs where nobody actually does any work, a disastrous house party in the country, and the heroine's complete inability to keep from embarrassing herself in front of the man or men she's trying to impress.
Trust me, you've read this one before. But judging from the number of hits I get on Mme. Dariaux's name, I'm assuming that the book has sparked an interest in her book by the same title, so I will start blogging her again. [I had stopped until I was able to read the novel, in order to avoid looking like I was using someone else's literary device. Since that's ALL it was in the book, I feel no guilt about blogging Genevieve again.]
So here goes, from a random flipping-through of Elegance, by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux.
FINISHING
"The few remaining fashion fanatics get almost as much satisfaction from the inside of a beautifully made garment as from its outer aspect. I can remember how my mother always used to turn a new dress inside out in order to inspect carefully the way in which it was finished."
If you ever buy vintage clothes, you know how different they look on the inside than new ones. I've got a dress from the 40s or 50s with a Neiman-Marcus tag in it--not exactly haute couture, but probably about as close as you could get in the 50s in Dallas. It's purple lace, with a lavendar taffeta underdress. Every seam is finished beautifully. The bodice of the underdress is boned almost invisibly. The zipper is perfect. The overdress is lined with chiffon that is actually stitched in the pattern of the lace. I've had it for nearly 20 years, and it's at least two sizes too big now, but I have to just take it out and admire the construction every once in a while.
However, even this dress doesn't have some of the details Genevieve talks about:
"Among the finishing touches that help to keep a dress in place are an inside grosgrain belt, even in an unfitted dress (although in this case the grosgrain is attached only to the front of the dress), and tiny snap-fastened shoulder-strap holders made from a narrow bias of the same silk as the lining. A low V neckline is guaranteed to plunge smoothly if a small dressmaker's weight is endcased in a length of ribbon and attached inside the point of the V. Wide, deep trapeze necklines will not budge even when you lean forward over a dinner table if a length of elastic is sewn inside each corner of the décolleté, and these two bands are then joined together at the back by hooks and eyes. Finally, the only tried and true way of maintaining in place an off-the-shoulder necline is to sew a short length of elastic inside the top part of the sleeves--uncomfortable to the wearer, but most effective."
Because you see, this is the foundation of Mme. Dariaux's elegance: it's painful. It's a lot of trouble. Dressmaker's weights? Where would you even get something like that? It's not likely to be found in the sewing display at Target. Maybe not even on the notions aisle at Jo-Ann Fabrics (which seems to be the only place to get any kind of sewing supplies in most middle-to-large cities anymore, but that's another rant). Shoulder-strap holders? Why bother? So somebody sees your bra strap--so what?
But her philosophy also holds that elegance is worth the pain and the trouble. I think the narrator of Ms. Tessaro's Elegance missed the point when she used Mme. Dariaux's Elegance to transform herself into a fashionista. She's not really willing to trade in the fashionable for the timeless, to forfeit comfort for elegance. Because of that, the plot gimmick never becomes a plot element.
In a genre of literature that's overrun with stupid gimmicky hooks, this is actually one of the better ones. Too bad there was so little of the attention to detail, so little of the finishing, that Mme. Dariaux was a stickler for.
permalink posted by The Vintage Reader @ 2:48 PM 
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
