Suzanne Belperron, one of the most talented jewellery designers of her generation, was a decade younger than Toussaint, but she too moved to Paris while still in her teens and she too had an instinctive understanding of the women she was decorating. Belperron, born Suzanne Vuillerme in the Jura in 1900 to a family with deep roots in the area, had won prizes at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Besan?on from the age of eighteen and went immediately to work with Jeanne Boivin, sister of the couturier Paul Poiret and widow of René Boivin, the most famous Parisian jeweller of his day. But at Maison Boivin, Suzanne could never be given credit for her highly individual creations; her work had to remain anonymous, an impossible scenario for a woman of immense talent and a strong personality to match. So in 1932 when Bernard Herz, the well-known Parisian pearl and gemstone dealer, invited her to work for him as Artistic and Technical Director with much greater freedom, she could not refuse. From now on, Vogue regularly featured whole pages with ‘dresses by Chanel or Mainbocher, jewels by Belperron’, thus linking the names of couturier and jeweller in a new way. In the months to follow, the relationship between these two branches of the luxury industry was of key importance. The name Belperron was suddenly vying for attention with the longer-established Cartier and Van Cleef. Yet little was known about the woman behind the name, which added to her attraction.
Suzanne had married the engineer Jean Belperron in 1924 and the young couple lived in Montmartre, where they made friends with many avant-garde artists. Her friend the beautiful Nusch Eluard, actress and occasional jewellery model, and wife and muse to the surrealist poet Paul Eluard, was photographed by Man Ray in Belperron creations. However, Suzanne saw clients at her private salon at 59 Rue de Chateaudun in the unfashionable 9th arrondissement. She never had a shop front, but her work – swirls of naturalist leaves and shells, an antidote to the then fashionable Art Deco, and the mixing of precious stones with non-traditional materials such as ebony or chalcedony – was highly sought after by trendsetters such as the Duchess of Windsor, Daisy Fellowes and Schiaparelli. Parisiennes whose trademark was shopping driven by word-of-mouth recommendations knew where to find her and recognized her bold, unsigned pieces. At the same time, Suzanne was becoming famous for her own personal style, her very short hair often covered by a turban, and, although an extremely private person, she was herself photographed by Horst and Man Ray, sometimes wearing magnificent clips, large cuffs or rings on her long fingers. Herz was a handsome man some twenty-three years her senior, with a large country house at Chantilly and an apartment in the Avenue du President Wilson in the chic 16th arrondissement. His own children – a married daughter, Mme Aline Solinsky, and a son Jean who was a prisoner of war – were now grown up. He became something of a father figure to Suzanne and quite possibly her lover too. Among her most precious possessions was a white gold and platinum lorgnette from which dangled two heart-shaped charms; inside were two photographs, one of her mother and one of Herz. But Herz, although born in Paris, was Jewish, which meant that from early 1940 Suzanne Belperron was looking into how to transfer the company into her name and run Maison Bernard Herz entirely alone.
Although in 1940 the United States had not yet joined the war effort, the American Hospital in Paris was one of the few organizations that was prepared. Rebuilt after the Great War with 120 beds for medical, surgical and maternity cases and three operating rooms in the wealthy Parisian district of Neuilly-sur-Seine in the west of the city, it had shed its 1920s reputation as an upmarket clinic providing succour for rich or famous Americans such as Ernest Hemingway and the Scott Fitzgeralds to become a first-rate hospital for all Americans in Paris. Now, once again, with the help of Ambassador Bullitt, it had to get ready to become a military facility able to deal with shrapnel wounds, gas attacks or damage from bombs, with a special unit set up for blood donations.