A TEMPLE OF FASHION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 544, 26 January 1882, Page 2

A TEMPLE OF FASHION.

Thirty years ago, says a Paris corres-

ponpent, the great dressmakers of Paris were named Palmyre and Gagelin and De Bolsieux. At the first Paris exposition' it was the second-named house that took first prize for dressmaking. The article exhibited was a robe of ‘white silk wrought with gold. So novel and so artistic was the design that the dress was afterwards purchased for the South Kensington museum, and may be seen there to tins very day. It was : a young English gentleman, ituthe employ of Masion Gagelin, to whose creative brain had been owing the pattern of that wonderful toilet. Some years later the Princess de Metternich, then in the dawn of her social celebrity, recognised the remarkable talent of the young Englishman, and advised him to set up for himself. But he de- ; murred \ he was very well off where he was, rnd if his employers would grant him an increase of salary he would not ’ care to move. But M. Opigez, then the head of the Masion Gagelin, was a pig-headed narrow-minded old Frenchman, who could neither recognise the great gifts of his subordinate, nor yet his right to an increased salary. The result was a curt refusal on his part. Worth left his employ and set up for himself. The Masion Gagelin tumbled . to pieces a few years later from its own dry-rot, having existed from the days of Marie Antoinette, and the place that , once knew it now knows it no more. The Princess de Metternich did not fail to aid and recommend her protege , and Worth speedily became a power in the world of fashion, and this is the result, this vast establishment on the Rue de la Paix, up whose vast stone staircase have come half the feminine notabilities of the world. Queens have come here, and princesses and famous singers and queens of fashion, thirsting for new sensations and dressmakers in quest of new models, the wives of American millionaires, and the daughters of a hundred kings. The coronation robe of Mercedes of Spain (destined, alas! never to be worn) and the bridal dress of her more fortunate successor, the Austrian Christine, have adorned the spacious showrooms. Hither came Chris'ine Nils- : r son to learn what she coul i oiras Ophelia,-and the gentle . . quest

of the 'court dress of Linda and the splendid costume of “La Traviala.” Strong-rainded women, and sternly practical men have come here to view the establishment as one of the sights of Paris, and to such it seems almost incredible that the stout, elderly, dark* eyed man, with his languid voice and nonchalant manner, his fingers loaded with gems of price, and with two little King Charles spaniels barking at his heels, should be the soul and mainspring of this vast establishment that numbers amongst its employees no less a number than 1,000 souls. Yet that he most cejrtainly is. Now draping a skirt in hij> own private room, now pinning on lace in that graceful curvethat the fingers of no sewing girl is able to originate, now blending the silks and satins of varied tints for some costly toilet, now correci ing the fit of some rebellious corsage or the sewing of some recalcitrant skirt, he is everywhere at the same moment, the allpervading genius of this palace of fashion.