1907. Gabrielle Chanel is making hats. Ernest Beaux is making perfume. Alice B. Toklas arrives in Paris and is introduced to Fernande Picasso by Gertrude Stein. What are the topics of interest to Mrs. Picasso? Hats and perfume.
Today we don't think so much about hats. But up into the early 1950's at least, hats were a topic of interest to women ... and men.
Today we don't talk so much about perfume. There are too many; they are too common. But this wasn't always so.
In Gertrude Stein's "autobiographical" dialogue for Toklas, "[Fernande Picasso] had a true French feeling about a hat, if a hat did not provoke some witticism from a man on the street the hat was not a success."
When Chanel and Beaux began their famous collaboration on perfumes, it is said they would sit in a cafe and spray a bit of an experimental fragrance into the air as others passed. If the fragrance failed to provoke a reaction, they considered it a failure.
How times have changed.
Monday, April 25, 2011
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