Ŧhe ₵oincidental Ðandy: Mitzah Bricard: Christian Dior's Leopardess

Monday 12 November 2018

Mitzah Bricard: Christian Dior's Leopardess

Germaine ‘Mitzah’ Bricard

(1900 - 1977)

Image courtesy of: V for Vintage

“In fashion she aims immediately for the most marked expression of that indefinable, and perhaps slightly neglected, thing called chic.” ~ Christian Dior

Image courtesy of: Storm | Design Art Fashion

If the irrepressible Jeanne Toussaint could be said to have been ‘La Panthère’ of Cartier, then, in the same feline spirit, her counterpart, Mitzah Bricard (whose birth-name was Germaine Louise Neustadtl), could also be considered to have been Christian Dior's ‘leopardess’. And just as Madame Toussaint was instrumental in shaping Cartier's image and identity during the tenure of her creative direction in the 1930s through to the 1950s, so it was that Madame Bricard influenced and shaped the image of the House of Dior in the 1940s and 1950s. Her impact, nonetheless, would not be limited to the first decade of Maison Dior's existence but would project decades thereafter: as Christian Dior's primary muse, she would, for example, be the principal inspiration for John Galliano's Autumn-Winter 2009 Haute Couture ‘cabine’ collection (a collection in which Galliano fixated on the codes, the signatures, of the House of Dior: the lily-of-the-valley—Christian Dior's favourite bloom and his good-luck charm; of such vital importance was this flower to Dior that dried sprigs of it were sewn into the hems of all of his couture models and he always kept a sprig of it with him: its delicate motif appeared on hand-embroidered textiles as well as in Dior's jewelry and accessories lines; it was invariably combined with other blossoms to form opulent floral displays in the salon—the iconic Bar suit, and the panther) in conjunction with Galliano's 2010 Dior Resort collection; she would even be the inspiration behind the House's new line of ‘Mitzah’ cosmetics, an 18-karat white and yellow gold jewelry line of ‘leopard paw’ rings, a line of ‘Mitzah’ perfume, and an assorted line of ‘Mitzah’ silk scarves. (It is said that Madame Bricard habitually wore a leopard-print chiffon scarf bound around her right wrist to hide a scar, allegedly the result of a suicide attempt.)

As with the enigmatic Madame Toussaint, Madame Bricard's early history is likewise both scant and cloaked in impenetrable mystery. She was born, some maintain, in Paris, on November 12th, 1900; others place her birthplace in Romania, to an English mother and an Austrian father. All that is known with any degree of certainty about her background is that she was formerly a demi-mondaine—or, as some believed, simply the mistress of a string of wealthy lovers, which may help explain her remarkable trove of jewelry—and a muse to the British couturier Edward Henry Molyneux, who, after a distinguished military career in the First World War (he was wounded in France and was awarded Britain's Military Cross, a decoration bestowed for gallantry) had a salon in Paris before the onset of the Second World War. (Molyneux's lucrative maison de couture was established in 1919, on the Rue Royale; during the Second World War, however, he relocated his maison to London.) She first married a Romanian diplomat by the name of Alexandro Biano; then, in 1941, following Biano's death, she married for a second time; her choice of second husband was the very wealthy Hubert Bricard, president of B. L. B. Laboratories. No one knows for certain when, how or for what reason Germaine Louise acquired or adopted the name ‘Mitzah’.

Portrait of Mitzah Bricard (wearing a Dior mink wrap) photographed by Horst P. Horst - ca. 1950

Image courtesy of: The New York Times Style Magazine

“She’d walk around the studio practically naked, draped in panther skin. It was rather a lot for a young man to take.”

~ François Lesage

Mitzah Bricard

(Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolf - 1950s)

Image courtesy of: Harvard Art Museums

Many disparate elements need to coalesce to form a new, viable fashion House. But aside from the crucial components of financial backing—in this particular instance, the industrialist and textile magnate, Marcel Boussac—and a talented designer, timing, staffing and the necessary craftspeople are perchance equally of crucial importance. In this, Christian Dior was most fortunate: firstly, the timing of the opening of his eponymous Maison (in sedated hues of pearl-grey and white and headquartered in an old mansion, complete with a winding grand staircase, at 30 Avenue Montaigne) was opportune. (Highly superstitious, Christian Dior relied heavily on the clairvoyance of a certain Madame Delahaye; it was on her advice that he accepted Marcel Boussac's offer to fund Maison Dior. Madame Delahaye's advice pervaded every aspect of Dior's life: she forecast and advised on everything from the auspicious dates of his travels right down to even the choice of florist for his salon and homes, all of which, however trite or trivial, Dior dutifully accepted unquestioningly. Interestingly enough, the susceptible Dior defied Madame Delahaye's advice only once, with fatal consequences: she had strongly advised Dior against a planned trip to a health spa in the Tuscan town of Montecatini Terme, renowned for its thermal waters, in October of 1957, in the hope of losing weight. Accompanied by his chauffeur, Madame Raymonde and a goddaughter, Dior, after an after-dinner game of canasta, collapsed and died on October the 23rd; he was only fifty-two years of age.)

Mitzah Bricard photographed by Horst P. Horst

Image courtesy of: Getty Images

Happening, as it did, after the bereft, tumultuous years of warfare, the unveiling of his flower-inspired ninety-piece début collection (with each ensemble individually assigned a name such as Amoureuse, Pompon, Caprice) during the coldest winter in Paris since 1870 and shown on the final day of the Spring-Summer 1947 Paris collections, which happened to be Wednesday, February the 12th—(the 12th of February also marked the introduction of Dior's very first perfume: Miss Dior, the expected launch of which was due towards the end of 1947, was spritzed throughout the House in anticipation of Dior's inaugural collection and invited guests, including members of the international press; the French press were on strike at the time. While on the topic of Miss Dior, it was Madame Bricard who, incidentally, provided the name for the perfume)—and featuring the Corolle and En Huit lines was an instant success; instantaneously, also, the utilitarian but drab, square silhouette of the 1940s was rendered obsolete by Dior's curvaceous ‘New Look,’ with its emphasis on the hyper-feminine nipped-in ‘wasp’ waist—an effect all the more emphasized by the use of padded hips—softly rounded shoulders, and yards of sunray-pleated skirt fabrics. (Some daytime outfits weighed as much as eight pounds; some evening ensembles weighed close to sixty pounds.)

Christian Dior flanked by members of his atelier, including, in the front row, Madame Carré (left) & Madame Bricard (right); Madame Raymonde is seated in the second row, behind & to the left of Dior

Image is courtesy of: Paper Magazine

Secondly, Dior was aided, guided, counselled and nurtured by his ‘three pillars’ (or as Cecil Beaton once termed them, “the three fates”): the first of the triumvirate was Raymonde Zehnacker, whom Chrisitan Dior, in his autobiography, described as “my second self” and whom he credited with providing “reason to my fantasy, order to my imagination, discipline to my freedom.” Madame Raymonde, as she was deferentially known, was the directrice of the aterliers—she made sure that the House of Dior was run efficiently; the two—Dior and Madame Raymonde, along with Pierre Balmain—had formerly been colleagues at Maison Lelong. The second was Madame Marguerite Carré. Madame Carré was the technical director of the House of Dior (she had formerly been the atelier directrice at Maison Patou.) According to Alexander Fury of The New York Times Style Magazine (October 3, 2016), Madame Carré had been “poached from the house of Patou in an act of industrial espionage when Dior first opened in 1946. She brought with her a substantial staff of 30 seamstresses (the house of Dior, in its original entirety, only had a staff of 60). Patou lodged an official complaint regarding the move—the final details were hammered out under the supervision of the Chambre Syndicale, haute couture's governing body, to prevent a Montague/Capulet situation between the two Parisian houses”. Lastly and most compellingly, there was Mitzah Bricard.

Mitzah Bricard (in her habitual leopard skins, turban & pearls) photographed by Cecil Beaton ~ 1950

Image courtesy of: Pleasurephoto

“She was extremely beautiful, extremely thin, very perfect behind her veil, and had the most beautiful hands which performed magic when working.” ~ Countess Jacqueline de Ribes

Madame Bricard at work

Image courtesy of: Blog studio

Residing at the Ritz and rarely awakening before mid-day, when she finally made her appearance at the Dior ateliers, she was invariably and infallibly attired in a blouse blanche, a turban with veil netting (which she wore even while working), and stilettos. With her special proclivity for the colour lilac as well as for leopard skins—the spotted patterns of which have been reinterpreted in a myriad of ways, in innumerable designs, appearing in Dior collections since the very first, in February 1947—and ropes of pearls (two of her favourite items of jewelry being a fourteen-strand pearl necklace and a diamond-speckled, sculpted coral rose pin by Cartier; in addition to these, she was known for her collection of brooches: Jean-Louis Scherrer remembered, “She used to pin her turbans with Indian miniatures composed of emeralds” [Quote: Fraser-Cavassoni, N., Monsieur Dior: Once Upon A Time, 2014:79]), Madame Bricard was ostensibly in charge of the millinery department at Dior. (She had originally begun working as Dior's pattern-maker in December of 1946.) But her role was much more significant than that.

As his muse and reliant on the her taste, Dior entrusted Madame Bricard to imbue his collections with the sublimity of her innate sense of élan and chic; her presence and esprit furnishing 30 Avenue Montaigne with an aura of nonchalant cosmopolitanism. (There is an anecdote, related in a very brief article by Katya Foreman in WWD, entitled, The Muse: Mitzah Bricard [February 27, 2007], in which Stanley Marcus—one-time president of the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus—inquired of Madame Bricard if she had a favourite florist. “Certainly,” she is reputed to have responded, “Cartier.”) Christian Dior depended on Madame Bricard's approval on an ensemble or to improvise and correctly determine whichever accessory was needed to complete a look. “From time to time,” Dior once wrote in his 1956 autobiography, Christian Dior and I, “Madame Bricard emerges from her hatboxes, sails in magnificently, gives one definitely adverse comment, condemns an unfortunate fabric with a look or suddenly plumps for a daring color.”

Christian Dior & Mitzah Bricard (selecting ties to be sold as Dior accessories)

(Photo by Willy Maywald ~ ca. 1947)

Christian Dior working with Mitzah Bricard (left) and Marguerite Carré (right) on the Première soirée dress, Autumn−Winter 1955 Haute Couture collection

(Photo by Bellini)

Mitzah Bricard working with Christian Dior

The above three images are all courtesy of: Blog studio

Following Christian Dior's demise, it was the youthful Yves Saint Laurent who took over the helm from January 1958 to July 1960, the two years in which Saint Laurent presented six collections for the House of Dior, and in which he introduced the ‘Trapeze’ and the ‘Arc’ lines; his last collection, for Autumn-Winter 1960, Saint Laurent entitled Suppleness, Lightness, Life. In the twenty years following Christian Dior's death, very little—if anything—is known about the latter part of Madame Bricard's life. There are, however, a couple of tantalizing photographs of her with both Yves Saint Laurent and Saint Laurent's successor at Dior, Marc Bohan (along with Raymonde Zehnacker and Marguerite Carré), suggesting that she remained as part of the Dior personnel at least until the beginning of the 1960s.

The life of the woman born Germaine Louise Neustadtl but who lived as Mitzah Bricard—Christian Dior's ‘leopardess’: his muse; his confidante—came to an end in Paris on December the 13th, 1977. More than forty years after her passing (and more than seventy years after the foundation of Maison Dior), the specter of her image, along with her leitmotifs, still haunt—and permeate—30 Avenue Montaigne.

(Sources; Fury, A., The New York Times Style Magazine, Maria Grazia Chiuri and the History of Women at Dior, October 3, 2016; Fury, A., AnOther Magazine, The Talismans of Christian Dior Haute Couture, January 29, 2016; Dior Mag, 12 February 1947 - 12 February 2017: The New Look Fashion Show; Laroche-Signorile, V., Le Figaro, 1947: Le New Look de Christian Dior révolutionne la mode, January 21, 2015; Fraser-Cavassoni, N., Monsieur Dior: Once Upon A Time, Pointed Leaf Press, 2014; Jones, D., Vogue (UK), Autumn/Winter 2009 Couture: Christian Dior, July 6, 2009; Foreman, K., WWD, The Muse: Mitzah Bricard, February 27, 2007; du Plessix Gray, F., The New Yorker, Prophets of Seduction, November 4, 1996)

“She was his dancer and courtesan. With her rustling silks, her poses, her pearls and her points of view on everything and nothing, she was feminine seduction incarnate.” ~ Alexander Liberman

Image courtesy of: diktas

Image courtesy of: Pinterest

Above two photos: Yves Saint-Laurent with Mitzah Bricard, Marguerite Carré & Raymonde Zehnacker~ 1958

Roger Vivier, Raymonde Zehnacker, Marguerite Carré, Marc Bohan, Mitzah Bricard, Jacques Rouet, Kouka & Suzanne Luling photographed by Richard Avedon for Harper's Bazaar ~ 1961

Image courtesy of: The Richard Avedon Foundation

“Madame Bricard is one of the rare people for whom elegance is their sole reason for living.” ~ Christian Dior