Ginette Spanier

Ginette Spanier0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

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How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? Our castaway this week is Directorese of a celebrated Paris fashion house. She's made many appearances on radio and television in this country. It's Jeanette Spagnet.

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Madame Spagnier, how well could you resign yourself to Lendlin's?

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Very, very badly.

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I would hate it.

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What would you be happiest to have got away from? Getting up in the morning, definitely that. It really is the thing in my life I detest the most.

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On this island you can please yourself you can stay in bed until the afternoon, if you like.

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Does music mean a great deal to you?

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Yes, it does, and especially light music, because I've been a record addict all my life from the day of my first gramophone when I wound it up, now to, when I live in Paris, the light program, which I play a great deal because we hear it beautifully in Paris, and luckily, we can hear it at night.

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Did you have any plan in choosing your eight record?

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Nostalgia, what it would remind me of, of all the different phases of my life that I love. What's the first one?

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Private Live

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Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Why'd you choose this? Oh, it was the glamour of my youth. The absolutely unattainable as far as I was concerned. I come from a bourgeois family. I was very strictly brought up.

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And it was the theatre, which I love more than anything, which I still do. And Noel Coward was my dream. You always had a sweet voice, Amanda.

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Thank you.

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What exactly were you remembering at that moment?

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Lots of things. So was I.

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What fools we would have ruined it all!

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What are the other

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He was so ridiculously over-in-love.

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And yet

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Here we are starting off with two quite different people, in love all over again.

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Nero Card and Gertrude Lawrence in a scene from Private Lives. What's your next, Royce?

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From High Society, Frank Sinatra.

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Singing You're Sensational from the film. Why do you choose this?

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It is the sort of theme song of a very, very happy time in my life. And I who am, as I told you, a record addict.

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I always go back to Sinatra.

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When I'm in doubt of what to choose, he gives me great pleasure.

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I've no proof.

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When people say you're more or less aloof

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But you're sensational.

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I don't care.

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If you are

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Frank Sinatra

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Madame Spagnier, are you English or French?

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Oh, I'm British. I was born in Paris.

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Spent my very early childhood in Paris, but was brought up in England and am extremely British. What was it your first ambition to be?

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I suppose something to do with the theatre, but I didn't have the guts to do anything about it.

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What was your first job?

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Well, after a very spoilt childhood and youth, I had to earn my living because of financial necessity and I got a job in a store in Piccadilly as a shop girl.

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That's really when my enjoyment of life started.

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Properly. You enjoyed selling things. I loved selling it that first day and 35 years later. I still love selling. I hate buying. I'm a rotten shopper, but I still love selling. What did that first job lead to? Did you stay with that store?

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a short time because I was ambitious and wanted to have better jobs and I did get them by very hard work.

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You went to live in Paris because you married a French woman.

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Yes, I married a Frenchman in 1939, which is a rotten year to have chosen, except I was very much in love with this Frenchman, and we didn't want to be parted during the war. And you stayed in France right during the war? Yes, we moved 16 times. My husband is Jewish. I'm Jewish.

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I'm being niche as well. So it was the whole mixture was what the Germans disliked the most. We moved, as I say, 16 times, pursued by the Germans for four and a half years. I fainted from hunger in the street, became almost blind from malnutrition.

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And that was nothing compared to not being able to say what one felt and not being with the people one loved. And when the war was over?

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We bicycle through the German lines into the

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British and American lines and then we got to Paris and my husband started up his practice again and I worked for the American army.

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went to Nuremberg for the trial and then came back and got a job in the Utgutur with Pierre Bernard. How did that happen?

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Marvelous chance and coincidence, like all the wonderful things that happened to me.

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Well, we'll hear about this chance and coincidence in a minute or two. In the meantime, let's have your third record. What next?

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I have chosen

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The song called Now sung by Lena Horne.

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Why? First of all, because I love Lena. I think she's beautiful. And as you know, I love beautiful people, men and women. And I never get used to that. And I love her as a person. And then it's a song against racial discrimination, whatever the people discriminated against are.

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I was one, so I know what it feels like.

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Uh

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Uh

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Here's the moment now.

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Is the moment on we put it off not enough?

Ginette Spanier6:24

No more waiting, no hesitating now. Now, come on, let's get some of that stuff. It's there for you and me, for every he and she just wanna know what's right constitutionally. I went and took a look in my old history book. It's bad.

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Lena Horn.

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So by chance you got a job with Pierre Belmont. How did it happen?

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The daughter of a friend of mine from London came to stay with us. My husband and I were absolutely penniless. This was just after the liberation. And our mind wasn't a bit on expensive clothes. But as a treat, this child was allowed to choose two dresses from the new man, Pierre Balmer, whom frankly I had never heard of. So we dressed ourselves up most beautifully, I thought.

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and went in there looking very chic. Apparently I looked quite terrible.

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Who says this, Monsieur Belma?

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Monsieur Barnard and almost every member of the staff that I come across quite regularly over the last 18 years.

Ginette Spanier7:26

In years

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But still, I thought I looked great. That's what clothes are for. They make people look great. And saw the collection, went into a fitting room to get the clothes for the little girl. I was a little bit strict with the vendors. A lady came over to me and I thought she was going to offer me the mink or the sable coat. And she said, it's a woman like you we need in this firm. It was Pierre Balmain's mother. I started work for her son next day. And that's just about to the day, 18 years ago. And now as Directrice, you're in charge of the whole selling side of the organization. You don't have anything to do with the design. No, I can't. I don't know where to put a button. Monsieur Balmain does all the designing. I look after a customer from the moment she comes up the stairs to the moment her dress is delivered to her. That means I'm responsible for everything without actually doing any of the things myself. I'm responsible. Yes. And Balmain is one of the six or seven leaders in the world of old corporations. Yes, definitely.

Ginette Spanier8:26

Yeah.

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Now a woman going to the salon, one of these gentlemen, would expect to pay up to how much, for example?

Ginette Spanier8:32

Up

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Anything she wants.

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Anything she's got. If she's going to be embroidered and if she has the fantasy of adding fur to it, it can reach fifteen hundred pounds, which is not a very frequent sale.

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At the minimum for a simple day dress. Let's not talk about minimums. Let's say what an English couture asks. We're just about the same. We have the same expenses. That's what it comes down to. Are prices firmly fixed or is there a certain amount of cut and thrust?

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There is thrust from the customer, but me being the British governess of the Haute Couture, which is my official name in Paris. There is no question of any nonsense. The prices are fixed and that's what they pay.

Ginette Spanier9:16

The middle.

Presenter9:17

Apart from private customers, there is of course commissioned work for theatre and films. Yes, that we love doing. And of course, the buyers from all over the world who come and buy our models twice every year. This is legitimate business and a big part of the business as well. Madame Spanier, what is your definition of chic?

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Oh, the thing I love, like star quality, that little bit of gold dust.

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That people

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have been sent down from heaven with. Not necessarily expensive clothes. Definitely nothing to do with it.

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Now a girl in a cotton frock can have chic and a lady in a mink coat can make it look like rabbits. That means she hasn't got chic.

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Let's have your fourth record. It's Laurence Olivier on the death of King George VI, a piece he wrote.

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himself and spoke from a pulpit in a church.

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In America where he was the death of the king.

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It stands for me for everything I really love best in the world, which is England. I'm sorry to sound rather corny and high saluting, but it's what I would have liked to fight for during the war and what I think of every day.

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The king is dead.

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Long live the king!

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has been an oft repeated cry in the night through the centuries of British history.

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Only three times since England was one realm up to the present time.

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Have we announced the king is dead?

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Long live the Queen.

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though a third variation must have been heard on the death of Mary Tudor.

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and a fourth.

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on the deaths of Anne, Elizabeth, and Victoria.

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Flaurence Olivier.

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On the death of King George VI.

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Madame Spaniard, the collections are shown twice a year.

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I presume there is consultation among the fashion leaders as to what the new line will be. Absolutely not. No two couturiers have ever agreed about anything. Can you imagine them getting together and oh no, everything is done in absolute secrecy.

Ginette Spanier11:10

But it can be

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Can it be sheer coincidence that they all hit on a certain hemline or a certain style twice a year? It isn't a question of coincidence. It seems that there is an evolution to line, and that it's normal that what I am wearing today should give birth to the dress that I shall be wearing in six months' time. What happens to an odd man out, a couturier who loses the beam, as it were, and goes off on his own? They all try every single season. Very rarely they succeed, like Chanel in 1918 with the flat look.

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And dure after the last war with the new look.

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But otherwise, they have to come back into the fold and

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trim down their combs to the general line. How many dresses are there in a collection? Between 150 and 200 in each collection. Shown by the staff maniac. Yes.

Ginette Spanier12:05

Manica.

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We have eight Manikans.

Ginette Spanier12:07

Manca.

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to show them every single day at three o'clock.

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People don't realize that we show a collection every day of the year. Yes. Now, a customer sees a gown on a mannequin and orders it. This gown is then copied to the customer's measurement. Yes. The ones that are shown on the run were the prototypes and the customers by it changing now and then the color of the material and it made to her measurement.

Ginette Spanier12:31

Maybe

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Many copies could be made of each model gun. Oh, the more the better. We're a business. Then, after a while, the design is sold to the mass producers of ready-made clothes. No, no, no. The mass producers come in on the first day and buy a copy like everybody else, like a reproduction of our prototypes. And at the end of the season, we sell off the models to people lucky enough to have the size of the mankind. Is the collection shown only in Paris, or do you take it around? Every single day in Paris, and then we have excursions to places like Deauville and Tokyo and New York.

Ginette Spanier13:04

Yeah.

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Now Paris isn't any more the undisputed fashion centre, is it? There's competition from Rome and London. I'm horrible.

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But of course it is the undisputed

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center for the birth of fashion. Else, why would all these people from New York and Rome come and see and buy our models twice a year? Obviously there's competition, but in what business isn't there competition? Yes, if I may understate, it is not a calm life, is it?

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Oh no, it's violently hysterical. Try putting 600 women in a place where a window is never opened and those 600 French women. Oh dear.

Ginette Spanier13:46

Yeah.

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Let's have record number five.

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Go Away From My Window sung by Marlena Dietrich.

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Why do you choose this one?

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Well, because um though

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I'm devoted to Marlena as a friend. It there that isn't the reason for that.

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It's because she represents the glamour of the theatre that was revealed to me the first time after standing in a pit queue when I was at school and seeing Matheson Lang in the purple mask.

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I only well.

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Beauty was open to me.

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And when I go and hear her?

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I'm not disappointed. There's still the answer to that one the wonder.

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And I've chosen this record because I think she sings it beautifully. I love Bert Bacharach's arrangement and the bra.

Ginette Spanier14:35

Uh

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Yeah.

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does a great deal for me and will

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Give me.

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Something to think about on my island.

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Go away for my window.

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Go away.

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On my door

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Go away, wait, away from my bedside

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Wait, wait, wait.

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Uh

Speaker 414:57

Yeah.

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Then bother me no more.

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Bother me.

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No more

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Marlena Dietrich, what's number six going to be? The concerto for piano in D minor played by Rishta. I think it's really time that I had some classical music and got away from the sickly nostalgia of my other records. And Bach.

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In the way of classical music is my favorite, and at least I'll be able to get my brain clear. And I've always wanted to know perfectly.

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A classical record. Every path

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Every instrument, every note.

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The opening of the Bach piano concerto in D minor Richter with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Panospagnier, how well could you look after yourself on this desert island? You've already confessed you can't cook.

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Apart from that, I'm just going to get sunburned.

Ginette Spanier16:53

I'm just

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I'm going to be awfully bored. I should love lying in the sun and getting brown. But once I'm brown, I'm just going to look up at the sky and hope that a helicopter will come and save me. I'm sure it will. No eating at all. Oh, I'll find something to eat, won't I? I hope I'll learn to swim.

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I'm awfully frightened of the water for the moment, but I've always longed to have time to get used to the water and I'll find a little cave where I can sleep. I'm not going to do anything about it otherwise.

Ginette Spanier17:13

Yeah.

Ginette Spanier17:18

You know

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Would you try to dress your hair, look after your clothes?

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Well, I put my clothes in a neat little pile so that they're nice when I'm saved. Otherwise, I hope I'll be able to concoct a bathing dress. I'm not going to do anything else like that. My hair is very short.

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And it'll be wet most of the time, so I hope it'll be tidy. And anyway, I won't be able to see myself. Will they? I won't have a mirror. Rock pools. Oh, I wouldn't dream of looking at myself. No, I shall hate that. You're quite convinced about this helicopter. You're an optimist. Absolutely certain. Everything wonderful has come down from the sky. Why shouldn't it? It doesn't have to be a helicopter. It may be an aeroplane. But I shall be saved after a certain time. And I hope that time won't be too long. Let's have another record.

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Well, I'm going to have another classical record because of my fuzzy brain must get hardened.

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So I've chosen the first Brandenburg concerto, again by Bach.

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The opening of Bach's first Brandenburg concerto, Yehudi Manuin, with the Bach Festival Chamber Orchestra.

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What's your last record? Nothing in French so far. Oh no, you know, I don't really like France very much. I've lived there very happily because I've got such a divine husband, but I'm delighted to get away from France. That's going to be one of the nice things of this island.

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So the girl who came to supper, Noel Coward's musical.

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And a song called London is a little bit of all right, sung by Tesioshi. Why'd you choose this? Now, this.

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Is London again, the London I miss, the London I love, and

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When you hear it, you'll understand why. It represents everything I miss.

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London is a little bit of all right, nobody can deny that's true. Bow bells, big ben, up to the eat and down again, and if you should visit the monkeys in the zoo, bring a banana, feed the ducks in Battersea Park, or take a trip to Kew. It only costs a tanner there and back.

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Or gallants in the palace yard

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Tessi O'Shea singing Nero Card's London is a little bit of all right from his Broadway show The Girl Who Came to Supper, a show we haven't seen yet and this recording isn't yet available in this country.

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Well now, Madame Spaniard, there are your eight records. If you could only have one, which would it be? Without any doubt, Frank Sinatra singing your sensational.

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and one book to take with you.

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Well, I have a black

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Loosed leaf.

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Notebook. In it, I've always written down my favorite quotations from books that I've read, from letters I've received, messages I have received, and this I would love to have with me. I'm thankful to say the book is.

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Only half full.

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So

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I imagine I might have a pencil in my pocket. You might well.

Ginette Spanier21:15

Yeah, you might well.

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I would like to use the entity half of the book to write my experiences on the island. I happen to love writing. I've only written one book, but it is one of the things that I enjoy the most in life.

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And one luxury to take with you.

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A lovely little silver box that was given to me by Nancy Spain and which I always have by me.

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and which I treasure very much.

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You better see that that little box is full of pencils. What a good idea. And thank you, Jeanette Spanier, for letting us hear your choice of desert island disc.

Ginette Spanier21:48

No.

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Well, I have to confess to you that

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It's been my dream to be on this program because it really is one of my favorites.

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And I'm very grateful to you for having invited me.

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Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.