Monsieur Bébé

CHRISTIAN DIOR PARFUMS COLLECTION, PARIS, © CHRISTIAN BÉRARD

The Irresistible Monsieur Bébé

In a prolific and lavishly illustrated book published by Gallimard, Laurence Benaïm revisits the intense affinity between Christian Bérard and Christian Dior. The artist supported and influenced the couturier, whose work reflects inspirations gleaned from his unclassifiable accomplice. By Boris Bergmann.

PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE © CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY, ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS

For one thing, his silhouette never went unnoticed. Hair on end, a bushy red beard, an eruptive laugh. Always a stained suit covered with smudges of paint or pastels. At his heels, like an equally shaggy shadow, was a little dog, Jacinthe, who never left his side and went from previews and haute couture shows to the studio and fashionable cabarets... That, in sum, was the portrait of the artist Christian Bérard. A jack-of-all-trades of rare talent. A man-about-town with incomparable flair.

DIOR HERITAGE COLLECTION, PARIS, © CHRISTIAN BÉRARD

“Bébé”, as his friends called him, was born into a bourgeois milieu that, early on, exposed him to the fine arts. In 1920, he enrolled at the Académie Ranson art school. Influenced by the artists Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis, he learned to paint and travelled to Italy in pursuit of beauty… With his paintbrush, Bérard resisted avant-garde currents, such as Cubism, which he was quick to criticize: “I could never be interested in what happens when a guitar is cut into four.” While some tried to assimilate him with the “neo-humanists”, above all Bébé had a style all his own. He imagined dreamlike scenes, phantasmic characters, fanciful ruins. He invented landscapes, trompe-l’œils, friezes. Soon, Le Tout-Paris couldn’t get enough of him. The illustrious decorator Jean-Michel Frank commissioned Bérard to design painted paravent screens that became all the rage. Then, theatre doors opened to him. Christian Bérard befriended Jean Cocteau and Louis Jouvet, who saw in him “a meandering rainbow”. Fascinated by the Ballets Russes by Diaghilev, whose secretary was his companion, Boris Kochno, Bérard constructed unexpected scenery. He worked on stagings for the hit plays of the era: La Machine Infernale by Jean Cocteau, La Folle de Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, Les Bonnes by Jean Genet. He revisited the classics, such as Molière’s L’École des Femmes or Dom Juan. The legendary choreographer Roland Petit enlisted him for the ballet. Film work followed, once again with Cocteau, for whom he designed the sets and costumes for Beauty and the Beast in 1946, including the celebrated, monstrous mask worn by actor Jean Marais as the Beast.

Fashion could hardly remain indifferent to Bébé’s panache. In the early 1930s, he collaborated with Harper’s Bazaar and then Vogue, notably for the cover of the iconic special issue published in France right after the Liberation, featuring a blue-white-and-red ship sailing towards the sun and carrying with it the desires of an entire generation... But his deepest connection to fashion lay elsewhere, in his almost brotherly relationship with Christian Dior. In her latest book, Christian Dior / Christian Bérard: La Mélancolie Joyeuse, the journalist and author Laurence Benaïm explores the nature of their fusional friendship. In lieu of a classic dual biography, she offers a truly intertwined story of two extraordinary figures, two creators who constantly accompanied and inspired one another... On the surface, they appear like complete opposites: the extravagant and ultra-sensitive Bébé contrasting with the discreet and mysterious Monsieur Dior. Yet between them, the mutual aesthetic coup de foudre was immediate. In the 1930s, Christian Dior, then a partner in the Pierre Colle art gallery, showed paintings by the young Bérard alongside Dalí, Picasso and Matisse. Dior tagged along with Bébé to the most grandiose parties in Paris. He appreciated the artist’s energy, taste and candour.

PHOTOGRAPH BY LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE © CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY, ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS

And when Monsieur Dior embarked on the great adventure of opening a fashion house in his own name, Christian Bérard occupied a front-row seat. He’d come to fittings and offer words of encouragement. As a guest at the show that saw the New Look triumph worldwide, he was the first to proclaim “genius”, demonstrating his steadfast support for his bosom friend. The bonds were so strong, they resurfaced in creation itself. Monsieur Dior asked Bébé to help with decorating the House’s first boutique, called Colifichets, at 30 Avenue Montaigne. The artist even advised that Christian Dior decorate that original showcase in toile de Jouy, a print that became a Dior code. “Beneath seeming disorder, he created life,” the couturier wrote of his friend, the “arbiter of all parties and elegance”.

Moreover, among the colours in the autumn-winter 1947 collection, Monsieur Dior called a reddish-brown “Barbe de Bébé”, a direct reference to the artist’s red beard.

“Barbe de Bébé” would crop up everywhere: on a satin evening dress, a gala gown, a coat, a tweed suit, a wool ensemble... It was as though Christian Dior inscribed his affection for his longtime acolyte in the heart of his oeuvre, within the very matrix of the fabrics that he alone knew how to work to perfection.

In her book, Laurence Benaïm tracks down secret truths and buried memories. Beyond the luminous personalities, she reveals their foibles, doubts and fears. She unearths the hopes and dreams of childhood. In the Paris of artists, from the Roaring Twenties to the Liberation, two uncommon men and two destinies are placed face to face: two “Christians” forever united in their passion for art. Bébé and Monsieur Dior emerge in the truth of their pure talent. Never have they appeared so close.

“That arbiter of all parties and elegance, Christian Bérard, our dear ‘Bébé’, with his unerring taste, came (...) to see the collection that was being prepared. (...) We awaited, our hearts pounding, his verdict.”

– CHRISTIAN DIOR

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