‘Bonjour, mademoiselle, madame,’ the rather handsome Christian leaned over and kissed Fen’s hand, then that of Magda, while Pierre laughed and saluted them both from behind his drawing board.
‘These two men are geniuses,’ Simone gushed. ‘Their designs are so full of life…’
‘… And luxury,’ Pierre laughed. ‘Luckily for Mademoiselle Mercier here we like to dress her up like our younger sister and parade her around.’
Simone tutted and huffed in that particularly Gallic way, but Fen could tell she was in her element, being the darling of these two trailblazing designers.
‘Next let me show you the pattern designs,’ Simone pulled Fen along with her as the two designers waved them all off. Once out of earshot, she pulled Fen and Magda into a huddle and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone, but Christian is leaving soon, he says.’
‘Oh dear. That will be a loss for Monsieur Lelong.’ Magda sounded genuinely worried for the proprietor. ‘My mother used to come here in the twenties…’ her voice trailed off and Fen looked at her with concern. ‘I’m all right, I’m all right,’ Magda confirmed as she fished around in her handbag for a handkerchief.
Simone waited for Magda to finish blowing her nose and then carried on with her juicy piece of gossip. ‘It will be a disaster for this atelier, yes. Christian’s designs are out of this world, you know? They are in the new style, so fresh.’
‘Promise we won’t say a word,’ Fen assured her.
‘Good. I’m hoping that he might take me with him. If I’m still living in Paris by then, of course.’
‘Are you planning on leaving Paris?’ Magda asked but didn’t wait for an answer as she put her handkerchief back in her handbag and carried on. ‘I don’t think I could ever leave, not again. Never again.’
Fen slipped her arm into Magda’s and gave it a squeeze as Simone merely shrugged and led them into another room, this one full of rolls of fabric, all standing on their ends, like a vibrantly coloured version of the Giant’s Causeway.
Fen wanted to ask Simone what she meant about leaving Paris but was swept up by the sight of so much fabric. She remembered repurposing a pair of Mrs B’s old curtains to make a skirt during the war, and how Kitty had laughed at her as a rogue curtain hook had fallen out during a tea dance. Put it this way, the fabric in this room would have dressed the whole of West Sussex for the entirety of the war, with spare left over for the VE Day bunting.
‘Gosh aren’t these patterns wild!’ Fen ran her finger along a wide roll of brightly coloured silk, feeling the texture as much as seeing the pattern. ‘My friend Kitty would be in seventh heaven here!’
‘These are the fabrics for Christian’s new look, he’s very particular about them.’
‘I can see why, one yard of this is probably worth more than my entire wardrobe!’
‘Can you imagine,’ Magda joined in, ‘I used to come here and think nothing of ordering dress after dress. And now… well, same as you, Fen, dear, just being in this room is about as close to bespoke tailoring as I’ll get any time soon.’
Simone smiled and carefully tucked a stray few strands of her hair behind her ear. ‘I know what it’s like to be poor, too. Though I’ve never resorted to borrowing old lady’s clothes.’ She touched the fabric on the slightly unfashionable squared-off shoulder of Rose’s tea dress and laughed. ‘So thirties!’
‘Oh, well, I mean…’ Fen trailed off as Simone carried on talking, her manner suddenly less carefree.
‘Still, I would have only dreamed of a dress like yours back then. I was a young girl when Paris was in crisis, you know? The depression?’
Fen knew it well. It was The Crisis of Paris that had weighed on her mind heavily when she was deciding what to do for the war effort. She had witnessed the poorest in Paris starve back in 1934 when the shops ran empty and even bread was hard to come by. Her family had moved back to England the year after, but it had always haunted her, how it was the worst off in this world who suffered the most during times of depression, and how economic depression so often followed war…
‘We were starving. My father was out of work and my mother had died in the winter of ’33 from pneumonia. You might have been buying dresses here at Lelong, Madame Bernheim, but I was dressed in rags.’ Simone looked intensely at Magda.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Magda dropped her eyes and seemed to carefully examine the floor.
‘Tch, it is what it is. We have all been through hell and back these past few years. Back then, we were alley rats, vermin on the streets of Paris. My sister and I were old enough to help our father ply the streets but too young to realise what was happening. You could say that we were dying, but we didn’t know it.’
‘What happened?’ Fen couldn’t help but find it hard to tally the story Simone was telling her to the cosmopolitan young woman standing before her.
‘I realised I was beautiful.’ Simone paused as if waiting for Fen and Magda to agree with her, and sure enough they did both nod. ‘And I traded it as my best asset.’
‘Oh, I see…’ Fen was slightly shocked, while Magda took to examining the floor again.
‘No, not like that.’ Simone stood taller, more proud. ‘I was barely seventeen when the war started. A woman, yes, but not worldly, you know? But I modelled for artists and became a waitress and then I worked for the Resistance in the war as a lure for the Germans.’
‘A
