Poiret’s memoirs

13. Revenez-y by Paul Poiret (Paris: Gallimard, 1932) and En habillant l’epoque by Paul Poiret (Paris: B. Grasset, 1930). FIT Library Special Collections and FIT Archives.

The rivalry between Paul Poiret and and Coco Chanel was two sided. Paul Poiret, the original couturier or “King of Fashion” (the title of the English translation of his memoir) was not prepared to consider Coco Chanel in the same league (or even Syndicate) as himself. His two French memoirs recount his artistic and elegant life in early twentieth-century Paris and reveal how he viewed the changing roles for women and fashion during those heady times. They show how he identifies with an older guard of couturiers against the arriviste “profiteurs.” Below a translation of the passage that begins “Je ne vois pas” and goes to the end of the paragraph, from page 97 of Revenez-y:

I can’t see—let me say plainly—what Chanel or Patou bring to this great rivalry.  I do however see them both as equipped with a special perspective, skilled at adapting the creations of their colleagues for a middle-class, extensive clientele, bringing those creations into general use and disseminating them to various sectors of society. It was an intelligent strategy, and one from which they greatly profited, but which excludes them from the categories of couturier and creator.