“Is this the store?” Gaëlle asked with wide eyes.
“No, my dear.” Madame Cécile smiled at her innocence. “It’s the atelier, the workroom. Monsieur Lelong makes haute couture clothes.” Gaëlle wasn’t sure what haute couture was, but Madame Cécile made it sound very important, and the few garments Gaëlle could see nearly finished were beautiful. She was fascinated by what they were doing and the activity in the busy workroom. Lucien Lelong was one of the most important designers in Paris, overshadowed at the time only by Coco Chanel, whose close ties with the German High Command had caused her business to flourish during the Occupation. Lelong had been more restrained, although he had dressed their women too.
Gaëlle was still glancing around when a slim young man entered the room, and all the women snapped to attention and appeared to be even busier than before. Madame Cécile introduced him to Gaëlle. It was Christian Dior, Lucien Lelong’s star designer, and it had only recently been discovered that although he had important German clients, he had been passing information he gleaned from them to the Resistance for the entire Occupation. It made him a hero now, unlike Coco Chanel, who was not only accused of being a collaborator but was suspected of having been a German agent, and had rapidly left France for Switzerland when Paris was liberated. Dior’s sister Catherine had been in the Resistance too, and had been caught by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp for her subversive activities. Her brother was hoping she would be freed soon when Gaëlle met him.
“What do you think of her?” Cécile asked him in an undervoice about Gaëlle as she chatted with the seamstresses who were embroidering an evening gown. Every stitch of the clothing was handmade.
“As what?” The head designer looked distracted. He was working on samples for their spring collection, and he was worried about getting enough fabric to meet their clients’ demands. He gave Gaëlle a closer look then. “Pretty girl,” he commented, “beautiful actually. I wish we’d had her for our shows before the war.” But they still used models to show the clothes to clients. And with the Occupation over, once the rationing of fabric ended, Cécile was sure they’d do lavish fashion shows again. “Do we need her?” he asked Cécile.
“We will. But for the moment, not as badly as she needs us. She just came from Lyon. She lost her whole family during the Occupation. Mother, father, brother.” Cécile had asked her about her family. “She’s in Paris to find a job. She’s very young, just nineteen.”
“We can use her to model samples,” he said thoughtfully. “She’s beautiful and has a nice way about her. You can teach her how to walk and show the clothes. She has a natural ease and elegance I like,” he said, squinting at her as he appraised her. “She can be our good deed for the day. She probably needs one,” he said and smiled at the head of haute couture for the house. And then he noticed her hair. “Collaborator?” he asked in a whisper, with a worried expression.
“She says not.” Cécile had asked her that too, and then put in a good word for her. “I don’t know why, but I believe her. But someone in her home village didn’t, given the hair.”
“I’d like to believe she’s telling the truth,” the designer said, and Cécile nodded.
“Me too,” she agreed. There was an air of innocence about Gaëlle, good values, and poise beyond her years, probably due to the war.
“Why don’t you start her immediately? I have two new clients coming in this week. They’ve been here before but never bought anything. A fresh face always makes it more exciting.” She nodded, and he left the atelier then. A few minutes later Cécile took Gaëlle to her office, and they sat down.
“You start tomorrow, if you want to,” Cécile said, smiling at her. “You’re very fortunate. Monsieur Dior liked you, that’s what it takes around here, and you have lots to learn about how to walk and move and show the clothes to advantage. And you never speak to clients unless they speak to you,” she said sternly. “Where are you staying?”
“At a hotel, but I can’t stay there for much longer. I have to find a place to live.” She looked anxious about it, but was shocked and excited about the job. It was like a dream come true!
“We have an apartment for the models. You’ll be living with four other girls, and we expect you to behave like ladies and be nice to one another.” She said it like a school mistress, and she felt that way sometimes too, as Gaëlle stared at her in disbelief.
“How much will I have to pay there?”
“Nothing. It’s free, as long as you’re modeling for Monsieur Dior.” There were tears in Gaëlle’s eyes as she thanked her. She had a job and an apartment. She was going to be a haute couture model, and as she left the building a few minutes later, she whispered to the man at the door that she got the job, and he smiled broadly at her and gave her a victory sign. She was floating on air as she walked back to the hotel, and when she got there, she called to thank the curator at the Louvre who had given her the address. She sounded happy for her.
As Gaëlle packed her things at the hotel that night, she thought about how lucky she was. A whole new life had begun. The only thing missing was that she had no one to tell about it. No friends, no family. She knew that Rebekah would have been so excited for her. The only people she could tell were the doorman at Lucien Lelong, and the desk clerk at the hotel, who was busy and didn’t seem to care. But all that mattered was that she had a job. She was going to be a model for their head designer, Christian Dior. Gaëlle could only hope that her parents would have been proud of her.