IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 950, 25 October 1957, Page 13

IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS

THE SILENT TRAVELLER IN PARIS, by Chiang Yee; Methuen and Co., English price 30/-. PARIS A LA MODE, by Celia Bertin; Victor Gollancz, English price 21/-. MR CHIANG is a shrewd and interested observer and he has the same sympathy and liking for Europeans that so many Europeans have for Chinese. It is a pleasure to read his impressions of Paris written without any sly digs. If there is something he doesn’t like, Chiang Yee says so, but on the whole his writing is descriptive and factual, not critical. We learn a lot about Paris from his book, something about Parisians and various snippets of history. Naturally the author writes about what specially. interests him and this gives the book a unique flavour.: He notices the solitary policeman who seems to be reciting something to the moon; likens the fishermen on the quays to herons, and is astonished to find others as mad as himself when he climbs to the top of Notre Dame in a snow storm. He finds traces of Chinese influence everywhere, and with charming inconsequence will write that he has no idea what Henry IV_ thought about so’ and so, but that he knows a story about an Emperor of the T’ang dynasty-and tells it. Mr Chiang’s many ink and brush drawings are amusing and finely done, the coloured plates have an odd sugary quality I find distasteful, but the pleasure he took in doing the paintings somehow redeems them, : Paris a la Mode is a detailed examination ‘of the city’s .chief industryhaut couture fashion. It is an interesting subject. Sumptuous clothes and all

the proper accessories are designed and meticulously created on a very big scale in Paris. They are worn by models chosen from all over Europe for their beauty and elegance; and each creation is mamed and considered as a work of art requiring the co-operation ‘of a host of people-designer, mannequin, women in the workrooms, saleswomen (vendeuses) in the salons-all highly skilled. |. The exquisite model garments go out to almost every country in the world, but are worn by only a handful of rich women before the patterns are finally put, in a somewhat modified form, into mass production. This is France’s biggest export trade, and this book seems to suggest that there are bad times for it ahead. Fewer and fewer women can afford to dress in these, exquisite clothes and those who do are usually nothing like the beautiful young women they were desioned for.

Margaret

Garland