Dress
After Geneviève Antoine Dariaux
After Geneviève Antoine Dariaux, A Guide to Elegance (Doubleday, 1964; reprinted HarperCollins, 2003). Dariaux was the directrice of Nina Ricci's Paris couture salons. The book runs 224 pages, organised alphabetically from Accessories to Zoology.
The Argument
Dress is the first domain because it is the most immediately personal: it is the discipline one practises every morning, in the most literal possible act of composition. The six principles the wiki derives from Dariaux are not fashion rules. They are principles of selection, judgement, and self-knowledge — applied to the specific material of clothing.
The domain's thesis: elegance in dress is not a function of wealth, of beauty, or of access to the right shops. It is a function of discipline — the discipline of subtraction, of self-knowledge, of attention to the silhouette rather than the trim, of discretion before eight and intention after it.
The Figures
Dariaux teaches by example. The figures she names — by name, in writing, without flinching — clarify what the principles alone leave abstract: Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II, Duchess of Windsor, Princess Diana, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, Rita Hayworth and Elizabeth Taylor.
Known Limits of the Source
The book was written for a specific social register — Hermès as a baseline, couture as a reference point. Some prescriptions apply by analogy only at different price points. Gender essentialism runs throughout. Some fashion-specific conventions are of their era. The argument beneath them is usually timeless.
- I
Elegance is Selection
Not wealth — choice.
No woman has ever lacked elegance because of an excess of simplicity but always because of an accumulation of elaborate details or of ensembles that are badly co-ordinated or ill-adapted to the hour and the occasion.
- II
Quality Over Quantity
Few perfect things, worn often.
The cost of an item is its price divided by the number of uses plus the pleasure and confidence it gives. The marked-down item worn once is more expensive than the costly item worn constantly.
- III
Self-Knowledge
Before any choice, an honest mirror.
To be elegant is first of all to know oneself, and to know oneself well requires a certain amount of reflection and intelligence.
- IV
True Fashion vs Passing Fashion
Anchor to the silhouette. Ignore the trim.
True Fashion is the deep current that changes the silhouette every four or five years — the work of a particular creator, marking an epoch. Passing Fashion is the seasonal ripple concerned with details and trimmings.
- V
Discretion Until Eight
The day belongs to restraint. The evening, to brilliance.
Evening is the only time of day when a woman has the right and even the duty to call attention to herself.
- VI
Chic and Elegance
One can be learned. The other cannot.
One baby in its crib may have chic, while another doesn't. Elegance, by contrast, can be acquired by any woman of intelligence, discipline, and self-knowledge.
The Wardrobe
Dariaux’s inventory by hour — from nine in the morning to late evening.
Exemplary Figures
The women Dariaux names by name — with her verdict on each.