HER VOICE "EXTOLS MAXIMS AS FORMAL AS THE BANDERILLAS OF A BULLFIGHT

Mitzah Bricard first came to fashion designer Christian Dior with her expertise in hats, Dior explains that he examine's each dress as it is modeled before a show.

..."Fashion is above all a question of line; from the shoes to the hat the silhouette must be viewed as a whole.

That is why Mme Bricard and I now pore over the choice of the hat, whose shape has only vaguely suggested in the sketch.  The particular shape and size which will suit the 'line' of the dresses has to be decided.  Before me is a huge heap of assorted shapes which are to the hats what the toiles are to the dresses. As in the case of the models, the details will come later. At first, all that is necessary is that the hat should suit both the mannequin and the dress for which it is to be the complement. Sometimes the problem seems insoluble.  Twenty solutions are tried without success; sometimes in desperation one abandons the fruitless search among the existing shapes in order to create a hat which will suit the dress and the face, out of one's own head."

However, we should not think of her as isolated from the whole process of design to fashion show.

... "And he asks Mmm Bricard*, who is sitting beside him:

'What is that little thing that you've got in your hand? Yes. that.  Give it to me.'

'You can't do that,' she exclaims.

'Oh yes I can.'

The object now adorns the hat.  Perhaps the gloves are tried and retried over and over again, or the umbrella, which are put up, put down, put up again. Finally they are abandoned in favor of a muff. The voice of Mme Bricard extols maxims as formal as the banderillas of a bullfight. ..." (page 98)

*her surname is spelled Bricart throughout Dior's autobiography, but I will keep it as Bricard. Just as there are various spellings of her given name

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MITZAH INSPIRED SCARVES and FRAGRANCE FROM DIOR

When I scan the Internet for Mitzah and Dior, up comes scarves that sell for a two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars.  These scarves have names such as Toilie de Jouy Sauvage and La Roue de la Fortune Tarot.

Here is a link to one of them DIOR FASHION - MITZAH FASHION SCARF  Here it is mentioned that Christian Dior had a fascination with astrology.

Learning that Mitzah had also come up with the name of his perfume Miss Dior (which was created to honor Dior's sister, and that in keeping with her influence on the designer, a perfume had been invented called Mitza as recently as 2010, I found this exciting review by Chant Wagner:

MIMI FROU FROU COM : CHANT WAGNER's REVIEW OF DIOR's MITZAH PERFUME  from 2017

Excerpt of review: Mitzah eau de parfum by Christian Dior was introduced in 2010 as part of the then debuting Collection Courturier Parfumeur (rebnamed La Collection Privee today), as a homage to Christian Dior's muse, Mizza Bricard.  She was a former stylist at the British fashion house of Molyneux in the 1930's, a milliner by specialty and an all-around style icon.....  Dior stressed that she was one of those rare beings, whose sole purpose in life was the quest of elegance...

Mitzah was reputed for her mysterious exotic aura - which she cultivated - her over-the-top personality and her ability to hold her ground. The latter was precisely the reason why Christian Dior asked her to join his house. He saw her as the healthy and necessary counterweight to what he saw as his overly reasonable Normand temperament. He knew she would not just agree but disagree with him, shout her disapproval at him whenever she saw it fit, thus contributing to an excellent creative dynamic in his workshop.  He wrote that he had hired her because she would embody his favorite motto "I maintain."....

(Do read the article. It's fascinating.)

So how was this woman's personality and temperament expressed in a perfume?  Chant Wagner must be a nose!

Partial description of the perfume: The composition opens on a richly resinous accord with an original counterpoint of coriander, but also a powdery accord which soon becomes more intense. The fragrance composition seems to eschew the convention of opening on bright, sparkling notes - and to aim directly for a sensation of bade, deep notes.

There is something dark and feral about the scent which may be an allusion to Mme Bricard's predilection for wearing leopard fur and print. The impression is musky, slightly sweet, burnt, a bit caramel-y, a bit dry - and overall, jungley....

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THE DEMANDING MME. BRICARD IS WITH DIOR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FASHION HOUSE : HER EXPERTISE IS HATS

This autobiography proves to me once again that the creative are rarely only good at one thing for it's an exciting read, conveying the back-room, of a couture house, the models and the fashion show, the creativity and the business that was Christian Dior's House of Dior.

Our subject for this month, Mitzah Bricard, was on the team for all of it:

Why Christian Dior had Mitzah Bricard join his design team.

... "Mme Bricard, who had helped Molyneau with his collection to great effect.  We had become great friends... In August she allows herself to spend a month at a fashionable watering-place in order that she may be seen in the square of the casino, but on the whole her love of the country and nature does not go further than the flowers with which she decorates her hats and her dresses.  Her high standards are inflexible; in fashion she aims immediately for the most marked expression of that indefinable, and perhaps slightly neglected thing called chic. (page 12-13)

At the birth of the House of Dior, Christian Dior reports that Madame Bricard was there.  Using a 'cubbyhole' of the workshop to show his first independent collection:  

"At 10:30, with the salons full to bursting, the first mannequin showed the first dress.  Marie-Therese, half dead with fright, stumbled at her first appearance, collapsed in tears, and was henceforth incapable of showing a dress.  Very soon, the entry of each model was accompanied by gusts of applause.  I stuffed my ears, terrified of feeling confident too soon; but a series of short bulletins from the field of battle confirmed to me that my star mannequin, the troops - led, flags flying, but my star mannequin, the inimitable Tania - had triumphed.

Now the last dress had been shown, amid a tumult of enthusiasm, and Mme Marguerite, Mme. Bricard, and I stood gazing at each other in the dressing room.  We were none of us able to speak,  Then Raymonde came to look for us, crying with joy, in order to propel us into the big salon, where we were greeted by a salvo of applause.  As long as I live, whatever triumphs I win, nothing will ever exceed my feelings at that supreme moment." (page 17 paperback)

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ABOUT MADAME BRICARD and CHRISTIAN DIOR

From Ilya Parkin's book on the return of femininity to fashion after the masculinization of style due to the World War II demands on women...

In this book we learn that Dior's inspiration, in terms of his notions of femininity may have been his mother and memories of her, while his sister, who also had presence and impact in his work, had been part of the French resistance and had actually been arrested and put into a concentration camp. He had a nostalgia of femininity that had been abandoned in the War years. Perhaps he was even thinking of the Belle Epoque. He relied on a few women for their opinions - collaborations - with him at his workshop where he designed. One of them was Mitzah Bricard who he ever called "Madame Bricard," never getting on first name basis with her. She is portrayed as icy cold emotionally and yet...

Excerpt page 123

Dior's entwinement with femininity as a condition of his selfhood as a designer and celebrity can be most clearly seen in his very close working relationship with women over the course of his career. Unlike Poiret or Schiaparelli, Dior was not heavily invested in the image of the designer as genius who both found inspiration for and executed his craft entirely alone. Dior's work contains many references to the process of dress design as collaborative, as 'passionate collective research.'

Excerpt page 125-126

It is perhaps Dior's descriptions of Mitzah Bicard that are most telling, even if they do not have the same quality of incorporation that his discussions of Mms, Raymonde and Marguerite, the other members of his exalted triumvirate of women, have.  Like the others, he characterizes Mme Bircard as collaborator. But her role is never clearly specified. She functioned as a kind of muse, and certainly she had been memorialized as such. Her collaboration appears, in all of his portrait of her, to simply be, embodying elegance outside of time: 'Mme Bricard is one of those people, increasingly rare, who make elegance their sole raison d'etre.  Gazing at life out of the windows of the Ritz, so to speak, she is superbly indifferent to such mundane concerns as politics, finance, or social change." In Talking about Fashion, he says, 'if times are hard, she will ignore them, and troubles leave her unmoved.' Notably, it is Mme Bricard who inspires Dior's ideas; she catalyzes the process of creation. 'Her moods, her extremes of behavior, her faults, her entrances, her late appearances, her theatricality, her mode of speech, her unorthodox manner of dress, her jewels, in short her presence, bring the touch of absolute elegance so necessary to the fashion house.

Unlike Dior's smooth and harmonious incorporation of Raymonde and Marguerite, the relationship with Mme Bricard is described as tempestuous. He writes, "I knew that her presence in my house would inspire me towards creation, as much by her reactions - and even her revolts - against my ideas, as by her agreements.' It is a curious formulation, since what Dior values in Mme Bricard is ostensibly the same quality that is understood to be key in his success; an essential, almost inherited, understanding of the grammar of chic as something timeless, removed from the vagaries of history.  And yet he describes himself as being inspired by a motto he attributes to her, one which he struggled to apply to himself: 'I will maintain." What he takes from her is her compulsion to tradition. It is a compulsion that does not come entirely naturally for him, even if that traditional orientation is the trait on which his celebrity is bu8ild,.  Through Mmm Bricard, he learns to 'maintain,' to steadfastly carry on the timeless French traditions of chick and couture despite the vagaries of history and commerce.  In simply being, she fills an educational role in Dior's life, temporarily reorienting him to tradition and to the French past.

***

And yet... there are many an image of her in which she is not posing in an aloof or haughty manner, but smiling with warmth or as an active participant.  So, she is not just around posing at all...

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A DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT CHRISTIAN DIOR - MITZAH BRICARD APPEARS

THE WORLD OF MONSIEUR DIOR IN HIS OWN WORDS from 1949.

At about 3:35 you'll see Mitzah helping dress a fit model.  Those teeny waitlines! Around 13:35 again Madame Bricard with his other "collaborators."  Voluminous skirts.  Femininity. 

MITZAH BRICARD : AT ONCE UNKNOWABLE and OPINIONATED : THE ONCE GRAND-HORIZONTAL and INSTINCTUAL FASHION MUSE of CHRISTIAN DIOR

Madame Mitza Bricard is one of these almost unknowable creatures. Mitzah Bricard had the strong reputation - deserved - as a fashion muse as well as owning the good jewelry collection of a woman who had been treated as a a treasure or gifted by the men who enjoyed her as a courtesan.Yet, if this is true, the name or names of the man or men who kept her or patronized her remain unknown.

She is most known as a muse to fashion designer Christian Dior, not that she was ever his mistress. Her presence and opinion were important in that design studio and have had lasting impact. The mistress's role as muse to her man is an important one too, so you see the connection I've made. Her taste and her very presence made her a woman who stood out.  Dior said she was a rare person who made elegance her reason for being.

Fond of wearing leopard coats and turbans or simply wiffs of printed cloth, 

Mitzah was even called Christian Dior's Leopardess. 

MITZAH BRICARD

Germaine Louise Neustadtl

1900 - 1977

Our Mistress of the Month, Mitzah Bricard, maintained a mysterious past that had her encountering those who would keep her in stand-out jewels such as her long array of pearls - jewelry which she continued to wear judiciously to accessorize.  From being a person who had the means to purchase, she evolved to be one of designer Christian Dior's salon muse - collaborators. Called one of the last 'grand-horizontals' by John Galliano, then designer for the House of Dior, in a 2017 article in Women's Wear Daily, she was also known for what she did not wear, knickers. It was said she walked around the salon, comfortable in her nakedness but for a wiff of leopard cloth. She was photographed by the elite photographers Louise Dahl-Wolf and Horst P. Horst, and Cecil Beato,  black and white portraits of a mature woman with great presence. Unafraid to speak her mind, she sometimes looked in as the designs were evolving, only to make a negative comment, and was also known for ranging moods. Mitzah had a background in millinery so Dior made her the head of that department and she was also known for wearing hats, along with the above mentioned leopard and pearls. 

Her background contains mystery. She was born maybe in Paris, maybe somewhere in Romania. Her mother was English but her father was Austrian but how did she get to Paris or meet the Romanian diplomat and did she ever live in Romania?  As for that name Mitzah, also spelled Mitza or Mizza, who knows where it came from or when; to me it sounds Jewish. She had a string of rich lovers but was it love or were they patrons? She first married a Romanian diplomat, Alexandro Biano (which sounds Italian). After his death, she married in 1941 to the uber-rich Hubert Bricard, president of B.L.B. Laboratories; this we are sure of.**  Prior to Dior, she is credited with having been a muse to English designer Edward Henry Molyneux, who had a salon that opened in 1919 in Paris, before World War II. Did this artist, fashion designer, and military officer, also give her jewels?

Christian Dior (1905-1957) lived to be only fifty-two, dying while on vacation in Italy after suffering a third heart attack. Madame Bricard was already a woman of a 'certain age' during her tenure at Dior, in her late forties and fifties, looking well preserved and quite beautiful and most of all elegant and feline.

In reading around Dior, whose legacy is lasting, I learned that this late-bloomer died about a decade or so into having his own business and label, after working for other designers in Paris.  Dior suddenly got attention in 1947. On board during those years were a number of women who are credited as being his collaborators including his sister, for whom the Miss Dior perfume was created. Mitzah is credited with naming it.  In more modern times, the House of Dior created a perfume in her memory named after her. Certain collections through the years have been inspired by her. The fall 2021 collection included a Mitzah jacket, a leopard print with a figure-shaping hug.

Known for going against the more functional but 'masculine' apparel worn by women during the World War II years, in which women stepped up to activities once owned by men, and creating a tiny waist- full skirt fashion that emphasized femininity, Dior was not at all opposed to having women's opinions. These women lived for fashion but also they worked at the salon actively throughout the process of creating a new garment. Mitzah is seen pining a dress to a fit model, at a quick lunch in the salon before they all get back to work, and appearing at small in-house fashion shows as staff, wearing her finest, as well as modeling for photographers, a busy woman. While Coco Chanel deplored the feminine look of Dior, those in his camp thought her fashion's androgynous. His women were considered to be "flowers."

Who was this man, Dior?  In a podcast I listened to on YouTube originating from the House of Dior, an interesting and beautifully stated mini-documentary, I learned that  Christian Dior believed in the occult - palm readings, astrology, psychics, fortune telling - intuitive women - and went for readings frequently. He sought guidance for his success.

Image of Madame Mitzah Bricard at work in millinery from BlogStudio 

BLOG STUDIO - CHRISTIAN DIOR many good images here.

The current Dior line of long, thin silk scarves includes an astrology pattern. Dior's emergence was on the last day of what was the 1947 Paris fashion shows, almost as if this was the plan for luck. He is said to have sewn lily flowers into the hems of garments because they were his favorite flower. 

We'll be learning more about Christian Dior and Madame Mitzah Bricard this month as I pull from a few books that describe their relationship, which is the best way to get to know a woman who became known, while keeping her mystery.

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** Although there is information on current companies with this name, I've not been able to clarify what the company her husband was president was about or if it still exists. I won't speculate as there are a few possibilities.

Research for this month's Mistress of the Month, Mitza Bricard,  includes the article, "The Formidable Women Behind the Legendary Christian Dior" by Lindsay Baker, which lead me to the book Poiret, Dior, and Schiaparelli by Ilya Parkins.  

As well as Bill Cunningham's book "Fashion Climbing."

And, we'll look at Dior's own memoir.

*** John Charles Galliano CBE, RDI is a British fashion designer who was the head designer of French fashion companies Givenchy, Christian Dior, and his own label John Galliano. At present, Galliano is the creative director of Paris-based fashion house Maison Margiela.  - citing Wikipedia.

Interested in modeling and fashion?  You might want to read :

SIMONE MICHELINE BODINE -  "BETTINA" - THE FIRST SUPERMODEL and MISTRESS OF ALY KHAN - A JET SET ERA MISTRESS  which appears in the June 2015 edition of Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.