Closing the brothels represented the end of an era, an era when young provincial girls, usually in their early twenties, would be seduced into coming to Paris to seek fame and fortune, often enticed by a man who promised them love and riches, only to find that they had to work to support themselves. A brothel, complete with pimp or madam, was their only option. Some young girls, brought to Paris by a wealthy patron, such as Coco Chanel and Jeanne Toussaint, had made good in the city. But as is shown by the registers from La Petite Roquette (a women’s prison used for prostitutes) indicating that fewer than 20 per cent had been born in Paris and its immediate suburbs, most did not fare so well.
With the passing of the new law, furniture from the Belle Epoque bordellos was now auctioned, properties were sold and ‘Screw Marthe Richard’ was daubed on one famous brothel door as it closed. But the new system, whereby young women in garish clothes were seen plying their trade all too openly on the streets around the Rue Saint-Denis, just as they did in any other city, was not popular either and seemed to threaten Paris with losing its charm – for men at least. As Nancy Mitford wrote (incorrectly of Marthe Richard since she was not a deputy) of the brothels: ‘These, having lately been driven underground by the ill-considered action of a woman Deputy, had become rather difficult for a foreigner to find.’
But find them they still did. One of the best-known, which should have closed in 1946 but somehow managed to continue more or less legally as a ‘meeting place’, was L’Etoile de Kléber, whose upper rooms had housed Edith Piaf and friends for months at a time during the Occupation. Piaf may not have played an active role in any resistance group and she had performed in numerous brothels and nightclubs frequented by Germans or French collaborators or both. Yet, when she was brought before a post-war tribunal, Andrée Bigard had spoken in her favour, and she was forgiven. Her popular song, ‘La Vie en Rose’, although written in 1945, was not performed in concert for the first time until 1946 and immediately became a huge hit. Similarly, Charles Trenet – allowed to forget his far more questionable behaviour during the Occupation when he had performed at the Folies Bergère and the Gaieté Parisienne, favourite Wehrmacht haunts – now released ‘La Mer’, which also became a massive hit. Both songs captured the mood two years after the Liberation: namely that whatever the hardships and pain of war, it was time to move on and forget. Life in Paris was good.
The milliner Madame Agnès used new German fabrics such as fibranne (spun rayon) mixed with wool for her 1941 collection and praised the succesful combination of ‘French creation, German production’. Suzanne Abetz, wife of the German ambassador, sits behind the model on the right.
Day of Elegance on Bicycles, June 1942. Designers were constantly looking for ways to make riding a bicycle – a necessary means of transport in Paris without cars – appear elegant. Most tried to disguise the divided skirt since trousers were officially prohibited.
(left) Shortages of shampoo and electricity resulted in the closure of many hair salons and encouraged women to adopt a turban as the most fashionable way to hide dirty or uncoloured hair. This enterprising hairdresser is offering an open-air service in the sunshine.
(above) A 1942 evening clutch bag made by Boucheron. The inside contains a mirror and compartments for powder, lipstick, eyeshadow, a comb, cigarette box and lighter. Such boxes were fashionable when the possibilities for buying new jewellery were limited.
Women and children using metro stations that were deep underground as shelters from bombing raids, most of which targeted Greater Paris where factories were located.
Two girls walking in Paris with yellow stars sewn on to their clothing in 1942. This became law for all Jewish adults in May that year.
French buses used in the infamous round-up on 16 and 17 July 1942 of 13,152 Jews, including more than 4,000 children, held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver sports stadium in Paris with almost no food or water for five days before deportation to other camps, mostly Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Women and children trying to wash clothes in the courtyard at Drancy, an unfinished housing complex just outside Paris, which became the principal transit camp for French Jews before deportation to Nazi extermination camps.
Renée Puissant, who moved to Vichy following the Occupation to run her family’s jewellery business from the Van Cleef & Arpels boutique in Vichy. This photograph was taken weeks before her death in 1942.
Béatrice de Camondo Reinach, a convert to Catholicism, believed her wealth and close friendships with German riding companions would protect her. In 1943 she and her family were arrested and later killed in Auschwitz.