Hot Pink by Susan Goldman Rubin

Author:Susan Goldman Rubin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2015-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Leopard-skin booties, 1939–40.

With Jean Clément she introduced the first shoulder bag. She had asked Clément to adapt the small pouch worn by French railway guards that hung at the end of a strap. Schiap then lengthened the strap, enlarged the bag to be like the ones bus conductors wore to collect fares, and called it the bandoulière, or shoulder-strap bag. It became the rage in Paris, and everybody wondered what Schiap would do next.

Meanwhile, “Gogo was going places,” wrote Schiap. Gogo left Abbot’s Hill School in England and went to a school in Paris for a year. When Gogo was sixteen, in 1936, Schiap was asked to write an open letter to her daughter about fashion for the Daily Express, a British newspaper.

She began, “Dear Gogo, Soon now you will be buying your own clothes, so . . . I suppose I ought to give you a little advice.

“To begin with, you won’t have a big dress allowance, because I think it is a bad thing for young people . . . Your first inclination will surely be to buy as much as you can for your money. Don’t give in to it . . .”

Schiap believed that it was better to have a few well-tailored clothes that fit properly than many cheap, trendy outfits.

Two years later, Schiap opened a debutante department in her London salon, with clothes for young women her daughter’s age. By then Gogo was eighteen, but Schiap didn’t want her daughter to be involved in her haute couture business. And Gogo willingly stayed away from the world of fashion. She had gone from Paris to Munich to learn German but wound up taking cooking lessons. Gogo returned to London and “lived an enchanting life of early theatres, dance suppers, impressive balls,” wrote Schiap, and “for the first time enjoyed beautiful clothes.”

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