4
Emmanuelle Dirix
There can be no permanent loss of collective memory, only temporary self-inflicted amnesia.
WILKINSON (1996: 88)
This text is concerned with the use of the French tricolor in fashion and dress and, by extension, in the visual culture of the fashion press in Occupied France, and more specifically with questioning how the meaning of these fashion objects has been positioned within the postwar history of Vichy France.
While several important works have been written, most notably by Lou Taylor (1992, 1995a) regarding the issue of collaboration by the haute couture houses, little has been said about the actual material culture produced during the time, and even less about its potentially problematic symbolic nature. Dominique Veillon in her seminal work “Fashion under the Occupation” (2002) took a more traditional historic approach and gave a thorough descriptive overview of the “goods” produced, yet she only hints at the gray areas of their meaning and mostly remains neutral in her assessment concerning issues of collaboration versus resistance.
The absence of discussion about these (tricolor) objects’ potential variable symbolic meanings has resulted in the all too often unproblematic categorization of these items and images. Consequently, their existence is almost exclusively seen as a material manifestation of an underlying resistance to both the Vichy regime and the occupiers. This text wishes to challenge that their reading is this straightforward. Furthermore, it poses the argument that rather than being examined objectively and thoroughly as historic objects, they instead have been co-opted by, and utilized in, the creation of a postwar Vichy narrative imposed from above and all too easily adopted from below. Their ambiguous potential has been removed from, and by, postwar narratives, which have categorized them as a singular homogenous group, which, in turn, has hermetically sealed them against objective, substantiated interpretation.
Similarly, the role of material culture in the creation of memory, and specifically collective/popular memory, needs questioning. Collective memory for the purpose of this text is defined as:
The memory of a nation … (that) is created after reception of many signals. Here we have termed a vector everything that puts forward a voluntary reconstruction of events with a social end. Whether conscious or not, whether bearing an explicit or an implicit message, the many representations of an event all come together in defining a collective memory. (Rousso cited in Wilkinson 1996: 88)
By extension, it thus draws attention to the disjuncture between the past, conceived as everything that ever happened, and history, conceived as what agents of culture present the past to have been, and how objects have been co-opted into history rather than being treated as agents of the past.
It therefore makes a case against approaching material culture as indisputable evidence of history, and instead argues for it to be regarded as remains of the past and consequently for its reading to be opened up to allow for ambiguity that has the ability to expose and disrupt its often linear affirmative function in collective memory. This is an ambiguity that is often lacking but that needs to find a voice in this retrospectively created narrative, namely, the tricolor objects’ ability to challenge the demarcation between villains and heroes, between collaborators and resistance activists (Cone 1992b).
On June 14, 1940, the German army marched into Paris after France’s military defeat. An armistice was signed on 22 June, and the northern part of France, including Paris, was occupied by German troops. In the days prior to the fall of Paris, the government had moved first to Bordeaux then to the spa town of Vichy and would remain in the latter for the duration of the war, governing a country split in two both physically and mentally. The eighty-four-year-old newly appointed President de la République and First World War hero Maréshal Petain broadcasted on October 30 that France had entered a path of collaboration with Germany, thus making state collaboration official (Kedward 1985; Paxton 2001).
The government and country continued to be represented by, and indeed use, the tricolor, which despite the now-accepted version of events was never banned, only its use as an actual material flag was not tolerated at various times between 1940 and 1944 in the occupied zone; indeed, it would have been near impossible to suppress or ban let alone police the use of the simple color combination of red, white, and blue in everyday life (Plate 4.1). In the unoccupied zone, the Vichy government made extensive use of the tricolor (both as flag and as a color combination) in their propaganda; a variation featuring the addition of a francisque axe (a double-headed axe with concentrically colored blue, white, and red blades) and seven golden stars within the white stripe was Petain’s presidential standard and while also used extensively by the regime it did not replace the republic’s original tricolor, nor its use.
The republic’s tricolor originated during the French Revolution and its representative values of liberté, égalité & fraternité continued to symbolically define France; the tricolor was both a tool used by and an affirmation of the government as supposed protector and executor of French values. However, in a country that was occupied by “the enemy”—even if an official collaboration had been agreed—and that was no longer free, the tricolor inevitably took on new, or rather multiple and often contradictory, meanings.
The population of France during the Vichy years can be roughly divided into three groups: those who actively supported collaboration (Fascist and Nazi sympathizers), those who actively supported resistance (Gaullists), and those who are best classified as “other” (including, but not exclusively, Pétainistes). To each of these groups, the tricolor was a pertinent symbolic signifier but one whose signified meaning varied radically.
While all in France felt mentally and physically humiliated by the country’s military defeat and the subsequent occupation, it needs to be acknowledged, however uncomfortable, that even if a significant proportion of the population might not have liked the physical occupation of their territory, they were not wholly ideologically opposed to the ideas and visions of their victors. This was sadly evidenced by the ease with which certain individuals and institutions facilitated and collaborated in the “cleansing” programs of the Nazi regime. To this group of collaborationnistes, as Hoffmann (1974) and later Paxton (2001) call them, the tricolor was synonymous not simply with France and Frenchness, but a country deeply tied up with a specific and often very problematic purist view of national identity and nation-state.
De Gaulle’s Free French government in exile also used the tricolor but added the two-barred Lorraine cross as a sign of their commitment to reclaim annexed territory and to differentiate themselves from the puppet Vichy government and position themselves as the true leaders and protectors of France. A scarf by the English company of Jacqmar from this period (in the collection of the Museum of London) features a pattern consisting of the Forces Navales Françaises Libres badge including the Lorraine cross, the breast badge of the Free French Air Force, the “Moustique” or mosquito breast badge—which “could only be worn by men and women who had joined the Forces Françaises Libres before August 1943, when their units were amalgamated with the French Army of North Africa” (Behlen 2011)—de Gaulle’s signature, and the text Forces Françaises Libres; the design is executed in red, white, and blue on a light blue ground and serves as a useful example of material fashion culture utilizing the tricolor within a context of active resistance. However, as the use of such a scarf or this “adapted” tricolor (or the Lorraine cross) would have been too dangerous on French soil, the matter is further complicated by the fact the republic’s tricolor could thus be used as a symbolic substitute to disguise a more radical rejection of the Pétainiste regime under the guise of conformist support. Hence for those who actively resisted it was equally a sign of Frenchness but one that went beyond government politics and that was closely aligned to the revolutionary values of 1789—values and ideals inherent to the nation, and ones that superseded governmental politics and that could indeed be contrary to them, as was the case during the war years.
The third group, those not actively engaged in either collaboration or resistance, felt it was their patriotic duty as French citizens to continue to support the government and Pétain’s leadership without critical questioning but it needs to be understood, often without exaggerated commitment. It is interesting to note that after the war many in this group were unclear if their support of Vichy meant they had been collaborators or resisters; unsurprisingly, many preferred retrospectively to classify themselves as the latter. During the war, for this group the tricolor meant supporting France, but by extension and without much questioning, also the government and France’s “values” even if those values had undergone a major reform under Pétain’s Révolution Nationale. (One of the many outcomes of this national revolution was the substitution of the words liberté, égalité, fraternité with travaille, famille, patrie; it is impossible to determine if for the population these values substituted those originally associated and symbolically represented by the tricolor, but this is highly doubtful.) The way this group understood, valued, and used the tricolor is the least straightforward and the most problematic to pin down especially as their understanding and value of it shifted as the war progressed. While to the collaborators and resisters the tricolor’s meaning was fixed, to the “ordinary” Frenchman its meaning was rather more fluid and diverse. So to every one of these groups, the tricolor symbolized Frenchness and their commitment to it, but crucially their interpretation of Frenchness varied radically.
In recent years, several books, articles, and exhibitions have been staged about fashion and dress culture under Vichy. In nearly all of these, fashion objects (garments and accessories) in a tricolor palette and fashion imagery from the Vichy period have been included or referred to. In the case of, for example, a silk scarf decorated with the image of Pétain, the object is clearly highlighted as problematic and categorized as state propaganda; however, in cases where such explicit imagery beyond the use of red, white, and blue is absent, the objects are most commonly framed as expressions of symbolic resistance to the occupiers, which is of course problematic in light of what has been discussed in regard to the potentially diverse symbolic meanings of the tricolor.
In more critical contexts, such as Veillon’s study (2002), the question as to the reason why people might have donned tricolor items is raised and indeed makes the pertinent point that wearing does not equate to resistance per se, however the possibility of these items expressing the opposite of resistance is not entertained. As Taylor (1995b) pointed out, there is still too little linking of art and design to Vichy ideology (Plate 4.2).
The same approach yet more explicit can be found in the catalog to the 2009 exhibition Élégance et système D. Paris 1940–1944, curated by the Palais Gallièra but interestingly staged at the Musée Jean Moulin (named after the high-profile member of the resistance—the museum context inevitably also implicitly frames the objects on display as the material culture of resistance). What sits uneasily about the catalog is its complete neutrality in regard to the objects and their descriptions. While academic and curatorial neutrality is laudable, objectivity should not be considered equal to, nor be confused with neutrality (Haskell 2000). Indeed, beyond factual information about how the objects were made, and historical tidbits about the popularity of hats, no wider critical context to the period and fashion production is introduced.
Considering its theme and location, it is reasonable to suggest the exhibition would attract a majority of French visitors. This of course made the absence of context and the perceived neutrality of the approach somewhat contrived and anything but neutral. In fact, its lack of questioning and challenging of received wisdom affirms that the audience implicitly “knows” the wider context and indeed the official, culturally accepted narrative of this period through their embodiment of France’s collective memory of the Vichy years.
One of the objects featured in the catalog is an issue of the fashion publication Mode du Jour from 1941. At first glance, its cover appears very French indeed being a composition of red, white, and blue. Several other French women’s magazines including Elle, Marie-Claire, La Femme d’Aujourd’hui, and Le Petit Echo de la Mode regularly employed this tricolor palette (Plate 4.3). When first encountering these magazines it is easy to categorize them as subversive or defiant, especially as tales of “symbolic resistance” are plentiful when it comes to fashion and cultural life under Vichy. The most well-known is that of Couturiere Madame Grès who utilized the tricolor in her collections supposedly to the great annoyance of the Germans who, in fact, shut her atelier down several times. It would be natural to assume these magazines propose a similar act of symbolic resistance through color. However, the Grès tale while regularly repeated in interpretative history cannot be substantiated through primary research. While there is little doubt Grès was an outspoken opponent of the Germans, there is no indisputable evidence she was shut down specifically for her use of red, white, and blue. Her flouting of the German imposed fabric restrictions in her pleated creations (which in itself could be interpreted as an act of defiance) was to “blame” not her supposed/or potentially intended symbolic resistance.
There is no unequivocal evidence the occupiers had an explicit issue with the use of the red, white, and blue color combination in material or visual culture, aside from when presented in flag format, but this is more closely aligned to the conflation of national flags and patriotism and as a marker of physical ownership of territory. Indeed Cone (1992b) points out that tricolor painting which emerged as an artistic movement around 1941 was generally well received, not suppressed, and merely considered as an expression of innate Frenchness by German critics. The popular “reading” of these magazine covers as symbolic resistance is thus skewed by the incorrect belief that the occupiers had a moral stance on, and furthermore tried to unilaterally suppress expressions of Frenchness.
Tricolor objects and images, or specifically their imposed and culturally restricted readings, are part of the wider myth of “résistancialisme” (Rousso 1990) that emerged after 1944. As Roland Barthes (1972) stated, myth repeated enough times becomes truth. In the case of these magazine covers, the “real” truth is far less subversive. The excessive use of red and blue ink was simply attributable to the heavy rationing of chemicals, which resulted in only certain colors being liberally available. A closer look inside the publications affirms this. Page after page is filled with illustrations of what appear to be patriotically tinted fashions but upon reading the descriptions it becomes evident that red and blue in fact had to stand in for every color of the rainbow. This disjuncture between fashion image and description is not unique to Vichy France and what is important is the fact that the outcome of material shortages, so central to these objects, is overlooked or omitted from their biography in the exhibition and catalog which leaves these magazines open to interpretation. Interpretation is dependent on many factors including how the object is physically framed (i.e., what other objects it is complemented or contrasted with, the design of the exhibition space, the identity of the institution) but also on what prior knowledge the viewer brings to the table.
In the case of tricolor objects and imagery, that prior knowledge is all too often shaped by what revisionist historians have termed the Vichy syndrome: the postwar collective French memory of the war years and a syndrome that was created as much to hide as to reveal (Rousso 1990, 1994; Paxton 2001). Rousso described this construct as
a process that sought: first, the marginalization of what the Vichy regime was, and the systematic minimalization of its hold on French society … second, the creation of an objet de mémoire, the “Resistance,” far greater than the algebraic sum of the acting minority who were resisters … third, the assimilation of this “Resistance” into the entire nation, notably a characteristic of Gaullist résistancialisme. (Rousso in Cone 1992a: 192)
The Vichy syndrome does not deny collaboration but denies it was widespread; more importantly, it denies the possibility of it being widespread among the good people of France through the creation of a narrative that foregrounds the resistor as the true Frenchman or woman; this “constructed” historic resistencialism is thus central to contemporary French national identity.
This syndrome was not merely a creation by the state; its citizens played and continue to play their part, as do historic relics. Indeed a vital part of this process of “altering” the past into an acceptable history involved the creation of a supportive visual and material narrative that both developed new media (film, TV documentaries) and rearranged existing surviving objects that affirmed this collective memory. In terms of artifacts, this was achieved by the imposition of a symbolic order that dealt in extremes only: good, evil, resistance, or collaboration. In such a system, tricolor objects are used to smooth out friction and create simplicity when in fact they are historic friction. The Vichy syndrome strips away ambiguity and so protects the status quo through the repetition of a myth that is easy to swallow and that tastes good to boot.
Collective memory, shaped by the Vichy syndrome, thus places certain sanctioned meanings on objects such as tricolor fashions either explicitly or implicitly by co-opting them into its story as powerful signs of something they may not originally have been, hence why the myth that the tricolor was banned needs to be perpetuated as it allows the mere existence of red, white, and blue items to immediately be categorized as something of great sign value. The whole issue is, of course, further complicated by the fact that upon liberation all designers, if not every Frenchman and woman, went “tricolor-mad” and these “vive la liberation” items naturally skew our understanding of the earlier occupation items even further.
Manifestations of this collective memory are found both implicitly and explicitly throughout the exhibition catalog; the little explanation or context that is included to “help” frame certain objects is historically contentious and yet entirely in line with the accepted narrative. In the Section “Accessoires de Propaganda,” it states, “L’administration Francaise doit cooperer avec l’occupant” (the French administration has to/is forced to cooperate with the occupier). Most prominent Vichy historians dispute this was a case of “had to,” indeed the fate of neighboring countries suggest it was a choice. It is not the intention of this text to judge whether this choice was right or wrong but it is highly problematic and worrying that over time this revised interpretation of history that denies France’s war leaders any agency in the matter of collaboration has become official truth and is reproduced by cultural agents such as museums whose job it is to conserve the past, not to help rewrite it.
The catalog then deals more appropriately with the persecution of Jews in the garment industry but while there is acceptance that the Vichy regime (but it is to be noted not the French people) played an active role in the victimization of Jews, it fails to point out that at times they acted on their own accord and initiative without orders from the Germans to do so.
The final section of the catalog is named “L’accessoire, symbole d’opposition et de résistance.” It explains that an accessory is sometimes used in support of Vichy propaganda but that it can equally be an act of resistance to the government and the occupier; once again there is no mention of the possibility of collaboration, the word simply does not appear hence its existence is negated. The underlying tone is similar to Veillon’s: one that negates the possibility that fashion and one’s engagement with it can ever be construed as collaboration.
It is a possibility and in France this was explicitly evidenced in the “pastoral” and “traditional” fashions (Figure 4.1) resurrected or invented as part of Petain’s moral right-wing national revolution, which are uncomfortably similar to the sartorial ideas promoted by German National Socialists in the 1930s. Sadly this possibility of sartorial collaboration is one that contemporary agents and agencies of culture do not, or cannot, entertain let alone give voice to.
Figure 4.1 Pastoral-inspired ensembles Pour Elle magazine 13/8/1941. Author’s image.
This denial or refusal to question results in the several examples of women wearing tricolor accessories in Paris that are cited in the catalog, being categorically presented as acts of defiance and resistance. This text does not deny the possibility that these were not, or could not be, acts of resistance but it is necessary to raise doubts about the reasons why they get presented as such without questioning. These are all examples of how the objects are “made to fit in” and substantiate a narrative of good, pure, but oppressed, French people desperate for freedom and with a hatred for their occupier/oppressors. For many that was the reality of the matter but history shows us that for many it was not, and that the tricolor could be symbolically implicated in criminal acts such as the deportation of the Jews as much as in acts of resistance.
The lack of personal stories and personal agency in regard to the objects in the catalog that are undeniably about propaganda or collaboration is equally interesting and revealing. While personal stories of brave women who wore the tricolor are featured in the accessories and resistance section, in the propaganda and persecution section only the abstract, depersonalized agents of oppression are mentioned: Vichy, the Government, the Occupiers, The Germans. This is strange since fashion is about the personal as much as it is about the collective. Yet when the discussion turns from resistance to collaboration, the personal disappears and is substituted by the abstract: internal evil has to remain impersonal, faceless, nameless, and thus blameless.
The catalog does not challenge, instead it affirms that common beliefs are instruments of power and self-preservation and “that memory functions as a shield in the present rather than as a bond with the past” (Wilkinson 1996: 87). By leaving unchallenged the willful misperceptions of those who lived through Vichy and without questioning the motives that led them to falsify their memory of the past, it exposes that “Parallel with the history of Vichy another history was taking shape, that of its memory, of its persistence, of its development after 1944 up to a date that today remains impossible to determine” (Rousso in Wilkinson 1996: 87–88).
That there was symbolic resistance in Vichy France is not in doubt, but the promotion that it was as clear-cut and indeed prevalent as suggested by revisionist French historic narratives needs to be challenged. In similar need of interrogation is the reading of material culture featuring a tricolor palette because as this text has argued without this, these objects can only ever function as predetermined agents in an altered history and solely as evidence of a flawed cultural truth. These objects are about Frenchness; Frenchness meant different things to different people during Vichy, as it does now. Nevertheless, by presenting Frenchness instead as a homogenous and hermetically sealed idea and by wanting to make everything, including objects, fit into one of two neat boxes—the correct or the corrupted, resistance or collaboration—we miss the objects’ true meanings and potential, that is, their ability to highlight that national identity and collective memory are constructs based on myths, ones that material culture can affirm but more importantly that it can disrupt through the exposure of those sanctioned and sealed narratives and lay bare their true contradictory colors.
References
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