War Paint by Woodhead Lindy

Author:Woodhead, Lindy [Lindy, Woodhead,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-12-05T22:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE SECOND WORLD WAR - PART I London, Paris, New York 1939-1942

ELIZABETH WAS IN PARIS in the early summer of 1939 for the gala opening of her new salon in Place Vendôme, followed by a tour of her salons in the South of France and London. She took time out to visit the Paris couture collections, accompanied by Gladys, and even more time trying to persuade her sister to move back to New York to avoid the war in Europe. However, Gladys adored her husband, and since Henri de Maublanc welcomed the Germans, he insisted they were in no danger at all. The Elizabeth Arden company in France had been made over to Gladys several years earlier to avoid prohibitive French taxes on foreign ownership and it was now, somewhat reluctantly on the part of Elizabeth, made over to the name of Henri de Maublanc, where it would remain safe under Occupation, for the duration of the war. So supportive was Henri of the regime in Germany that during the late 1930s, when smoothtalking high-powered German visitors, members of Ambassador von Ribbentrop’s ‘charm squad’, as they were called, visited London to spread the good word about Nazi Germany, they were apparently made welcome at Arden’s Grosvenor Street offices. Such meetings were observed by a young employee called Joan Miller, who left shortly afterwards to take up war work as personal assistant to Charles Henry Maxwell Knight, aka ‘M’ – chief of MI5’s B5 (b) Section. Miller later wrote about her experiences, in a book the government tried desperately to ban, saying, ‘Elizabeth Arden’s London head office was used as a pre-war rendezvous point by the Gestapo.’ The outbreak of war put paid to any further Anglo-German hospitality via Henri, and it must be said that had Miss Arden known about such visits she would have been furious.

Edna Woolman Chase had also extended her summer trip to Paris and Europe that year and was lunching at Claridges with Teddy Haslam and Harry Yoxall, business manager of British Vogue, when a frantic message came through from her daughter Ilka, imploring her to come home. Mrs Chase sailed shortly afterwards on the SS Manhattan. The Americans in Europe seemed to take the threat of war more seriously than many of the British. Teddy Haslam wasn’t alone in hoping it ‘might not happen’. Boris Forter, Helena Rubinstein’s newly appointed UK manager, was convinced nothing too serious would evolve, and failed to stock up on staple ingredients, most of which then became impossible to obtain for the duration.

Helena’s sister Ceska, by now a widow and feeling isolated, was panicking to get out of London, convinced that bombing raids were going to start overnight. Her nephew Roy Titus, who had been working at the London office, was immediately recalled to New York and Boris Forter was, as he put it, ‘left holding the fort’ in the company of the Rubinstein chief accountant, Mr Slatter, while Ceska followed Roy back to America, remaining there in uneasy and underemployed exile throughout the war.

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