If you were a millinery fan but didn't know anything about Madame Paulette, the elegant cover and the picture of a model in an asymmetric shell-shaped velvet cap on the second page of Hats by Madame Paulette - Paris Milliner Extraordinaire (Thames & Hudson) by Annie Schneider would be enough to prompt you to become the number one admirer of Pauline de la Bruyère, "queen among milliners and milliner to queens".
Born in 1900 in Paris, Pauline Adam was schooled in Switzerland and, upon her return to France, she went to work as assistant house model at Maison Lewis, Paris. When she turned 20, she moved to Brunet et Verlaine, a new millinery house where she worked as designer and saleswoman. Three years after she got married and, in 1925, she left her job and decided to risk it all by opening her own salon on Rue de la Pépinière.
Clients arrived pretty soon and her success prompted Pauline to move again, this time to Rue de Ventadour in 1929, where she adopted the name Paulette for her label. Paulette won the hearts of many loyal clients (among them quite a few wealthy South American socialites) all of them attracted by her style, elegance and technique.
In 1939 she opened new salons and workrooms in 63 Avenue Victor-Emmanuel III, decorated by architect Jean-Claude Dondel. Paulette left Paris when the war broke out, but returned again in 1940 to reopen her atelier and save her seamstresses and saleswomen's jobs.
The designer became known for innovating millinery, coming up with new shapes and extending hats with scarves of tulle, organza and wool.
An improvised turban she made for herself with a black jersey scarf launched a new fashion - the turban bicyclette (bicycle turban) - ideal as a solution to hat and hairstyling problems during the shortage.
Though she was summoned up to the German command post and told to moderate her more extravagant designs, Paulette was in the end never forced to close her atelier during the war. Her business actually boomed at the very end of the conflict: she employed 120 people, including permanent house models, and she started collaborating with fashion designer Robert Piguet, who became an admirer and dear friend to the milliner.
Taking part in the touring exhibition Théâtre de la Mode meant that Paulette started getting more clients from other countries, including the States where she found a famous supporter in Harper's Bazaar's editor-in-chief Carmel Snow.
In those years Paulette managed to produce at least 800 hats a month, among them berets, capelines with fine veils, pillbox hats (she launched the pillbox in 1946), skullcaps, fitted bonnets, felt hoods, draped turbans and toques, travelling hats, evening headdresses and close-fitting caps.
All her designs could be considered as carefully constructed architectural pieces, at times featuring stiffened spirals and pointed shapes or inspired by modern artworks like Calder's mobiles. British milliner and buyer Otto Lucas very aptly dubbed her "the architects of hats" to highlight her perfect construction techniques that respected the shapes and proportions of a woman's face.
The milliner of choice for many glamorous events and sumptuous balls such as Don Carlos de Beistegui's, Paulette also created hats for the theatre and ballet. A friend of set and costume designer Christian Bérard, she designed fancy hats for Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud's Amphitryon by Molière, basket-like headdresses for Louis Jouvet's Don Juan and pieces for Les Parents Terribles, Jean Cocteau's film adaptation of his own play.
The '50s brought new successes with two collections a year and more designers buying the rights to reproduce her designs (Biki among them). Paulette also opened a shop in Buenos Aires in 1948, a special department in Harrods, London, and corners in department stores in America, where she was honoured and revered.
Though Paulette contributed with her designs to many films, theatrical performances, and cabaret shows (and she provided unique hats for film stars, socialites and royalty), her most famous pieces remains the ones she created to match Cecil Beatons' costumes in the films An Ideal Husband (1947), Gigi (1958), and My Fair Lady (1964). Directed by George Cukor, this adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion features Audrey Hepburn wearing Paulette's iconic enormous capeline piled high with ostrich feathers and topped with a black and white striped ribbon bow.
The '60s brought new changes in fashion and, while her esteemed clients still bought hats for grand occasions and gala evenings, milliners started disappearing from the scene. Paulette continued designing, though, producing new shapes, focusing on chignon covers and cascades of feathers, and, refusing to close down, she entered into collaborations with Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana.
Paulette was in her early eighties at the time, but the pieces she produced were the tangible proof of her inexhaustible imagination: there were skullcaps with insect embroideries, catwoman masks and dragonflies made of coloured organza on Mugler's runways, while for a Montana catwalk show she had models sporting hats with letters spelling the name of the designer.
Marking the 30th anniversary of her death (Paulette died in September 1984), Hats by Madame Paulette is a must for milliner fans (and for fashionistas obsessed with turbans...): Schneider is married to Madame Paulette's son and is therefore not only familiar with her life and family archives, but also with her time-consuming method for making hats that is explained in detail.
The book includes beautiful pictures of Paulette's hats, plus sketches, drawings, illustrations and glamorously elegant images by iconic photographers such as Richard Avedon (check out the the infamous "Rabbit Ears" hat that Avedon photographed and that reappeared as the "bunny ears" designed by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton's Autumn/Winter 2009/2010 collection), Willy Maywald and William Klein (Paulette's designs were photographed also by Horst P. Horst, Henry Clark, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin).
Apart from focusing on fashion history, millinery, style and elegance, the volume - accompanied by a foreword by Stephen Jones, who was dubbed by writer Patrick Cabasset in 1986 "la nouvelle madame Paulette" - is also about empowered and strong women. According to Paulette, hats were indeed a way of behaving, they offered the wearer the opportunity to try out a different personality, and that's why she often advised women who weren't brave enough against hats. Entering Paulette's world will feel for some readers like embracing the brave challenge of wearing a hat, transforming themselves and face the world, just like the French women who opted for her turbans would do during the war.
Hats by Madame Paulette - Paris Milliner Extraordinaire by Annie Schneider is out now on Thames & Hudson.
Image credits for this post:
All images courtesy Thames & Hudson
1. Book cover for Hats by Madame Paulette - Paris Milliner Extraordinaire (Thames & Hudson);
2. Paulette in one of her workrooms, 1952;
3. Silk turban in shocking pink, 1944;
4. Paulette selects a photograph from a contact sheet, 1948;
5. Blond straw with velvet anemones and gouza feathers, 1946;
6. Black velvet chignon-cover with two ostrich-feather pompoms, 1965; Cascade of petals in black organza, 1965;
7. Beige veiled velvet decorated with two woollen pompoms, 1963;
8. Asymmetric navy straw, 1937.
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