………………..July in Paris used to be the month the French designers presented their fall “COUTURE” collections………Recently, a very dear friend of Jac’s….Abel, sent me this photo from Instagram…….He though it was Jac, but wasn’t sure. I new instantly that it was Jac. The caption read Nina Ricci, Fall Couture. From the date I knew Jac was 17. When I confirmed it was Jac, Abel was so happy to have found it and was able to share it with me…Abel and I had gone to Parsons School together. He was a year ahead of me. We were not really friends in school. The head of the design department kept us very sequestered. One class didn’t mingle with the other. Mrs. Kagey [the head of the Fashion department] frowned upon upper class men associating with the lowly newbies….As fate would have it designing was not the course Able would take. He became a “booker” at the very prestigious Elite modeling agency (the best agency to be with), and Jac was one of his models. The booker was responsible for arranging everything for the TOP models, and he took very good care of Jac…We became friends through Jac. Funny how things work out…..She had told me that Nina Ricci was one of her favorite accounts for the French Couture, among others. I noticed in this picture her hair looked dark, and it wasn’t her natural light blond color. I know from the stories she told me that they would do all kinds of things to the models hair. The hair “designers” wouldn’t think twice about changing a models hair color on the spot to work with the designer’s collection. I think she may have been a red head for this particular Fall Couture show. I wish she were here to see the photo and tell me the story behind it…. She said there were many times she had to run to the hair salon right after a show to have them get her natural hair color back…There were times she came home from Europe in tears, because of how they ruined her hair by dying, crimping…all kinds of tortures…..Of course she was young and would never complain fearing she wouldn’t get booked for the next season. I think the makeup makes Jac look like a China Doll, and from the look of the embroidery that very well may have been the theme….The makeup must have been very colorful, but that’s another unanswered question…….She loved working for Nina Ricci, not because of the designer Gerard Pipart, who she said was very talented and very nice to her, but because of Gerard’s right hand person, Francis Touyarou……..Francis was considerably older then Jac , but he adored her and took Jac under his wing. He was quite tall, and slender with a bald head. He wore wire rimmed glasses. He dressed impeccably, and was quite distinguished. Jac often told me that the atetier, [the work rooms where all the magic happens], at Nina Ricci were some of the most beautiful she had seen, and the seamstresses were some of the finest she had ever worked with. Not once did she get stuck with a pin! The couture shows were very different from the ready to wear shows. The ready to wear shows had 25 to 30 plus models, and the fittings were really adjustments not true fittings. For the Couture it was a whole different story. The clothes were fit to you. Weeks before the fittings they had already taken exact measurements of everything you could possibly measure! On the week of her fittings the designer already decided what you were to wear, and the clothes were already made for you according to your measurements. They were all made by hand and sewn by hand..Due to all of the preparations the fittings were for the final sewing. A model had better not gain any weigh!!!…Only 10 to 12 models were booked for each Couture show which, as I said, took place in July. For the Couture each model walked the runway back and forth by herself before another model came out….after all you were looking at clothes that started at $20,000.00 for a day dress. The “House” wanted to make sure the editors, and more importantly the “clients” got a good look!……………………Paris can be a very lonely place for a 17 year old girl with no friends. Forget the models befriending you. You were just competition to them. They spoke different languages, and in general were not a friendly bunch especially to a new pretty face! Francis took Jac out to dinner often, and some nights they would finish the evening at one of the new exciting clubs like Le Club Sept, and Le Palace….Jac couldn’t do this too often because she had to get to bed for the next full day of work….She adored Francis…..We met a few years later in NYC, and we too became fast friends. When I was in Paris on business I would meet Francis at his apt. and we would go out to the newest trendiest restaurants. Having the position he did at Nina Ricci for so many years, and continued to have, it was never a problem for him to get a reservation…..everyone new him. Jac told me I had to see Francis’s perfume bottle collection….OMG!!!!!When I saw it my jaw dropped, and it takes a lot to impress me. He had the rarest bottles and they were all worth a fortune. They were, as Francis would say, SUPERB! He had started collecting when he was a young man going to auctions. He had glass cases in his apt where he beautifully displayed each bottle…..When Francis came to New York Jac and I would always have dinner with him at least twice……..Jac always sent Francis a Christmas card or a postcard from where ever we traveled……many from Anguilla. Francis would always send us post cards from his travels…..mostly from Pau, France, where he was from. It was in the Pyrenees, and he said it was SUPERB……It was Francis who got me to use that word…He just said it with such flare! and I new exactly what he meant…..it was the best, the finest, flawless……He would vacation in Pau each summer with his sister who Jac had met…..A few years ago the cards stopped coming……..Francis had passed away…..a member of our family was gone. It hit Jac hard, and a piece of her heart went with him. He was like the older brother she never had. We later learned Francis left his bottle collection to a very prestigious Museum in France………..These extraordinary people come into our lives like a BRIGHT BURNING STAR, and then disappear with the morning light……. I will never forget Francis, and his kindness to my very young and lonely Jac……or the stories Jac would tell me that made up her life. I wonder now if Jac really knew how impressed, and blown away I was by her……………….I know they are together now, and they are saving a place for me at the table.
