Throughout September the atmosphere in Paris was a panicky one as impoverished refugees were flooding in, soldiers drafted out and families, unable to decide whether to remain in the capital or travel to the coast, criss-crossed the country trying to find a place of relative safety. Most private cars were requisitioned and from now on travel, other than by train or bicycle, was difficult or impossible. Claire Chevrillon, the English teacher, and a social worker friend now began escorting women and children out of Paris into the country to save them from possible bombing attacks. To appear more professional and inspire confidence, Claire wore her scout uniform and carried the obligatory gas mask as she made several trips from the Gare Montparnasse on trains teeming with terrified women, rambunctious children and the sick and elderly. For the first few months after 3 September, Parisians of both sexes barely moved without the compulsory gas mask, so great was the fear of a gas attack. But as several newspapers noted: ‘Women in Paris Will Not Forsake Fashion in War’. Some designers seized the opportunity to create ever more ingenious fashion containers for gas masks, and it was not unusual to see the masks in leather or satin-covered boxes or in bags made of various fabrics as women tried matching them to their outfits. Jeanne Lanvin, one of the most popular designers, invented a cylindrical-shaped box with a long strap costing 180 francs, which was much coveted by a few wealthy Parisiennes.
Janet Teissier du Cros, a young Scotswoman married to Fran?ois, a Frenchman, observed how a handful of fashion-conscious Parisian women managed to remain looking chic in the dark, dirty and chaotic capital. She and her husband had been living in Edinburgh but concluded two days before war was declared that they should return as soon as possible with their small son, André, in order that Fran?ois could join his regiment to fight. Janet, having chosen to be in France to support her husband, later recalled feeling overwhelmingly that, in spite of the dislocation, uncertainty and upheaval, especially at railway stations, not to fight this time would be deeply shameful. As her sister, married to an American, put it: ‘If France and Britain don’t fight, however shall I face the Americans?’ Janet had studied music before her marriage and, for educated women like her, it was not so much a question now of how to avoid war as of how to win it once it came. Having said goodbye to her husband, she went south as quickly as she could with André to live with her in-laws, optimistic that the war would soon be over. As she boarded one train after another and then had to climb into an open cattle truck, she realized that by that stage ‘we were all looking pretty bedraggled. André was so filthy that I doubt whether I would have had the courage to touch him if he had been someone else’s child.’ But, as she settled on the floor of the cattle truck, she noticed another woman, probably on her way to visit her soldier husband, a true Parisienne dressed in a beautiful black, tailor-made suit with a white lingerie blouse ‘that was still really white’ and a small black hat which could have come only from Paris. ‘She was like a breath from Paris. Though she sat on the floor with us she never lost her air of neat elegance and the sight of her struck guilt into my soul for it reminded me that I had been taking advantage of circumstances to let my standards down, an unpardonable thing in France.’
The couture houses of Paris had shown their fabulous autumn– winter 1939 creations to the world’s buyers in April. Now the city’s thousands of dressmakers and ancillary workers in their ateliers were busy fulfilling orders. As Lucien Lelong, President of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, argued, ‘our role is to give France an appearance of serenity; the problems must not hamper the creators. It is their duty to hold aloof from them. The more elegant French women are … the more our country will show people abroad that it does not fear the future.’
For those who chose to look, 1939 had proclaimed itself a dangerous year from the start. Le Jardin des Modes was not alone among women’s magazines in keeping up a pretence of normality by advising its female readers in January 1939 how they too could dress their hair in a little chignon at the nape of their necks ‘à la Duchesse de Windsor’, or in March giving advice on ‘how to embellish, firm up and make younger looking breasts … a discovery which French women are passionate about’, the magazine insisted. The more upmarket Vogue published an advertisement for Helena Rubinstein make-up which proclaimed: ‘These days it is the duty of everyone, especially women, to communicate to those one loves, the optimism which results from confidence in oneself.’ The interesting logic behind the advertisement was presumably that wearing Helena Rubinstein make-up would help to win the coming war. It was an attitude driven home by editorials in all the magazines that autumn.
Some couture houses had responded to war by introducing military elements into their designs such as frogging, shoulder braid and tassels on the warm coats which were now essential for the long unheated train journeys. A few hats were created to resemble British busbies or French tricornes. But mostly the magazines responded with exhortations to keep up standards for the men’s sake. ‘For those who are at the front,’ declared Le Jardin des Modes on its September front page, ‘you must stay how they would like to see you. Not ugly.’ On its inside pages the magazine explained how all periodicals were required to reduce by 50 per cent the amount of paper they used, but ‘we decided in spite of the difficulties that our duty was to show the entire world that French fashion will continue in [these] serious circumstances to guide feminine elegance’.