A Dress-Designer's Memoirs AT the very beginning, proudly, M. Poiret

declares himself a Parisian of Paris." We believe him. We agree with

him. We see what he means.

There he stands, in the frontispiece, habited in strange,

soft materiaLs which he could better describe than we : mantle, a sort of tunic, soft gloves, a velveteen hat—eminently Parisian. Just the sort of "native" the English tourist, this Easter, will ask to be shown in a motor-coach drive round the city. And the rest of him—all that he tells us—

confirms the first glance.

He is a bit of Paris as the visitor used to think of "the

gay city" in days before the i'Var—article de Paris, for home

use and for exportation.

About his patriotism there can be no doubt. Listen to this

I have always detested the military, less because of the bad treatment they have inflicted upon me than because of the amount of time they have made me waste. Consider that, with the War, my compulsory service, and my training periods of twenty-eight days, I have been a soldier nearly six years, and during the best years of my life. And then, I have a critical mind, and then I sin more accustomed to command than to obey, and then I have always found the military second-rate and inadequate even in victory. None the less I love my country and I have sometimes wept on beholding the flag.

Waste of time ! Another Parisian trait here—the great dress-designer's amazing industry. True, they snatched himi for the War—just after he had manifested his devotion to the flag by taking a Viennese friend, who happened to be staying with him, to the military authorities for imprison- ment. But what was M. Poiret doing during the War ? Mainly, indefatigably, his chosen work. He was making something to wear.

Like a spider, continually exuding webs, he was always

exploding into designs. For years his "feminine modes" were the rapture of "high life." In the War, he at once invented a new model for a capote, and spurned military impertinences by hawking this about, until choleric colonels and haggard Ministers were forced to respect him. Dresses and designs, cloaks and capotes, perpetually dripped from

M. Poiret.

One day, on the boat going to America, a great lady com- plains of the cold. At once M. Poiret produces scissors— they never left him—and slices off an elegant piece from his travelling rug. A capote for the lady was improvised then and there. But this was nothing. At all times, in sickness as in health, all' over the world and in every city of the world, M. Poiret scattered models." One is stifled by them, buried under them, as one is drowned in scent— the perfumes exhaled by M. Poiret, until apparently the crafty M. Coty snatched them out of his hands. It is a

stuffy adventure.

But it evidently was not all dressmaking. It was, besides,

culture. For to be a supreme couturier you must be learned. It is well, for example, to know painters, guarding yourself

from the peril of being accused by those jealous creatures of borrowing ideas from them. Still, they help. No doubt M. Poiret's masters, in the strict, technical sense, were those old ones, Doucet and Worth, under whom he served. He " rather commanded than obeyed" Derain, Segonzac, even Picasso. Bakst, too. He liked Bakst's work. But he was there, he reminds us, before Bakst.

The son of a little cloth merchant, M. Poiret was a dandy born. That humble origin may retrospectively have worked upon him, inspiring him, by contrast, into what really sound

like repeated spasms of the folic des grandeurs. For now, after culture, came the exhibition of culture. Having clothed half elegant and extravagant Europe, M. Poiret took to giving files, invited clients, built a fantastic theatre for "subtle and refined entertainments that would appeal to the elite of Society." His imagination appears to have been infected by his friend Dr. Mardrus, the brilliant translator of the Arabian Nights. In the Poiret " oasis " near the Bois all the " stars " shone. It must have been voluptuous. It was also, no doubt, an excellent advertisement. And it

was expensive. At the end we are not surprised to hear that the author now lays claim to a decent, philosophical poverty. But he may return. "I have many dresses within me."

Obviously a man of great courage, reinforced by that terrifying energy ! One gets to like him. One sees him fearless, armed by a ludicrous vanity. He defies the Baroness Henri de Rothschild, who one day permitted herself to " command " him. Even as he browbeat military arrogance in the War, he managed, in peace, to snub Grand Duke, Princes and those who, like the overdressed music-hall beauty, Mistinguette, tried to borrow his ideas. He believes in his star. None of those who betrayed him has prospered ! But lightly he lifts a velveteen hat to those who have been forced by Fate to help him. For instance, to much attacked Mrs. Asquith, who got into such a row long ago for displaying the Poiret modes at Gowning Street (as the vulgar come. quently called it), that "the poor woman no longer dared to meet me." This we cannot believe. No one has ever frightened Lady Oxford.

M. Poiret ought to recall, in his philosophical retirement, La Rochefoucauld's maxim—Phonnele homme est celui qui ne se pique de rien. He is, we are sure, hannite homme. But. heavens, how he does "pride himself" on everything !

The translation is vivacious, in a Parisianized English, But I cannot believe that, when Mr. Guest makes M. Poiret

say (p. 48) that "for five or six months he lived a disordered

life turn and turn about playing Romeo and cherub," the translator is not forgetting that so cultured a modish, must have read Beaumarchais. Cberubino, we know. Even M. Poiret would not boast of having resembled a little angel with baby wings and no clothes on !

RICHARD JENNINGS.