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Archive for Marlene Dietrich

Embroidering The Wings Of Angels With Silver Beads

by Beverley
December 27th, 2011

L’Eglise Saint-Roch was filled with floral tributes from all the important names connected with Paris haute couture. The priest, Rev. Christian Lancrey-Javel said, as he helped lay a black lace shroud on the coffin, “The indefatigable Francois Lesage might be up there now busily embroidering the wings of angels.

I would never turn down an invitation to lunch with a very attractive Frenchman so when Francois Lesage invited me to lunch with him at Bistro Gardens in Beverly Hills in 1989 I accepted with great pleasure. And lunch naturally turned into a Santa Barbara News-Press column for me.

Francois Lesage & Beverley Jackson at I. Magnins

Following luncheon I went with him to the I. Magnin‘s department store, now also departed, in Beverly Hills to see the new House of Lesage collection of jewelry being sold there. Well it turned into quite an expensive luncheon because I could not resist a lovely coral and pearl bracelet I spotted.

Lesage coral bracelet

Now sadly I read in London obituaries that Francois Lesage has died at the age of 82 after a long illness. He was a truly charming gentleman with fine sense of humor and he was in a business that absolutely and totally fascinated me. In 1924 Albert and Marie Louise Lesage, his parents, purchased an embroidery firm Michonet which had once been embroiderers to Napoleon III. In 1925 they changed the name and it became the House of Lesage, an embroidery business specializing in a technique that enables a greater range of shades in beads or thread within one color and a wider range of different colors. Their technique was first put to use by the famous designer of the period Madeleine Vionnet.

At the age of 18 Marie Louise and Albert’s son Francoise left Paris and went to Hollywood to learn contemporary costume decoration from the famous studio designers including Edith Head, Irene, Adrian and especially my adored friend the late Jean Louis. One of the most famous dresses in the 20th century was the great gown Jean designed for Marlene Dietrich to wear in one of her Los Vegas performances and that gown was beaded by Lesage in Paris. To see the great Dietrich in this incredible gown, covered on entrance by the most glamorous luxurious white fox coat with train ever made, was a never to be forgotten experience. The beading was done on transparent silk and there was great debate about whether you could really see through it or not. I couldn’t tell when I sat up close for a performance in Las Vegas and Jean never confided the truth to me! He could be a real pixie!

Before Albert Lesage died in 1949 Francoise Lesage did well in Hollywood. He had ultimately opened his own boutique on the Sunset Strip where all the big stars were his customers. But it was goodbye Hollywood and all its glamour when Albert died. Back to Paris to take over the family firm.

However he went back to other stars, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Schiaparelli, Balmain, Dior, Givency… The beading that Lesage created for the great haute couture gowns can probably never be accomplished again in the future. The artisans who executed the designs are dying out, although looking ahead Francois set up am embroidery school in 1992 connected with his workshops for young people to learn the great techniques of embroidery and beading past. Chanel who bought the House of Lesage in 2002, following his example, have I understand recently purchased a famous Parisan feathermaker Andre Lemarie so that another ancient art can be passed on to future generations.

The two items I have ever most coveted in western design (we’re not counting imperial Chinese robes here!) were beaded by Lesage. One was a jacket for Saint Laurent solidly beaded on a design of Van Gogh sunflowers. The beading was done in layers to display the thick areas of paint in Van Gogh’s work. And the price of the jacket was in a range with a small Van Gogh painting of the time. And worth it. More than 600 hours of work went into each jacket. Speaking of value of work, the wedding dress Lesage beaded for King Khaled of Saudi Arabia’s daughter is said to have cost 60 million French francs, approximately 11 million U.S. dollars at the time. That’s a lot of beads, sequins and pearls! Or maybe real gems?

Luckily for me one of new things Francois ultimately did was go into a line of jewelry and beaded accessories created by Gerard Tremolet for Lesage in 1987. Lucky for me because I could finally afford Lesage — the bracelet and a pair of earrings!

The other piece I coveted was a Christian Dior ball gown from the collection of 1949. I won’t try to describe it but here is a picture. It was perfection! Several of them were sold. I saw one close up in an exhibition of Dior in New York at the Metropolitan Museum years ago. That gown had been made for Mrs. Byron Foy who had donated it to the museum. The other time I saw it was at the marvelous “Hommage a Christian Dior 1947-1957” exhibition in Paris in 1988. This exhibition also displayed framed “samples” of the great beading used on the gowns which were prepared for designers to chose from. For every collection, spring, fall, winter, summer from 250 to 300 samples were made by Lesage for their customers to chose from. One sample represents 40 to 60 hours of work and about 100,000 stitches. Each year Lesage uses 750 pounds of pearls keeping a lot of oysters busy! And 100 million sequins are used.

page from the book “The Master Touch of Lesage”

Brown Jacket with Lesage beading

Lesage beading does indeed deserve to be framed. Or preserved somehow. A very old Galanos dress that could never fit again but had great Lesage beading found a second life as part of a brown velvet jacket my clever dressmaker and friend Quy created. Quy was fascinated working on it as there was some cutting and piecing needed and the Lesage work was so finely done not one single bead came loose in the process. I found an original design for beaded work in “The Master Touch of  Lesage” by Palmer White that was created originally for Karl Lagerfeld in 1986. Comparing it with my embroidery, Jimmy Galanos might have been influenced by that design for Lagerfeld, eliminating a very elaborate border of a supposed ruby and diamond Cartier necklace and going heavy on tiny yellow, orange, red and white sequins. If  I’d found this earlier in life I could have tried to verified it. Galanos was a close friend of the late Maggie and Jean Louis and we were together at their New Year’s eve parties in Montecito most years. This comes to mind as New Year’s eve is upon us now.

Francois Lesage, working with his skilled beaders and embroiderers, produced great beauty during his lifetime. In my opinion he deserves to be considered a great artist. And as I said originally, a very charming man.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories Editorial, My Life

Let’s Talk MAJOR Movie Legends: Kirk Douglas, Marlene Dietrich & Rita Hayworth

by Beverley
August 23rd, 2011

Today is sort of movie legend day. I originally was going to tell you only about a secret concerning Rita Hayworth’s legendary strapless satin gown from Gilda and details of the famous gown and coat Marlene Dietrich wore in Las Vegas, both designed by the late Hollywood designer Jean Louis.

However I got a very disturbed email this morning from my good friend Kathleen Fetner without whom there would be no blog. Kathleen came into my life when a friend in Atlanta, GA, Joan Aherns gave me Kathleen’s name when I needed someone to do my first website in 1998 for my first book, the once-again newly reprinted Splendid Slippers – A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition. Kathleen is a genius. What more can I say. She can deal with me trying to do things I’m incapable of doing on this PC for starters. She can get me out of all the messes I manage to type my way into. She can make photographs of shoes for bound feet and women with bound feet revolve in my blog, and my latest Tweets magically appear going round and round as well. She can find things like ancient video on Florence Chadwick swimming and Russian Cossacks marching in Shanghai in 1937 it would never occur to me to look for. Well, as I said there would be no By The Way nor Beverley Jackson blog without Kathleen. And further more I couldn’t be without her as a friend.

Now what upset Kathleen? A Terrible Tabloid she saw while checking out at the supermart. While I might sometimes secretly succumb to picking one up and peeking to see if someone famous is really having a wild affair with someone I know???? Kathleen would never dignify the TT’s by even a glance. But she had broken her rule when she saw the name Kirk Douglas in headlines. Knowing Anne and Kirk are adored friends of mine she sent me a very upset email. Is Kirk barely able to walk, is it true he’s never learned to talk again since his stroke, etc etc etc.

I immediately answered Kathleen with a quick email from my iPhone as I was walking to my car, late as usual. “Saturday before last I dined at Mollie’s Trattoria with Anne & Kirk & the super bright young man who is working with Kirk on the latest book he’s writing. We parked in the garage in Mollie’s building. That garage is in the basement & there are two flights of stairs up to Mollie’s. Still using the cane due to the fall I recently had I took the elevator. Anne, a fine athlete still, graciously took elevator with me. Kirk and his young pal TORE up the two flights of stairs to beat our elevator up. And they did! Then Kirk talked more than any of us at dinner. Don’t even glance at the TT’s anymore!”

Now with Kirk’s situation clarified in case any of you secretly look at the Terrible Tabloids, let’s get on to Rita Hayworth. For a very long time the strapless satin gown Hollywood designer Jean Louis created for her to wear in Gilda was the most copied gown in history. Now I suppose Princess Diana or the Duchess of Cambridge‘s wedding gowns will hold that honor. But in its day that Gilda dress was IT!

Maggie and Jean Louis, who lived in Santa Barbara/Montecito their last years, were very special friends. Miss Rosie O’Grady, my introduction to wirehair dachshunds, was a gift from them. Maggie always named all their dogs good Irish names. Rosie came to me because the five Jack Russells that the Louis had before they found neglected lost Rosie didn’t like the new addition to the Louis household and it got dangerous for Rosie. I learned Jack Russells in a pack cannot be trusted. The five at Maggie and Jean’s ultimately killed the family cat after living with it for years. And they killed a little white poodle who arrived with a friend of Maggie’s for a painting session after the owner disregarded Maggie’s warning not to take the dog out of the car. So Rosie came to me and had a very happy safe long life!

I delighted in getting Jean to tell me about gowns he had designed for Hollywood glamour queens — Gene Tierney, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Lana Turner, Claudette Colbert, Marilyn Monroe (he designed the much photographed gown she wore the night she sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy.) I was particularly interested in the strapless satin gown Rita Hayworth wore in Gilda. And the incredible beaded seemingly see-through creation with great white fox coat with a seemingly endless train that trailed behind Marlene Dietrich which Jean produced for her last Las Vegas show. I flew to Las Vegas to see that show as I was a great Dietrich admirer and I did want to see the dress she supposedly had to be sewn into before going on stage. It was well worth the trip. She/it were fabulous!

At one point I read that some collector had paid a great deal of money to buy the original Gilda dress. That was before costume collecting became such a big thing and prices really skyrocketed. I asked Jean about it. He smiled that sweet innocent smile of his, looked at me and said, “I wonder which one they got?” Then after chuckling to himself he added, “I knew that dress was being worn in a major scene in the film and it would endure a real beating with take after take after take. So I secretly made three identical dresses.” Now the secret is out.

Maggie and Jean were wonderful people and they gave the BEST parties. Their New Years Eve parties were very special, always with interesting assortment of guests like brilliant American designer James Galanos and members of the Moroccan royal family. At one of their large parties my dinner partners were Rudolf Nuryev on one side and Alexander Godunov on the other. I’m talking MAJOR ballet greats here! This party was actually the beginning of a treasured friendship with Rudi Nuryev. One thing that kept that friendship going to be honest wasn’t that I made him laugh or he enjoyed my company. It was that he collected Chinese robes and I had much better ones than he. There was one robe in particular he coveted, an emperor’s robe with superb embroidery. I kept telling him I’d leave it to him when I died and he kept hoping to get it sooner. Then he went and died! The robe is now in an important American museum. I’d rather Rudi had had it.

with the late Rudolf Nureyev & Jean Louis in my living room

Rudolf Nuryev, Jean Louis and me. One of my Chinese robes Rudi tried to get me to give him was the brown imperial princess robe with branches of plum blossoms hanging behind us in my living room

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com
Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend
Categories My Life

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